S2 Ep1034: When Helping Hurts: Dr. Brian Fikkert

Hello, friends. Registration is now open for next years, exiles and Babylon converts. And I cannot wait for this conference. Here's a few topics that we're going to wrestle with the future of the church, disability in the church, multi-ethnic perspectives on American Christianity and a conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. We have Eugene Cho, Elise Fitzpatrick, Matt Chandler, Michelle Sanchez, Justin Gibbany, Devon Stollamar, hard rick to list goes on and on. Joey Dodson is going to be there. Greg Boyd and Clay Jones, they're going to be engaging in this conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. And of course, we have to have Ellie Bonilla and street hymns back by popular demand. And Teneca Waiya and Evan Wicken will be leading our multi-ethnic worship again. We're also adding a pre-conference this year. So we're going to do an in-depth scholarly conversation on the question of women and ministry featuring two scholars on each side of the issue. So doctors Gary Bersier and Sydney Park are on the complimentary inside and doctors Cynthia Long Westfall and Philip Payne on the E-Gallitarian side. So March 23 to 25, 2023 here in Boise, Idaho. We sold out last year and we'll probably sell this year again. So if you want to come, if you want to come alive, then I would register sooner than later and you can always attend virtually if you can't make it out to Boise in person. So all the info is at theologyinthorod.com. That's theologyinthorod.com. Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of theology in the Rob. My guest today is Dr. Brian Fickert. He's the founder and president of the Chalmers Center and is a professor of economics and community development and at Covenant College in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He's also the co-author, the best selling book, When Helping Hurts How to Eliviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself, which is the main reason why I wanted to have Brian on that this book When Helping Hurts has been one of the most influential books in my life and it's, you know, read it over 10 years ago and just really reshaped how I think about poverty, poverty, relief, helping the poor short-term mission trips. And so that's what we talk about in this podcast. Dr. Fickert has a PhD in economics from Yale University. He's also written several other books including From Dependence to Dignity, Helping Without Hurting in Short-term Missions and Several Others. I would highly, highly encourage you to check out the website, chalmers.org, chalmers.org. And yeah, if you have any heart for missions, for short-term missions, for poverty, relief, you absolutely have to digest everything that Brian has written. So please welcome to the show for the first time. Do you want to know only Dr. Brian Fickert? Those of you who have been listening to the podcast for a while, I've been now in that I'm like, okay, this guest I've been waiting for years to have on. So this is another one of those times with Brian. So you might know his name from a pretty well-known book When Helping Hurts. In fact, I don't know Brian, the title of that book is almost taken on life of its own. I mean, I hear people all the time, you know, say, when we want to help people, we want to hurt them as we're trying to help. So yeah, I told you off line. I mean, honestly, I mean, this from the bottom of my heart, probably the top five most influential books in my life. I mean, I will never think about poverty, poverty, relief, missions, short-term missions, the same. And it really, when I read your book, it was one of those, and I'm sure you get this a lot too, like there was something already that just didn't kind of feel right with how we were going about helping the poor. It just felt a little bit almost colonial or just like white man, savior, whatever. And so when I was reading your book, it was just like, oh my gosh, you were putting like a thwartative sense to just kind of gut the level reactions that was feeling. So anyway, Brian, this is a long introduction. Thank you so much for being on the Algebra. It's so great to be with you, Preston. Thanks so much. Can you tell us for somebody who doesn't know about the book or maybe it's been 10 years since they read it? Can you give us the, maybe the snapshot of what the book is all about and why I might say this has been so influential in my life? Yeah, so it's, we're really doing thanks to God for all of these things. We never imagined the God would use the book in this way. And so we just want to give Lord to him. The book asks the question, what is poverty? Because the way that we answer that question determines everything we're going to do to try to alleviate poverty. It's like we go to the doctor. The first thing the doctor does is try to diagnose what's wrong with you. It's the out of the diagnosis. The doctor treats you. And a couple of things can go wrong. There's a doctor can misdiagnose what's wrong with you. Give you the wrong kind of treatment. You won't give better. You might get worse or the doctor might treat the symptoms rather than underlying causes. Imagine if you go with the headache and the doctor gives you two Tylenol, right? And the headache starts to go away. Oh, man, healed. But what if you had a brain tumor? And so treat symptoms rather than underlying causes can actually do really harm. And so we've got to get the diagnosis correct. When you ask most Americans what is poverty? They say it's about a lack of food, a lack of housing, a lack of clothing, a lack of money. For some reasons that go deep into our culture, we tend to think in very materialistic terms. But when you ask poor people around the world what is poverty? They'll say things like this, I feel less than human. I feel shame. I feel like I can't get that change in my life. I feel like garbage that everybody wants to get rid of. The poor tend to find their poverty in far more psychological and social terms. We tend to find it material terms and that disconnect between how we think of it and how they're experiencing it creates a problem. It's like a mismatch. The kinds of remedies that we apply don't fit the disease. Wow. The opening illustration you gave, I don't know if you can maybe sum that up a relivex. That was that was mind blowing. I mean, this is I've been I've been as 10 years ago since I read it. I still remember at the end of the illustration, a true illustration of you and the Kibera slums that you did everything wrong. And you're helping somebody in desperate need. Here you go. It takes couple bucks out of your wallet to save a life. I mean, or whatever it was, it was just like, I was expecting like a positive. And you're like, did everything wrong? Here's why that that was mind like, can you can you tell us relive that story? Yeah, yeah. So so first of all, I wanted to be careful and to say folks, our message isn't do less. Our messages do more, but perhaps do it differently from how you've done it before. So some people think our message is you can hurt the poor. So just stay home and don't give any money. That's not worth trying to say whatever you're doing, quadruplet, do more, but perhaps do it differently. So we gave an example to start of our book about a woman who actually was a witch doctor and she was coming out of that. It was coming to Christ. But she had actually she had tonsillitis and she had her next door neighbor cut out her tonsils with the rusty mishetty was horrifying. And so she's lying there on the floor of her hut that she's in quite a bit of pain and agony and she needs penicillin. And so I reached my pocket and I gave money to somebody to go get her penicillin. And that was a good thing. People she really did need penicillin. And so so she really did need help. But what I forgot about was that just just maybe 30 yards away was a church that we were working with and that church was trying to minister to her. And she needed connections to that church. And the people in that church needed to get into the practice of ministering the people in their community. So this is a very poor church way down in the heart of the slums. I gave the money and I just spent just 10 more seconds. I could have gone back to that church. There are a bunch of people gathered there already said, hey, there's somebody in your