Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor by Robert D. Lupton

Author:Robert D. Lupton [Lupton, Robert D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Church work with the poor—United States, Social Issues, Community development—United States, Religion, Christian Life, City missions—United States, City churches—United States, Community development—Religious aspects—Christianity
ISBN: 9781441224101
Google: 200lBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Baker Books
Published: 2007-04-20T20:56:33+00:00

CHAPTER 13

GOING DEEPER WITH

DEVELOPMENT

The old adage goes: Feed a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime. But suppose that man who we have taught to be a proficient fisherman comes home one day with an empty stringer? The pond, he announces, has been fished out—overfished. There have been just too many fishermen taking fish from the pond. All the edible-size fish have been caught.

In order for the fisherman to continue to feed himself and his family, he will have to leave and search for other ponds—unless, of course, we decide to take some corrective action and find a way to restock the pond. That would require us to shift our ministry emphasis from teaching men to fish to emphasizing environmental conservation. This would represent a change in strategy at least as dramatic as the original shift we took when we decided to get out of our feeding program and start the fishing school.

In those wonderful early years when we at FCS Urban Ministries spent our days feeding the hungry, we felt so close to God’s heart, so clearly obeying Christ’s command to directly care for the least of these. There was something so uncomplicated and pure about that ministry. That was before the nagging realization dawned on us that we might actually be fostering dependency among the hungry we were feeding.

Our desire to do good had unintended consequences, and so, in order to be responsible as well as caring, we made the decision to scale back our hands-on feeding program and instead help the hungry learn to feed themselves. We decided to teach people how to fish.

Training fishermen to catch their own food had its own rewards, though we surely missed the warm feelings of placing food into a man’s outstretched hand. Graduation day from the fishing school was inspiring, and there was great satisfaction in seeing our trainees return home with stringers full of fish they had caught.

But then we were confronted with yet another unintended consequence of our ministry. We had not considered that the pond would be unable to meet the demands of so many of our graduates. We had produced some fine fishermen, but we were about to lose them from our community because they could no longer sustain themselves. What was good for individuals was proving to be hurtful to our community. Unless, once again, we altered our mission and did something about the deteriorating environmental concern.

Of course, it would certainly have been legitimate ministry if we’d decided to stay the course and remain focused on what we do best—training fishermen. We could have continued to give our students the skills they needed to make it on their own. We might have even added a course to our curriculum on finding plentiful ponds, streams and lakes out in the larger world. Who knows, we might have produced some world-class fishermen who could come back to our school as chapel speakers from time to time and inspire our students by stories of enormous fish they have caught.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.