Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1034: When Helping Hurts: Dr. Brian Fikkert

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Dr. Brian Fikkert is a Professor of Economics and Community Development and the Founder and President of the Chalmers Center for Economic Development at Covenant College. He is coauthor of the best-selling book When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself as well as Helping Without Hurting in Short-Term Missions, Helping Without Hurting in Church Benevolence, and From Dependence to Dignity: How to Alleviate Poverty Through Church-Centered Microfinance. Dr. Fikkert earned a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University, specializing in international economics and economic development. In this conversation, Brian and I talk about his book When Helping Hurts, which is easily the top 5 most influential books I’ve ever read. We also talk the pros and cons of short term mission trips and how churches can best partner with poorer churches without doing unintentional harm. Check out Brian’s organization www.chalmers.org Thanks to Doug Smith for helping sponsor today's episode. To check out Doug's newest book, [Un]Intentional: How Screens Secretly Shapes Your Desires, and How You Can Break Free: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625861966/ If you would like to support Theology in the Raw, please visit patreon.com/theologyintheraw for more information! 

Hello, friends. Registration is now open for next year's Exiles in Babylon conference, 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 Gibney, Devin Stalemar, Hardwick. The list goes on and on. Joey Dodson's 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

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Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of theology in the raw. 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 of the bestselling book, When Helping Hurts, How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself, which is the main reason why I wanted to have Brian on. This book, When Helping Hurts, has been one of the most influential books in my life. I read it over 10 years ago and it 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, the one and only Dr. Brian Sickert. Those of you who have been listening to the podcast for a while, every now and then 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, it's almost taken on a life of its own. I mean, I hear people all the time say, we want to help people. We want to hurt them as we're trying to help. So yeah, I told you offline. I mean, honestly, and 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, 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 authoritative sense to just the kind of gut level reactions I was feeling. So anyway, Brian, that's a long introduction. Thank you so much for being on Theology in a Raw. 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 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 we're really giving thanks to God for all

of these things. We never imagined that God would use the book in this way. And so we just want to give glory 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 when you go to the doctor. The first thing the doctor does is try to diagnose what's wrong with you. It's out of the diagnosis, the doctor treats you. And a couple of things can go wrong there. The doctor can misdiagnose what's wrong with you, give you the wrong kind of treatment. You won't get better. You might get worse.

Or the doctor might treat the symptoms rather than the underlying causes. Imagine if you go in with a headache and the doctor gives you two Tylenol, right? And the headache starts to go away. Oh, man, I'm healed. But what if you had like a brain tumor? And so treating 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 affect change in my life. I feel like garbage that everybody wants to get rid of. The poor tend to define their poverty in far more psychological and social terms. We tend to define their poverty in far more psychological and social terms. We tend to define it in 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 or relive it. Because that was mind-blowing.

At the very end, I mean, this is 10 years ago since I read it. I still remember at the end of the illustration, a true illustration of you in the Kibera slums, that you did everything wrong. And you're helping somebody in desperate need. Here you go. It takes a couple bucks out of your wallet to save a life. 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 was mind blowing. Can you tell us, relive that story for us? So first of all, I wanted to be careful to say, folks, our message isn't do less. Our message is 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 what we're trying to say. Whatever you're doing, quadruple it. Do more, but perhaps do it differently. So we gave an example at the 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 tonsillitis. And she had her next-door

neighbor cut out her tonsils with a rusty machete. It was horrifying. And so she's lying there on the floor of her hut. And 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 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. She really did need penicillin. And so she really did need help. But what I forgot about was that 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 to 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 if 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 help. Could you minister to her? But what happened is I got in the way of that local church and its ministry. And so I was the outside answer. I was the outside savior. The problem is I was getting on the airplane a couple of days later and I wasn't going to be around anymore. What she really knew 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. It wasn't terrible, but in 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, if I remember correctly, how even though it took, relatively speaking, it cost you next to nothing, right? It would have cost the church. 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 for us to depend upon extending the kingdom of God and meeting needs. 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 that, I'm like, yeah, but you saved a life and it didn't take much, but you're kind of like, that's the point. Like 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 individualistic kind of creatures or people we think we are.