community that needs that needs help. Could you minister to her? But what happened is I got in the way of that local church and it's ministering. So I was the outside answer. I was the outside savior. The problem is I was getting on the airplane a couple days later and I wasn't going to be round anymore. What she really was connection to that local church. And so she really did need help. It's just I probably wasn't the best person to do it. That wasn't terrible. Right. Just a few seconds more of thought I could have thought, you know what? I could have done this a little differently to really empower the local church to minister. That's it. And I like how you brought up a firm member correctly. How even though it took, you know, relatively speaking, it cost you next to nothing, right? It would have cost the church. You know, they would have to pool resources together. But even that practice of them coming together and saying, we don't need a white westerner tourist really to for us to depend upon extending the kingdom of God and meeting needs. Is that I mean that that because that even as I was reading down like, yeah, but you saved the life and it didn't take much, but you're kind of like, that's the point like it. We steal away the power of local communities when we always feel like we're the ones who have to come in and do the thing, you know. That's exactly it. You know, human beings are actually deeply wired for relationship. And in the West, we don't really get that very well. We're highly individualist to kind of creatures or people we think we are. And really, this people are hard wired for relationship. What she needs is what all of us need the deep relationship of the community of God's people. And so I got in the way of relationship building. And that's a mistake. You talked about, again, I wish I don't have my copy in front of me. I've moved a couple of times. I'm going to give you a test buddy at the end. I was looking for it. It's not I have a whole poverty section here that it's not there. I think might be my wife's part or something. But I remember you giving different categories of Peace. that are like, and I don't know the kind of in need or whatever, there's kind of like people that there are people that need like, they are going to die if they don't get material help. Hurricane hits an island. Maybe there's famine or something where people are literally dying in the streets and they don't get material help. They need material help. They need a bam, a handout to get them to survive, to get to the next step. Then there's another category of like, they need, well, I'll let you take it from here, but what I loved about that is we often misdiagnose, and give material help to people that need the second or the third category of help, or kind of like psychological help and power, man. Can you, yeah, talk to us about those different categories? Yeah, you got it. Yeah, okay. So it's always helpful to remember the end goal. What we're trying to do is to flow with God's mission, and God's mission is a mission of restoring all of creation to what it's supposed to be. And for human beings, that means we're storing us to what we are supposed to be. And we can impact that a bit, but again, the human being is wired for relationship with God, themselves, with others, and with creation. And what that looks like, that relationship with creation, amongst other things, it looks like using our gifts, storing our gifts to do what the Bible says, to increase the numbers, to do the earth, be productive to unfold and impact God's creation. And so the goal is to restore people to that, to all that it needs to be an image bear. Well, the problem is that oftentimes people come to us, they look the same, they're poor, but they're actually in very different situations. And so the underlying causes of their poverty are different, and their capacities are different. So you just gave a great example. What you were talking about is relief. So this isn't the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan at all, but it's a helpful illustration. So the dude is lying on the side of the road, being the Good Samaritan provides relief. Really, relief is a handout. It's appropriate when the individual or the community can't contribute to their own improvement. That's what happens. The Good Samaritan takes the dude to the inn, and he gets him bandaged and stuff, right? And then what happens is we think that there's this process of restoration that we're trying to restore the individual to what they were like before the crisis happened. As we move into that, it's called rehabilitation. And we want to move away from doing things to people or for people and to start to do things with people, to ask them to contribute to their own improvement. Why? Not because we're a bunch of uptight Republicans, although we might be, but because we want to help them be human again, to be humanist, to be able to storage or stuff, right? So as soon as the individual or community can contribute to the rebuilding of their life, you want to ask them to participate. It doesn't mean that we won't provide any assistance, but we'll only provide assistance in ways that complement the use of their own gifts. You want to restore them. So they need to get the practice of using their own gifts again. Then development is helping an individual or community to achieve a greater degree of humanifloor than they've ever experienced before. It means walking with people long periods of time as they learn to use their own gifts in order to be who's are called to be such relief and rehab and development. Here's the other thing. The vast majority of poor people in the world are not in a crisis. They're not destitute. They're not on the verge of starvation. They actually can do something. And so the vast majority of poor people around the world need development, not relief. And the number one problem the US Church has is that we provide relief in context in which development is the appropriate intervention. We hold on resources. We take over. We do things. And the people actually can do something that can contribute to their own improvement. Can you give us a concrete example of that? I mean, maybe not the name of a church or something, but I mean, maybe a typical thing to churches do well-intended but might not be the absolute best. Well, I was hearing about this guy named Sprinkle or something. I heard it to really stoop-- No. So the list is still going on. So we all give it to you. I have a friend who is very, very wealthy. And his son lives in a homeless shelter, a block away. Well, why? Abel bodies, the son can function. He could work. But this homeless shelter basically provides him with three meals a day and a place to stay for free. And so what the kid does is he stays to the homeless shelter. And he goes to the library all day and plays video games. Well, my friend tries to hold a son accountable to say, no, son, you ought to be productive. You've got to be working. You've got a lot of gifts. But because that homeless shelter is providing relief to a young man who doesn't need it, he undermines my friend's approach, which is a more developmental approach, trying to walk with a son. And so bad relief undermines good development work. I do-- I mean, I even wrote down a question. I was going to ask it's kind of related to this. I mean, like homeless in America-- or we could even say that-- well, let's stick there for a second, because I have wondered. And this is something that I was kind of wondering before I read your book and I read your book, and it kind of made sense. Do you feel like most approaches to helping homeless in America are not-- are more relief and not-- not-- It's a rehabilitation-- Rehabilitation and-- Rehapen development. Yeah. Can you give us an example of maybe a good scenario? This is what it could look like that might be better. You've asked me the hardest one. So there's probably no harder population to work with homeless people in America. There's a lot going on there. Lots of mental health issues that I think make it harder to know what to do and how to function. So just in a nutshell, again, I believe that human being is not just a physical creature, we're body, soul, relational creatures. And so what happens to us relationally affects us physically and spiritually. We see that homeless person sitting there on the street corner. Sure, the person is lacking in food. But why? Why is that? Well, typically there's some kind of relational problem. Their family perhaps has rejected them, or perhaps they've done things to ostracize their family. Oftentimes, people in that situation are running from relationships. A lot of people in that situation are actually like me. They are type A personalities who highly perfectionistic and something went wrong. Maybe they got fired at work or something, some imperfection happened, and they couldn't cope with it. So they turn to alcohol or drugs to try to deal with the pain. And so the point is just there's a deep seated relational thing that's causing them, in most cases, to be homeless. So what do we do? Well, it's hard to know what to do. So when I stop at a street corner, I try to track a light, and there's a homeless person standing there. I know that if I give that homeless person a dollar, it's just going to enable them to be there again the next day. It's not really going to help them. And so I typically don't give, because I know there's several more relational thing that they really need. And so I often say to the person, hey, I know of a great ministry that can walk with you across time. Well, the reality of it is, typically, the person will reject that on the front end. They just sort of want the quick fix. And there's also, again, mental health issues, their decision making process. It's in the way it's rational. So what do you do? Sometimes, on rare occasions, I will give, because I think the person is so incapable of making a good decision, I've just got to buy time until he can get the relational stuff in place. And so it depends. There's no easy answer. I do think that prolonged handouts for anybody is a bad idea. And so you want to get them into a setting where you can engage and pause the relationships with them, walking with them across time. I'm not an expert at homelessness, but somebody has told me that typically, it takes 70 touches for a homeless person to be willing to trust you and your ministry. But by touches, I mean, 70 times that you're walking down the street, you stop and talk to the person on average, 70. Well, for that person, it's going to be open to you saying, hey, let's walk together over time. Let's do something different here. And so it's very complex. Sometimes you've got to give a hand out to buy the 70 chances. So it's not a complete either. Or are you saying there is a place for a temporary relief, even though the goal, in a sense, the function is more playing a role in rehabilitation, but you have to establish a relationship, which if you're just constantly not-- yeah, that makes sense. It's very complicated. And it's by case, too pressed. And so I have a friend who-- OK, so another year, Scott, I was coughing another book called Becoming Whole. It was killing me. I mean, I was so far behind. I was missing all my deadlines. And my hair was-- now my shiny-- he was like this. And one of the things I went out for a walk in my neighborhood, in my body language, I go for a walk, is basically don't talk to me. I'm in a zone. I've got my AirPods in. Don't talk. And so I-- [LAUGHS] It's horrible, actually. So I come across a fella I've known for some time, his name, but we're called Bob here. I've known him. He's in my neighborhood. I don't know him that well. And he's standing by his car. And he says, Brian, I've been thought of my house. Can you help me? So I started to-- you know, I'm writing a book on how to solve Poverg. [LAUGHS] I'm just striking a dead at this moment. This is horrifying. So I thought, you know what? I'll call my wife. and she'll say we can't help him. So I called my wife and say, "Honey, I said Bob is homeless. You need to place the state of that, but we can't help him right?" She was, "No, you bring him home." So Bob was in my house for three weeks. Well, we're providing him with a handout. We were. Because he was so mentally discombobulated. He wasn't thinking rationally. So Bob stayed in my house for three weeks. But what happened is, over time, he started to kind of perk up a bit. He started to kind of, when he was in a safe place and a relationship, he started to kind of calm down a little bit. So there's a sense in which we provide an environment in which Bob could calm down. And did we give him food? Yeah, we gave him food. We gave him place to stay. But then what happens is, after about a week, he goes, "Bright, how can I help you?" So he started to go, "You know, I should contribute something here." That's what you want to have happened. So my wife, my wife, leaves town. She's gone for the weekend. And it's a Saturday. And I said, "Bob, could you clean my house?" So it turns out Bob has an obsessive compulsive disorder. And this is an issue, my own family. So we were trying to figure how we build a Bob's assets. And we come up with a business for him, OCD, overcoming dirt, putting my obsessions to work for you. So Bob starts cleaning my house. So I'm sitting in my study all day, typing away and I'm mad, and I'm frustrated. I can't get this book written and I'm spitting nails and all this. And all day long, and here Bob, clean up my house. And he's muttering under his breath. I'm like, "Who's he talking to?" Because they're cemental illness issues. Who's he talking to? And they say, "Bob, who you talking to?" He says, "Oh God, I've been thanking God all day for the chance to clean your house. I've been talking to God, praising him for the change." So here I am writing a book about image bearing. Spitting nails, mad that I've got to work on this book. And my homeless friend is out there in my house, doing what I'm talking about. The next day I come down, there's a note on the island, Brian. Jill is coming home today. Why don't you get her a dozen roses and put them right here and have a little arrow from your Russia's for the roses? So Bob is helping me love God and love others. I'm trying to tell you Preston, there's gifts there, there's abilities there, there's an image bearing in there. And so I think we kind of fan the flames of that and then Bob started minister back to me. Bob is still my friend five years later. He is, it's not easy. Two steps forward, one step back. He's still doing all kinds of crazy things. But over time we're seeing progress or Bob. And so it is providing things from the context of empowering relationship. Why do you think so many people do still fall back on relief? Is it easier? Do they not really know? Except I think most Americans, I think deep down they know like this homeless person, if they had a job where they were going to hold down a rent, get clean, like that. Of course that's better. Like just sitting here getting money every day on the street corner. That's not a good life. But is it, I mean, I got to think it's part of it. It's just easier, right? The hand a couple of bucks and move on. Do investing relationship is like, even when you're talking, I'm like, well, that's overwhelming. Like, I don't know if I have time for that. You know what I'm now like, oh my gosh, like, totally, totally. So I think there's a couple of reasons. At the deepest layer, Americans are highly materialistic creatures. We think money is the answer to everything. And so our default for almost everything in our life is some kind of physical response. And this is pervasive in our culture. And so our default is towards stuff. In the context of poverty, we do that as well. But yeah, it's easier. I mean, it doesn't solve the problems, but it kind of makes me feel like I've done something. And should I've given this dude something? And I don't have time to invest in relationship. But around even is, I don't have time to invest in 40 Bob's. I can barely do one. Yeah. I mean, barely one. And my whole neighborhood is involved in this right now. It's a lot of work. And so relationships are hard. They're time consuming. They're messy. Going on a short-term, it's a mission strip. It's quick. It's easy. It's measurable. And so that's another issue. A lot of times in the space of poverty, we have to work with donors. We get to work with donors, I should say. And they want, typically, something measurable. Well, it's easy to measure how many both of soup I laid out. It's hard to measure how many relationships I foster today. There's all kinds of forces