And the reality of it is people are hardwired 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, and again, I wish I don't have my copy in front of me. I've moved a couple of times. I read it. I'm going to give you a test, buddy. I was looking for it. I have a whole poverty section here and it's not there. I think my wife bought it or something. But I remember you giving different categories of people that are in need or whatever. There are people that 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 third category of help or kind of like psychological help, empowerment. Can you, yeah, talk to us about those different categories.

You got it. Yeah. 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 restoring us to what we are supposed to be. And we can unpack that a bit. But again, the human being is wired for relationship with God, with ourselves, 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 in numbers and to subdue the earth, to be productive, to unfold and unpack God's creation.

And so the goal is to restore people to that, to all that it means to be an image bearer. 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 bleeding to death. The Good Samaritan provides relief. Relief is a handout. It's appropriate when the individual or the community can't contribute to their own improvement.

So what happens? The Good Samaritan takes the dude to the inn and he gets abandoned 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 to be human again, to be humanists, to be able to steward your stuff, right? So as soon as the individual

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. And then development is helping an individual or a community to achieve a greater degree of human flourishing 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 they're called to be. So it's relief and rehab and development. Here's the 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 U.S. church has is that we provide relief in context in which development is the appropriate intervention. We hold our resources, we take over, we do things, and the people actually can do something to 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, like maybe a typical thing that churches do, well-intended, but might not be the absolute best. Well, I was hearing

about this guy named Sprinkle or something. I heard he did some really stupid, no. Oh, the list is long. I have a friend who's very, very wealthy. And his son lives in a homeless shelter a block away. Well, why? The son is able-bodied. 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 in the homeless shelter and he goes to the library all day and plays video games. Well, my friend tries to hold his son accountable and say, no, son, you got to be productive. You 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 that'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 more relief and not rehabilitation? Rehab and development. Yeah. Can you give us an example of maybe a good scenario of 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 are 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. 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

some more relational thing that they really need. And so I often say to the person, hey, I know of a great ministry. I 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. The decision-making process isn't always 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 till we can get the relational stuff in place. And so it depends. There's no easy answer. is a bad idea. And so you want to get them into a setting where you can engage in positive relationships with them, walking with them across time. I'm not an expert on 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. By touches, I mean 70 times that you're walking down the street and you stop and talk to a person, on average 70, before that person is 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 got to give a handout to buy the 70 chances. So it's not a complete either, or are you saying there is a place for temporary relief,

even though you, but the goal in a sense, it's the function is more playing a role in rehabilitation, but you have to establish relationship, which if you're just constantly not, yeah, that, that,

that makes sense. It's very complicated. And it's case by case to Preston. It's not. So I have a friend who, okay. So, so a number of years ago, I was co-authoring 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 – my anxiety was like this. And one evening, I went out for a walk in my neighborhood. And my body language when 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 it's horrible, actually. So I come across a fellow I've known for some time.

His name, we're going to call him 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 um I've been thought of my at my house can you help me so I started into you know I'm writing a book on how to solve poverty I'm 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 I say honey I said Bob is homeless um he needs a place to stay the night but we can't help him. So I called my wife. I say, honey, I said, Bob is homeless. He needs a place to stay the night, but we can't help him. Right. She goes, no, we can bring you bring him home. No. So Bob was in my house for three weeks. Well, you know, we're providing him with a handout. We were because he was so mentally discombobulated.

He wasn't thinking rationally. So Bob stayed at 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 in a relationship, he started to kind of, you know, calm down a little bit. So there's a sense in which we provided an environment in which Bob could calm down. And did we give him food? Yeah, we gave him food. We gave him a place to stay. But then what happens is after about a week, he goes, Brian, how can I help you?

So he's starting to go, you know, I should contribute something here. That's what you want to have happen. So 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 obsessive compulsive disorder. And this is an issue in my own family.

So we were trying to figure out how we build on 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, I can hear Bob cleaning my house, and he's muttering under his breath. I'm like, who's he talking to because there's some mental illness issues? Who's he talking to?

At the end of the day, I say, Bob, who are 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 chance. 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 for me where I should put the roses. So Bob is helping me love God and love others. I'm trying to tell you, Preston, is there's gifts there. There's abilities there. There's image bearing in there. And so I think we kind of fan the flames of that.