at work that lead us towards material solutions. Can you talk about churches in the West, more financially, well off churches that are really wanting to help poor churches around the world? I mean, obviously, Africa, lots of churches are partnering with organizations, doing poverty relief, maybe child sponsorship, orphanages, so on and so forth. Digging wells, whatever. Can you give us a picture of maybe some unhelpful? Again, underlying everything I'm going to say that might sound critical is well-intended. I mean, people have, they want to help the poor. They read James 127, like, I'm going to do that. So maybe well-intended, but less than helpful, ways in which churches might partner with a church or an organ of poor here. And then maybe a positive example what it could and should look like. Yeah, yeah. So let's start with the negative first. It's important to first remember the primary manifestation of Jesus Christ in Uganda is the church in Uganda. It's not us. They're the ones who are going to be there over the long haul. If poverty is deeply relational, which I think it is, then it's going to take empowering relationships to address poverty. I can't have a relationship with somebody. I know one week missions trip. It takes decades to bring the kind of healing that we're looking for. And so the whole paradigm of, I'm going to go and do and fix something is ridiculous. I don't know about you, Preston. But I have relations with ships that aren't altogether healthy. They don't get fixed by me running down the street and hurling something. It takes long periods of time of deep engagement. So the first thing is just to have a sense of the primary manifestation of Jesus Christ in a poor community are the people of God already in that poor community. So our goal ought to be to support them to elevate them, to put them front and center stage. Well, what does that look like? Well, a heartful thing is when we rush in and we're on center stage and we're the answer. And so the easiest example is a short-term mission trip. God has already placed some the church there, there the message. When we run in and take over and do things and communicate, we're the answer. It undermines the local ministry. Let me give you an example. I know the ministry in a Dominican Republic that was engaged in deeply relational work with low-income adolescents. Okay, and the Dominican Republic is poor, but they're not destitute. These people have guessed me half of American baseball has followed the Middicons. I mean, there's talent abilities and gifts here, right? So there's this ministry to adolescents in this very poor community deeply relational, very empowering and a short-term mission team comes in and does vacation Bible school. That seems like it's not, it seems innocuous. It seems helpful, right? Except here's the problem. The U.S. church has got really glossy materials and puppets and gifts that they hand out. And so now the kids are faced with a choice. Do we go to the local one, the local vacation Bible school that's, you know, with people that we know and they seem kind of boring and they don't have high-glossy materials. Or we go to the exciting moment, the Americans that got high-glossy materials and puppets and toys. What happens, of course, is the kids are like, the circus came to town. It's the all-going-to-the-glitch-the-american one. Well, that happens over and over again. And the local ministry can be completely undermined because the kids don't want to go to the local one that rather go to the circus that comes to town. And so here's an example of how relief handouts done over and over again. Remember, your trip is the only one. There's a trip after trip after trip. You're competing with locals and undermining their ministry. Does that make any sense? Yeah, absolutely. And I've seen that over and over. I mean, there's a lot of sociologists that I've read. Again, I think in the wake of your book, I got on this kick of just reading a lot on short-term trips. And I didn't realize there was a massive discussion just among sociologists with American churches doing these things and showing how even building projects, which maybe there's a place for that, but you have to ask, what does this do to the local economy? When you come in with your power tools, throw up a building in a week, the local carpenter who's been looking for work all month, does that say something good about Jesus to him? Or does that look like you took his job? That's a great example. Yeah. But yeah, or even just the cross-cultural, I mean, you and I know, and our missionaries who are listening, how long it takes to overcome, or just the language barrier, and then you always have an accent and then just the culture. Sometimes it takes decades to really get to where the foreign culture is. You're just so at home in it that you don't feel like a foreigner. And even then, their whole life, you're still going to be seen, you know, if you have different skin colors as a foreigner. So to come in, sometimes if it's maybe an any vangelistic ministry, where I remember I heard a story of kids on an admission trip going into a, I think it was a Spanish-speaking culture. Like, all right, just go on the street and start preaching the gospel. Like, we don't speak Spanish, you know? And they still did. Well, it just doesn't matter. Just tell them who Jesus is, you know? And in an honor-shame culture, they come back and like, "Oh, everyone is so happy and smiled and gave me." me a hug and it's like, was that because you're a cute little blonde year 15 year old or because, you know, like they came to Christ? I don't know. Like it's hard because it's like you want to, I want to encourage the spirit, but just say it's other better pathways in which we can help people to engage cross cultural expressions of Christianity without, I don't know, without without doing, I mean, there's always better ways to do it. I don't know. Do you have any? Is that my? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so go back to what we said earlier, the local church that's already there is the primary expression of Jesus Christ in that community. So ask yourself, what can I do to support, encourage, empower that local church and its leaders? Well, you know what? There's some really powerful things that you can do, but they sound really boring. You can like babysit the kids of the pastors, they can take his wife out on a date because he's exhausted. You can actually just sit and listen to them talk about their ministry and show an interest in them. You can encourage them. You can pray for them. You can come back and be an advocate for them. The power of this is off the charts. It's off the charts, but it's a back stage role. It's not a, I'm the message I'm going to run on the community. It's, I'm going to help this church to engage well in its community by taking a lesser role by taking a back stage role so that they are put forward as the hands and feet of Jesus. There's all kinds of things they need. They need training. They need, they need, they do need financial resources at times. The Chalmers Center that I need to be part of is very involved in equipping very poor churches all over the world to use microfinance and micro enterprise development as a means of communicating the fullness of Christ kingdom. But it's all about the local church using local resources. And so the poor aren't looking to the west for the answers. The poor are going, I've got gifts. I've got abilities. I can do something here. And so there's ways to do this well. There is a role for the US church, but it's more back stage. It's more empowering. It's more equipping and praying. It's a, it's a, it's a different kind of role than we're accustomed to. I've heard that in the wake of decolonization, 60s and 70s, that the west just kind of dumped ton. I mean, I don't know how trillions of dollars or whatever into Africa. And it actually demonstrably, if you visit lots of it, not every area, but a lot of areas are like, is this better off than it was? You know, obviously colonization was horrible. And I'm glad we pulled out. But I'm just not, is that pretty agreed upon among economists that the the Western kind of help that we have given specifically Africa and the wake of decolonization has not been helpful or is there are people still? There's quite a debate. There is quite a debate. I, I, I'm not quick to sort of say, yes, this, yes, that I'm more, I'm an academic. So for me, everything's great, right? So I'm, I'm not willing to say that all for me, it's been bad. There's never any good. Just as I'm not willing to say that all missions are bad. It's, it's greater than that. I will tell you this, the hardest places to do good poverty alleviation work are places where the US church has been a lot. Yeah. Can you, can you unpack that? I know where you're going. Yeah. Yeah. So think of Cabera Cabera outside of Nairobi. It's one of the hardest places to do good poverty alleviation work because good poverty alleviation work, developmental work looks like this. It looks like same to the poorest people in the planet. What gifts and abilities do you have? What resources do you have? What are your dreams? What are your goals? How can you use your gifts and your abilities to achieve your goals? How can we walk with you in that? Where the US church is up, it's all the opposite. You're poor. We're going to fix you by hurling resources at you and giving you a track to tell you how good your soul to have. It's like my friend, my wealthy friend, I mentioned he can hold a sun accountable to use his own gifts because there's a homeless ministry down the street who's just giving him things. It's the same problem. Cabera, if you try to use an asset based developmental approach, what you say to people, use your own gifts, use your own abilities, use your own resources. We'll walk with you in that. Why should they listen to that when they can walk across the street? Some are just going to hand them things left and right, creating all kinds of unhealthy dependencies. Cabera is in the hardest places to work. Arguably, the hardest place to work is Haiti. Okay. Think about Haiti. Think about Haiti. You've been colonized for many, many years and you feel like outside forces run things. You don't have capacity. You don't have ability. The colonizers are the ones that have the ability. And then you're struggling with traditional religions, some called animism, which teaches spiritual forces are in charge. The human being isn't in charge. And so you're kind of not able to affect change in your life. Your whole worldview is outside forces, outside forces are in control. The colonizers have reinforced that. There's a story in Haitian culture that one of your leaders made a pact with the devil. So you're really beholden to spiritual forces. And now earthquakes happen. And oh my lord, all these outside forces, I can't control anything. It's all things outside of me. Oh, but here come all the Americans with all the stuff. More outside forces. It's always outside forces. And so the American trips, the short term experiences, the NGOs reinforce the mindset that says, I can't affect change in my environment. And so where the US church has showed up a lot is the hardest place to work. What is this proximity? Have something to do with Haiti as well. It's it's a easterly. It's always like a close this majority world super poor places to go. If it was like Madagascar, I met a gas guys got similar issues, but no one's, you know, it's a long trip. The truth matter is the Chalmers Center works in West Africa a lot. It's way easier for West Africa is considered one of the most difficult places in the world. It's very, very poor. It's much easier for us to get work done in West Africa than in East Africa. This East Africa you got Uganda and Kenya and Americans have been pouring in there for a long time. West Africa is largely French speaking. French speaking West Africa, they're not accustomed to Americans coming and doing things. So it's easier to get something done with them because they actually don't look to us to solve all their problems. So friends, today I want to tell you about our recent guest Doug Smith and his newest book Unintentional How Screens Secretly Shape Your Desires and How You Can Break Free. Look, I'm all about thinking deeply and loving widely, but many of us can't actually think deeply because we're addicted to screens. And so that's why Doug Smith wrote Unintentional. It's a tech focused discipleship book and it is absolutely incredible with biblical wisdom from Greg Boyd and Ozzgennis and others. Doug helps you and your family overcome screen obsession. So check out the notes where you can find the link to purchase a Doug's book Unintentional. Yeah, when I was in I was in Kibera just briefly was it it's the last year and a half ago. And I remember walking through and I remember the opening illustration here, but because you're super tall right aren't you like six seven or something. You said not only might a white American, but I'm like not small walking through and you're like everybody you do just like bright light on your. There is a friend of a friend there are two it's a church kind of on the outskirts and they open up a school and they still live in Kibera they're from Kibera and the school has a local teachers from Kibera that come in and they even start like a volleyball team and the school is all they're huge on we will never break the cycle poverty unless these kids get a solid education. So it's known for being actually a good school we walk through it. I mean, I love it. I'll get out, but it was I talked into it was really neat to hear. You know, and they would accept money if we offered it, but it wasn't like in other places where it's just you could tell that they were doing their own thing that minimal Western support, which I thought was actually really good even though I'm like, oh my gosh, you're in need of so many things and we could I could snap my fingers and fix this, you know, but I was like, I thought it was really good that they've they've been able to get by on a lot of local resources. It's really neat, but yeah, even in talking to the two pastors that were kind of running it, it's yeah, to hear him hear them talk about just how how difficult it is to actually get out of Kibera once you're there. You have the stigma of being raised in the slums and there's a social, you know, on our shame dynamic that wraps is wrapped up with that and yeah, it it was it was eye opening. I mean, in so many ways, but I'm I'm curious. I would imagine you got probably a lot of really good feedback from your book when helping hurts and I would imagine some critique. Is there is there kind of one or two critiques that stand out? And I'm curious if you maybe have changed your mind or anything or said, well, maybe I would have said this differently since then. I mean, it was written over almost 15 years ago, I think, right? Yeah, so so great questions. Had it been critiques. There there a bit of few. I think worse than the critique though. has been people who use this as an excuse to stop trying to help. Our message is not, don't do, don't help. Our message is do more, but do it differently. What we're talking about is way more expensive. Relationships are way more expensive than simply dumping bag to grain out of an airplane. So, what we need are people to write big, big checks to organizations that work in highly relational and powering ways. What I'm talking about is more expensive, not less expensive, in terms of time and money. So for us, I would say a, a, a, a grief is that some people have used it to say, let's not do anything, that kind of thing. Some have criticized it saying, you're so focused on relationships that you've lost sight of structural injustice. And that one is very frustrating to me. I think the book actually communicates something very different. What we're saying are that people have relationships with God, self others in creation. And those relationships are broken due to both individual brokenness and systemic injustice. And so it's not either or for us, it's both and that criticism has been very frustrating because it's on every page of the book that it is also, there's a systemic cause of this. And so I think that I wish we had done differently. We tried to address the subsequent book called Becoming Whole, which by the way is way better than when helping hurts your audience should all go out and buy Becoming Whole. I would shameless commercial there. I would say that one of the things we don't talk about in when helping hurts is another cause of poverty. So we've got individual brokenness, systemic injustice. There's also