And then Bob started to 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 with 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? I think most Americans,

relief? Is it easier? Do they not really know? I think most Americans, I think deep down, they know this homeless person, if they had a job, were able to hold down a rent, get clean. Of course, that's better. Just sitting here getting money every day on the street corner, that's not a good life. I think part of it, it's just easier to hand a couple of bucks and move on. Do you invest in relationship? Even when you're talking, I'm like, think part of it is just easier, right? To hand a couple of bucks and move on. Do you invest in a relationship? It's 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, which I'm not like, oh my gosh. 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 sure, I've given this dude something and I don't have time to invest in relationship. But the reality of it is,

I don't have time to invest in 40 bobs. I can barely do one. 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 admissions trip is 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 bowls of soup I ladled 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 want to do that. So maybe well-intended, but less than helpful ways in which churches might partner with a church or an org in a poor area. And then maybe a positive example of what it could and should look like. Yeah, yeah. So let's start with the negative first. It's important for us to remember that 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 on a 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've got, I have relationships that aren't altogether healthy. They don't, they don't get thick by me running down the street and hurling something at somebody. 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 who are 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 harmful 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 missions trip. God has already placed the local ministry. Let me give you an example. I know of a ministry in the Dominican Republic that was engaged in deeply relational work with low-income adolescents.

Again, the Dominican Republic is poor, but they're not destitute. These people have gifts. I mean, half of American baseball is full of Dominicans. There's talents and 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 admissions team comes in and does vacation Bible school. That seems innocuous. It seems helpful, right? Except here's the problem. 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 uh 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 one with 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. They all go to 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. They'd 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 isn't the only one. There's 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's 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. Jesus to him, you know, or does that look like you took his job, you know? 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 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 the foreign culture is 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 um you know if you have different skin color as a foreigner so to come in sometimes if it's maybe an evangelistic ministry where i remember i heard a story of you know kids on a mission trip going into a i think it 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. It doesn't matter. Just tell them who Jesus is, you know?

And in an honor-shame culture, they usually come back and like, oh, everybody's so happy and smiled and gave me a hug. And it's like, well, is that because you're a cute little blonde-haired 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. Um, but just say, are there better pathways in which we can, um, help people to engage cross-cultural expressions of Christianity without, I don't know, without, without doing, I it? 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 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 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 backstage role. It's not a, I'm the message, I'm going to run around 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 backstage role so that they are put forward as the hands and feet of Jesus. And there's all kinds of things they need.

They need training. They do need financial resources at times. center that I get to be part of is very involved in equipping very poor churches all over the world to use microfinance and microenterprise development as a means of communicating the fullness of Christ's 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 U.S. church, but it's more backstage, it's more empowering, it's more equipping and praying. It's a different kind of role than we're

accustomed to. I've heard that in the wake of decolonization, the 60s and 70s, that the West just kind of dumped tons, I mean, I don't know, trillions of dollars or whatever into Africa. And it actually demonstrably, if you visit lots of areas, not every area, but a lot of areas, you're like, is this better off than it was? 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 Western kind of help that we have given, specifically Africa in the wake of decolonization, has not been helpful? Or are people still – There's quite a debate. Okay. There is quite a debate.

I'm not quick to sort of say yes this, this, yes, that. I'm an academic. So for me, everything's great, right? So I'm not willing to say that all foreign aid has been bad, that there's never any good, just as I'm not willing to say that all missions are bad. It's greater than that. I will tell you this, the hardest places to do good poverty alleviation work are places where the U.S. church has been a lot. Yeah. Can you unpack that? I know where you're going. Yeah. Yeah. So think of Kibera, Kibera 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 saying to the poorest people on 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 U.S. church is up, it's all the opposite. You're poor. We're going to fix you by hurling resources at you and give you a tract to tell you how to get your soul to heaven. It's like my friend,

my wealthy friend who I mentioned, he can't hold his son 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 in Kibera. 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? Somebody's going to hand them things left and right, creating all kinds of unhealthy dependencies. Kibera is one of 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, that 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 religion, some call it animism, which teaches that 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. So 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 word, 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 U.S. church has showed up a lot is the hardest place to work. Does proximity have something to do with Haiti as well? It's easy. It's always like the closest majority world, super poor places to go.

If it was like Madagascar, Madagascar has got similar issues, but no one's – that's a long trip. The truth of the matter is the Chalmers Center works in West Africa a lot. It's way easier. 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. In East Africa, you've got Uganda and Kenya, and America has 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. something done with them because they actually don't look to us to solve all their problems. Hello, 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 Oz Guinness and others, Doug helps you and your family overcome screen obsession. So check out the notes where you can find a link to purchase Doug's book, Unintentional. where you can find a link to purchase Doug's book, Unintentional. Yeah, when I was in Kibera just briefly, was it the last year and a half ago?

And I remember walking through and I remember the opening illustration here, because you're super tall, right? Aren't you like 6'7 or something? You said, not only am I a white American, but I'm like not small walking through and everybody, you're just like bright light on you um we there's um it's a friend of a friend they're 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 um the school has a local teachers from kibera that come in

and um they even started like a volleyball team and the school is all they're huge on we will never break the cycle of poverty unless these kids get a solid education so it's known for being actually a good school we walk through it and i mean i love it as i'll get out but it was i talking to him it was really neat to hear um 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 they had 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 some 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 really neat but yeah even in talking to the two pastors that were kind of running it it's it's uh 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 honor shame dynamic that wraps is wrapped up with that and yeah yeah, it, it, it was, it was eyeopening. I mean, in so many ways, but, um, I'm curious, um, I would imagine you got probably a lot of really good feedback from your book when helping hurts. And I would imagine some

critique, um, 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 great questions. Have there been critiques? There have been a 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, it's way more expensive. Relationships are way more expensive than simply dumping bag of grain out of an airplane. And so what we need are people to write big, big checks to organizations that work in highly relational and empowering 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 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, because I think the book actually communicates something very different. What we're saying are that people have relationships with God, self, others,

and 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 to me because it's on every page of the book, that there's a systemic cause of this. Things that I wish we had done differently, we tried to address in a 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. 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 or to come up with another edition of When Helping Herds, trauma will be a major theme. That's, you know, going back to the American homeless,

I was thinking, and there's been a lot of work done since when Helping Herds first came out on even just neuroscience and how our brain gets rewired 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. There's so much more. And this is friends of mine that have done work with American homeless. And this is 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 a job, but maintaining a job into a home that they claim for their own and to keep a home. That's like the ultimate 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 a rent for a while. And I think a lot of that, yeah, just maybe underestimating the power of just what happens to your brain when you're on addictions. I completely agree with all that. Yeah. That's exactly right. I think 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 automatic response, that there's a huge part of the human being that's subconscious and emotive and not purely rational. purely rational. And I think that in becoming whole, I think we get at that better. But when helping hurts, I think there's too much assumption of rationality and a far more understanding of

what trauma does to us emotionally, what it does to our brains. I wish we had a bigger emphasis on that when helping hurts. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be a good addition. Um, you also, so you're, you have a book on short-term missions, which is taking, well, if I remember correctly, you have a chapter in when helping hurts on short-term missions. Is that correct? That's right. Did you expand that into a whole book after? Can you, can you talk to, I mean, we talked a little bit about short-term missions, but yeah. So there's a book called helping, helping without hurting in 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 it's not that we think that short-term trips have no role. We think they have a role. Probably need fewer of them, quite frankly. But what they ought to do is different in that it ought to 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 are some, I guess, if you were gonna, some big picture stuff, if someone brought you into kind of, all right, here's a short term team, we're going to be going somewhere cross-culturally in six months. What are some big picture things where you're like, here's some things you've really got

to nail down, otherwise you probably shouldn't go on this trip? Well, there's a lot. There's a lot there. 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 is that we all stink. 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

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. We go into a setting ought to do is give us a posture of incredible humility. We go into a setting, we ought to go with 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 me about your life. The power of just 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 it's a reframing.

I wouldn't call it short-term missions. I would call it a vision trip. I would call it a learning experience. There's a whole lot in those books to unpack that. But reframing what the trip is about, changing the expectations for what you're going to accomplish is all at the heart of it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I helped Cornerstone Church, where Francis Chandler's at, rewrite their short-term missions statement. I forgot what we renamed. Yeah, we renamed it too. 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. Exactly. Yeah. I think it was cross-cultural explorations or something. Yeah, cross-cultural learning, cross-cultural explanation, cross-cultural partnership. Something like that is terrific.