demonic forces and they're real and they've been unleashed and we have to take that into account. And so I think that comes up a little bit better in Becoming Whole. Another piece that I don't think we did a very good job on in when helping hurts is just the idea of trauma. When helping hurts is kind of written as though everybody's rational. And the reality of it is a lot of people are suffering from deep trauma and it makes us respond sometimes in settings in ways that are highly irrational. And I don't think when helping hurts gets at that very well. And so I think some of our subsequent work has gotten at that. But if I ever get time to rewrite to come up with another edition of when helping hurts trauma will be a major theme. That's going back to the American homeless. I was thinking there's been a lot of work done since when helping hurts first came out on even just neuroscience and how our brain gets wired through patterns and we're not robots. But I don't know over the last several years I've learned that there is once your brain gets rewired a certain way goodness gracious. You can't just do the whole Bob Newhart stop it like there's just there's so much more. And this is people friends of mine that have done work with American homeless. They say it's extremely hard and extremely long to get somebody not only off the streets not only holding the job but maintaining a job into a home that they claim for their own and they to keep a home. That's like the ultimate goal goal. Are they still in the home after two years? And they said it's a tiny percentage with hard work to get from on the streets to that they've maintained a mortgage or rent for a while. And I think a lot of that yeah just not is maybe underestimating the power of just what happens to your brain when you're on addictions and I completely agree with all that. Yeah that's exactly right. I think you know some of the work from James K Smith that you may be familiar with talks a lot about how so much of us is an autumn at response that there's a huge part of the human being that's subconscious and and emotive and not truly rational. And I think that in becoming whole I think we get at that better but when it helps it hurts I think there's too much assumption of rationality and a far more understanding of what trauma does to us emotionally with us to our brains. I wish we had a bigger emphasis on that when helping hurts. Yeah that'd be a good addition. You also so you have a book on short term missions which is taking I'd remember correctly you have a chapter in when helping hurts on short term missions is that correct? Did you expand that into a whole book after can you talk to I mean we talked a little about short term missions but yeah so if there's a book called helping without hurting a short term missions and some associated video content with that and it's basically trying to help leaders and participants on short term trips to have a more powerful kind of experience both for those who go but also for those on the receiving end and it just provides tips and training for how to make the short term experience worthwhile for everybody involved and so we it's not that we think the short term trips have no role we think they have a role probably needs fewer of them quite frankly but what they ought to do is different in that I'd be more about going to encourage and support the locals who are there a lot more about listening and a lot less about doing but then also that experience needs to be embedded in about a year long learning process if it's going to have lasting impact on those who go okay okay yeah what is some I guess if you were going to some big picture stuff if someone brought you in to kind of okay here's a short term team we're going to be going somewhere across culturally in six months like what is a big picture things are like here's some things you really got to nail down otherwise you probably go on this trip oh well there's a lot there's a lot there I the first thing is really understanding the gospel in a deep way what I mean by that is many of us think that the good news of the gospel is that we're pretty good that other people aren't so good and the reality of it is the message of the gospel that we all stink yeah the message of the gospel is that we're all deeply broken and that Christ comes and does healing for all of us and so whenever we start to think that our better smell so to speak is from ourselves we will always be prone towards pride always be prone towards thinking that we're better than and so at the heart of it is embracing the gospel that the fall has happened that Christ is bringing reconciliation to all things and what that ought to do is give us a posture of incredible humility that we go into a setting we ought to go to a posture of listening well and not doing and fixing we can't listen well don't try to do and fix discover the gifts that are already there ask people about their lives tell us about the gifts and abilities you have tell about your life the power of listening to stories is huge don't think that you can solve poverty in a week you can't the best you can do is go and listen and learn and support those who are there over the long haul so to reframing I wouldn't call it short terms missions I would call it a vision trip I would call a learning experience there's a whole lot in those books to unpack that but reframing what the trip is about change the expectations for what you're going to accomplish is out the heart of it okay yeah yeah I helped cornerstone church where Francis can is that we rewrite their short term missions statement I forgot what we mean yeah we renamed it to because we're always on mission and short term missions it does sound like I'm going to do this thing that's not being done when I leave that the mission is over but if I went back to the same place on vacation I would go with a completely different mindset you know exactly yeah I think it was cross-cultural exploration or something yeah yeah it's explanation cross-cultural partnerships something like that is terrific okay and Pilly see I think there is a roll for it over a decade ago now I brought one of my largest donors I at the Chalmers Center with me on a trip to West Africa and he was there all week to see our work we were doing a conference there he was part of answer there's a sense in which in that setting I was the missionary and my friend was kind of on the short term trip to look at the Chalmers Center's work and all week long he's a businessman all week long the people West Africa were showing him big thing bridges they built and damn so it's and our work is helping little church's to start saving groups and the people can show me a dollar a week or something you know I'm like oh this is so this is so small this is so humiliating compared to scene all week and we get at the end of the week I brought him out to a village I he saw our ministry there it was really small really simple we get in the car to go to the airport and I said to my brother I said Frank what do you think and they said Brian I've been praying and fasting for West Africa for 20 years he said what I saw in your work was a fulfillment of 20 years I'm getting shook to talking about there's a fulfillment of 20 years of prayer and fasting and he came back to the States it was a huge advocate for us helping us raise money to support that but the power of having one of our major financial supporters saying what you're doing is why I give I mean on on on tough days at the office I'm like this is what it's about Frank was praying for 20 years and so so the power of the encouragement the the power of having a person say, I see what you're doing, I believe in it. The power of that encouraging word keeps me going on tough days. That's our role. Encourage. Encourage those who are over there for the long haul where in the trenches and say, I don't need to see big dams, I don't need to see big things I believe in your industry with the Lord is doing to you. There's huge power in that. - Yeah, yeah. That man, that's awesome. - Here's a tension I have with short-term trips. Because with you, I don't think we should just scrap them all. I think there are some we should scrap and I think we absolutely need to rethink a lot of things about how we typically do short-term trips. And I feel like there's been a lot of