And Pili, I think there is a role for it. Over a decade ago now, I brought one of my largest donors 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. And so 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 in West Africa are showing him big things, bridges they've built and dams.

Our work is helping little poor churches to start savings groups. The people can show me a dollar a week or something. I'm like, this is so small. This is so humiliating compared to what he's seen all week. And we get at the end of the week. I brought him out to a village. He saw our ministry there. It was really small, really simple.

We get in the car to go to the airport. I said to my brother, I said, Frank, what do you think? And he 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 choked up talking about it. It was a fulfillment of 20 years of prayer and fasting. And he came back to the States and 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 tough days at the office, I'm like, this is what it's about.

Frank was praying for 20 years. And so the power of the encouragement, 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, who are 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 ministry, what the Lord is doing through you. There's huge power in that. Yeah, yeah. Man, that's awesome. It kind of like, here's the tension I have with short-term trips because I'm with you. I, I don't, I don't think there, we should just scrap them all. Um, 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, I mean, there's been a lot of stuff that has come out about it. So I'm really hoping the church can just maybe Google a little bit. Like there's a lot out there where people are, it's not that unknown anymore that like, there's a lot of like really bad ways to do a short-term trip. But here's, I remember early on,

and when I was doing like research and sociology, you know, one of the arguments, at least from Christian, maybe not sociologists, but people who are very pro, you know, one of the arguments, at least from Christian, maybe not sociologists, but people who are very pro, you know, short-term trips, was, you know, it's not really for the people you're going to serve. It's for the people going. It's their experience, their cross-cultural experience. They learn a ton. 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, uh, revved 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 didn't it didn't it didn't typically create career missionaries like people say we need some 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 and i if i speak anecdotally for me and my family, like doing quote unquote short-term trips or maybe just cross-cultural exposure, I have seen 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 that should we consider the benefit that it brings to the person on the trip and um and maybe i already said everything you end up saying anyway but yeah so so uh you've you've you've hit you've hit the nail on 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 of the 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 when you consider that your trip is one of 52 that are going to take place in the course of a year to that same village. 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 Cabrera who wrote an article to the New York Times years ago that was basically – it was a letter to the editor of the New York Times that 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 treating my kids like animals in a zoo. You're looking at my kids. You're pointing at my kids. You're treating them like objects. Don't give your kids a good experience of the expense of mine. So really thinking about the end goal is going to 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 draw their own conclusions about poverty. They draw their own 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 got to be embedded in a longer learning and discipleship process. Yeah.

Should we ever – I mean, what role does the money play into this? I guess here's my question. Short-term trips, it's a lot of money. I mean, just the flights, if you say it's in Africa or somewhere, the flights alone, then there's going to be a delay. Somebody's going to forget their passport. You have to rush rush this right i mean just all the blips and stuff that take money to um let alone the the food and housing and who's cooking all the food who's you know and in an honor shame culture they're not gonna let like they're gonna be you got these moms in the kitchen all week long and they wouldn't have and 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 like 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 stick him over for 10 days? Or would you rather have 50 grand towards whatever? But even that, that's almost like, I don't know if just sending $50,000 is best either, but I would love to almost get an honest, what is more valuable for your ministry? Again, I doubt we'd get an honest answer because- 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 these people. They probably have to clean up the mess afterwards. I don't mean just the fiscal mess. I mean the relational mess. We are imposing tremendous costs on those local hosts. They would much rather have the money.

But I feel like unless you have a really, really solid relationship, if you ask them that question, wouldn't they say, no, no, we want your income, right? I mean, are they going to honestly say, no, we'd rather have the money? So, okay. So let's go back to the Dominican Republic. I know the country director for a major Christian relief and development agency in the Dominican Republic. And I said, how do you handle the short-term? He goes, oh, he said, I figured 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 to just 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 – let me look careful here. They wanted to use a particular approach to evangelism in this Asian country. He said to me, he said, 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. It makes absolutely no sense here in Asia.