stuff that has come out about it. So I really hope in the church can just maybe Google a little bit. There's a lot out there where people are. It's not unknown anymore. There's a lot of really bad ways to do a short-term trip. But here's, I remember early on and when I was doing research and sociology, one of the arguments, at least from Christian, maybe that's sociologist, but people who were very pro short-term trips was what's not really for the people you're going to serve. It's for the people going. It's their experience, the cross-cultural experience, they learn a ton. And but even then I thought, well, that still can't be done at the expense of, like if you ended up doing something that was more harmful for the ministry on the other end, you can't justify that. Even if a bunch of people came back and they're all, you know, rubbed up for Jesus. But then there was evidence that I read and I think this is pretty well established that exposure to cross-cultural ministry on a short-term trips more often, they, I think they even, some of the data suggested that it increases like ethnocentrism kind of turned them off from it. It didn't typically create career missionaries. Like people say, we need short-term trips because that leads to career missionaries. And the evidence actually said, it actually didn't support that. So here's my tension is I do think, like if I speak anecdotally for me and my family, like doing quote unquote short-term trips or maybe just cross-cultural exposure, I have to see if done well, yes, that does. It can, it can help a believer in Jesus be more globally minded, if done well. Obviously, we want to do something that's not hurting, maybe actually helping somebody on the other end, but I don't know that, should we consider the benefit that it brings to the person on the trip and maybe already said everything you'd end up saying anyway, but yeah. - Yeah, so you've hit the veil in the head. There's two issues. One is we seem to assume that we're actually doing good for the people who are receiving us. And the truth in matter is, we can do a lot of harm in a week. You can't solve poverty in a week, but you can make it worse. You can make it worse by communicating to people on the receiving end. You're less than capable. You need outsiders to fix you. You can do real harm, especially consider that your trip is one of 52 that are going to take place the course of years, that same billage, okay? So thinking about what it really does for people on the receiving end is really, really, really important and so often we forget that. There was actually a mother in Cabera who wrote an article to New York Times years ago that said, was basically, it was a letter to the editor of the New York Times. It was basically said, stop giving your kids great experiences at the expense of my kids. - Oh wow. - My kids aren't animals in a zoo. - Yeah. - And you've got these people coming in who are shooting my kids like animals in a zoo. You're looking at my kids, you're pointing at my kids, you're shooting my objects. Don't give your kids a good experience the expense of mine. So really thinking about the end goal is gonna be a bigger part of all of this. But then what does it do for the people who go? Well, again, the research suggests, as you said, that it doesn't do very much unless that experience is embedded in a longer learning process. You need a lot of free trip training and a lot of post-trip debriefing and processing for that to be a valuable transformational experience. And that's what our book is trying to do. We give resources to help you to create that. Otherwise, people each other on conclusions about poverty, other on conclusions about what they've just done or accomplished. And it tends to be sort of a very quick kind of flash in the pan thing. And so for it to be really transformational, it's gotta be embedded in a longer learning and discipleship process. - Yeah. - Should we ever, I mean, what role does the money play into this? Like, here's my question. Like short term trips, it's a lot of money. I mean, just the flights, if you say it's over, say it's in Africa or somewhere, the flights alone, then there's gonna be a delay. Somebody's gonna forget their passport. You gotta rush this. For all the blips and stuff that take money to let alone the food and housing and who's cooking all the food. Who's, you know, and in an honor of shame culture, they're not gonna let, like, they're gonna be, you do got these moms in the kitchen all week long and they wouldn't have, no, no, let us cook for you. Well, that's insulting. So they're just, they're going to be serving you, which is taken away from other ministry. So just like the cumulative cost of sending 15 kids to Uganda, I mean, I don't know, 40 grand, 50 grand, whatever it is, is it? And I've done this before, actually, is I, sometimes if I know the host well, we'll ask him, would you rather have us to come over for 10 days or would you rather have 50 grand towards whatever, you know? But even that, that's almost like, I don't know if it's just sending $50,000 is the best either, but I would love to almost get an honest, like, what is more valuable for your ministry? Again, a doubt we'd get an honest answer, 'cause. - There's no question, they'd rather have the $50,000. There's no question. Because our trips impose tremendous costs on the hosts. They've got to entertain all of these people. They probably have to clean up the mess afterwards. I don't mean just the fiscal mess, I mean, the relational mess. It's, we are imposing tremendous costs on those local hosts. They would much rather have the money. - So, but I feel like, unless you have a really, really solid relationship, if you ask them that question, when they say, "No, no, you need to come, right?" I mean, are they gonna honestly say, "No, we don't have the money." - So, okay. So let's go back to Dominican Republic. I know the country director for a major Christian relief in the Belt Agency in the Dominican Republic. And I said, "How do you handle the short-termers?" He goes, "Oh, besides figuring it out." He said, "I give them something absolutely impossible to do on day one." Because I know they feel like they have to accomplish something, and I want them to give up. So I'll tell them, we have to move that mountain from there to there, and here's a shovel. Then what happens is, after the first day, they all collapse on the ground, and then they just hang out, and that's far better for everybody that is hang out. That's how I manage them. I have another friend. He was a missionary in an Asian country, and his major supporting U.S. church wanted to use a particular, I don't know if you look here, if you're here, they want to use a particular approach to evangelism in this Asian country. He said to me, "Brian, that's the stupidest strategy in my country. It doesn't work." He said, "That particular approach worked in a particular cultural setting, in a particular era in America, and makes absolutely no sense here in Asia." None. He said, "What are you going to do?" He said, "I'm going to let them do it." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because I need their money." He said, "This is what they want to do, and if I'm going to get their money to support my ministry, I have to let them run around my community doing stupid things to get the money I need to support my ministry. This is happening all the time." You mentioned earlier orphanages. Recent studies suggest that American Christians, not churches, but individual Christians in America, are giving $3 billion annually to support orphanages around the world. But all of the research suggests that orphanages are a disaster. 80% of it's an orphanage has at least one living biological parent. It's not good to mentally. It's better to develop mentally for kids to be in strong families, so we should be doing strengthening the families. What could be done with that $3 billion to strengthen families is off the charts. Instead, we're pouring it down the drain annually on supporting a strategy that all the research says is a disaster. Are you familiar with 1 million home? Do you know those guys over there? I don't know them. I've heard of them, but they're on my radar screen because they're part of a movement to try to end orphanages. I don't know them personally about her good things about them. I've had one of the guys on the show, and then another ministry, same thing. She ran an orphanage for years and saw all of the dark side of it. Now it's completely revamped her whole ministry to try to help put people in homes. On this podcast, we ran a recent campaign to help 1 million home raise enough money to put kids from orphanages into home. That's a recent, I would say maybe the last couple of years, I'm like, "Oh my word." The data, it's not unclear, which makes me a little frustrated. Wait a minute. It's not like, "Well, there's actually, it's a dispute whether a kid should be long here." This is really clear data. But so many churches, I don't know. Some of them, I feel like if they heard it, they would make changes. I think they wouldn't want to hear it. It's way more sexy to support them. an orphanage and send money and it looks great on Sunday morning. And you can go and hug the children. Which is a terrible thing to do. A kid has been to trauma to be hugging strangers and like, I don't know. It's kind of about us. The consumerism in the American church has spilled over into the space. It's about us. Yeah. It's terrible. What were questions on the host's church? Because it should go without saying, but I know it doesn't. If a church wanted to do a short-term mission trip, they should be invited by some local ministry. And the local ministry or pastors should tell them what they actually need. Like, never should the trips say, we're going to come and do. But are you saying it's almost comical? But you're saying that's actually fairly common for American church to initiate and say, we're going to come and do, and we're going to do X, Y, and C. That's still going on. Okay. Of course, but it's worse. But it's not as easy as asking them what they want. This is why I'm getting, yeah. So, so I know of a ministry or I got to be careful. So there's a church in Africa, a denomination Africa, that sent their leader to hang out with a U.S. church for six months. And that U.S. church is the primary supporter of the work in Africa. So at the end of six months, the leader of the church in Africa said to the U.S. church, here's what I would like you to do. I would like you to focus on clean water and on latrines. So I said to the U.S. church, tell me the makeup of your missions committee. They said, award him, I said, tell me what the missions committee does vocationally. One, do is a clean water engineer, one's a sanitation engineer. What happened is the dude in Africa listened to what the Americans were like and low and behold, he essentially catered to their interests to get the money. Preston, Preston, listen, look, fundraising takes a lot of faith and courage. When I do a lot of fundraising, when I walk into the office of a major Christian foundation, I can tell what they're interested in by looking at the books that are on their table, by looking at the books that are on the shelf. I can look at their text, a fileings the previous year. And so I can go in with the answer. I can go in and say, oh, we're about, we'll hold behold, just what you're about in order to get the money. And so I have to pray or don't help me to not be like that. That sinful tell me, don't be like that. And I have to work hard and not be in that kind of person. If I was destitute, if I was really poor, the temptation of that would be much higher than it is for me. And so suggestions, suggestions from the west of maybe you should think about this or that aren't suggestions. Those are funding opportunities. And so it's very difficult. It's very difficult to ascertain what do they really want in need. It's very difficult. How do you go, so say there is a church that has a really good vision of short term missions. It's they read your books and they're like, I'm on full-on board. We want to do a while. How do they begin to plan a trip? Because again, if they ask, say a church, they've been supporting their relationship with and say, hey, we want to do a trip. Can we come? Of course, they're going to say yes. And let's, yeah, so how do we go about it to where we make sure we are actually generally wanted and are doing something that is or being somebody, maybe not doing something, but being the people that are going to help. How do we go about that so people aren't just out of shame just telling us what we want to hear? So there's no easy answer. And it takes deep relationship. It takes deep honesty. It takes proving yourself over time. It takes honesty. It takes transparency. It takes sharing. And saying, you know what, maybe we messed this up in the past. Maybe the nature of our relationship should change. Which you really rather have is not all come. What if we gave you an option that we'd have three of us come and we would support your work instead of having 30 of us come? Walk through it. I'm going to give you an example in the US context. Very wealthy, very wealthy church in a major American city, supporting all kinds of non-profit ministries in the city. One day that the one of the outreach pastors at the wealthy church, Redwood Helping Hertz. And he called the ministry partner who was a black gentleman working in inner city ministry and said, I've just read what helping hurts and I'm wondering, have you experienced this from us? And the pastor, the black pastor, the person of tears and so I've been lying to you for 10 years. He said, you keep on sending short-term teams into my community. I don't have anything for them to do. So I keep asking you folks to paint the walls of my office. He said, we've now got an inch of paint on the walls of my office. The walls are about to cave over because I just make it for you all to do to make you happy. Because I need your money. And he said, I confess to you I've been lying to you. And then the church with the resources said, oh my word. And so they have started to say, how to have a different pastor? How can we really listen? But it takes, we've got decades of scorched earth here. It's good to go. There's not a quick fix, but it's going to take repentance, transparency, honesty, the whole thing. I've often thought, best case scenario to have say an American missionary has been on the ground for 10, 20, 30 years, understands everything we're talking about. Because they're, they might be better giving us an honest answer like, hey, you know, would they, because then they can kind of have a foot in both worlds. And if they're a straight shooter, they can say, yeah, actually, you do more harm if you came or no. If you came and did this thing, I know the pastor, they really do have this need. You know, we can talk about it. Yeah, I don't know. In principle, it depends, it depends how that missionary, him or herself has been acting as well. Yeah. So they, they're doing things that lost your dependent. It depends on, do they have their right, but you're correct. If you can find sort of a cross cultural interpreter. If you can find the person who's been there over the long haul, who understands what these issues are, they can often be very, very helpful. Well, thank you so much, Brian, for being on the podcast. Can you, so your talk, if people want to find, you want to find out more, do you have, besides your books, which I listed at the beginning, do you have like resources of the Talmer Center? People can can, can, can, uh, do my work. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so, so the Talmer Center is devoted to helping the church. And by the church we mean the local church, but certainly parachurch ministries, and even individual Christians, to declare and demonstrate the good news of the gospel, in ways that really empower people who are poor. So, so we're not just negative people, we're, we're, we're doing work all over the world, trying to really do good things, but our real goal is not, uh, let me rephrase it. Our goal is that poor people never hear of the Talmer Center. Rather than the poor to experience the local church in their community as the embodiment of Christ. So we're a church equipping organization. So there's all kinds of resources there. Just go to our website, it's charlmers.org, it's spelled CH-AL-M-E-R-S, CH-A-L-M-E-R-S, www.Charlmers.orgers, all kinds of stuff there. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you brother. Join me with you. [Music] This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.