None. I 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 from them 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. Really? You mentioned earlier, yeah, 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, when all of the research suggests that orphanages are a disaster, 80% of orphanages have at least one living biological parent. It's not good mentally. What's better developmentally is for kids to be in strong families. So what we should be doing is 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 One 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. So I don't know them personally, but I've heard good things about them. I've had one of the guys on the show and then another ministry, same thing. A friend of a friend, she ran an orphanage for years and saw all of the dark side of it. And then now it's completely revamped her whole ministry to trying to help

put people in homes. And on this podcast, we ran a recent campaign to help 1 million homes raise enough money to put kids from orphanages into homes. So that's a reason. I would say maybe only the last couple of years, I'm like, oh my word, the data, it's not unclear, which makes me a little frustrated. Like, wait a minute, this is not, it's not like, well, there's actually, it's a dispute

whether kids belong here. This is really clear data. But so many churches, I, you know, it's a dispute whether kids belong here. Like, this is like really clear data. But so many churches, I don't know, like they're – some of them I feel like if they heard it, they would make changes. Others, I think they just – they wouldn't want to hear it. It's just – it's way more sexy to support an orphanage and send money and it looks great on Sunday morning. And you can go and hug – you can go and hug the children. Which is a terrible thing to do. A kid who's been through trauma to be hugging strangers and like, I don't know.

It's just, oh yeah. It's kind of about us. Yeah. It's kind of about us. The consumerism in the American church has spilled over into this space. It's about us. Yeah. Oh man.

It's terrible. One more question on the host 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 pastor should tell them what they actually need. Like,

never should the trip 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 an American church to like initiate and say, we're going to come and do, and we're going to do X, Y, and Z. That's still going on. Okay. Of course, but it's worse, but it's, but it's not as easy as asking them what they want. Let me give you an example. This is what I'm getting. Yeah. So I know of a ministry, I got to be careful. So there's a church in Africa, a denomination in 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, what do you mean? I said, tell me what the missions committee does vocationally. One dude's a clean water engineer. One's a sanitation engineer. What happened is the dude in Africa listened to what the Americans were like, and lo and behold, he essentially catered to their interests to get the money. Preston, listen, look, fundraising takes a lot of faith and courage. 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 tax filings the previous year. And so I can go in with the answer.

I can go in and say, oh, we're about, lo and behold, just what you're about in order to get the money. And so I have to pray, Lord, don't help me to not be like that. That's sinful. Don't be like that. And I have to work hard at not being that kind of person. Well, if I was destitute, if I was really poor, the temptation for 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 and 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. They read your book. So they're like, I'm fully on board. We want to do it well.

How did 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. So how do we go about it to where we make sure we are actually genuinely 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 we don't just, so people aren't just out of, out of shame, just telling us what we want to hear, you know? So there's no easy answer. And it takes deep relationship. It takes deep honesty. It takes proving yourself over time. There's no easy answer. 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. Would you really rather have us 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 a U.S. context. Very wealthy, very wealthy church in a major American city supporting all kinds of nonprofit ministries in the city. One day, one of the outreach pastors at the wealthy church read When Helping Hurts, and he called the ministry partner, who was a black gentleman working in inner city ministry, and said, I've just read When Helping Hurts, and I'm wondering, have you experienced this from us? And the pastor, the black pastor, burst into tears and said, 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 up stuff 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. So that, so, and then the church with the resources said, oh my word. And so they have started to say, how could we have a different posture? How could we really listen? How could we, 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 it best case scenario to have a, say an American missionary has been on the ground for 10, 20, 30 years, understands everything we're talking about. Cause they're, they might be better giving us an honest answer. Like, Hey, you about, because they might be better at 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 or I don't know. In principle, it depends how that missionary, him or herself has been acting as well. So they may have been doing things that lost their dependency. So it depends on, do they have their radar? 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.

Thank you so much, Brian, for being on the podcast. If people want to find out more, besides your books, which I listed at the beginning, do you have resources at the Chalmers Center people can dive into? Oh, my word. Yeah. So the Chalmers Center is devoted to helping the church, and by the church, we mean the local church, but certainly parachurch ministries, even individual Christians, to declare and demonstrate the good news of the

gospel in ways that really empower people who are poor. And so we're not just negative people. We're doing work all over the world, trying to really do good things. But our real goal is not, let me rephrase it, our goal is that poor people never hear of the Chalmers Center. We want 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 chalmers.org. It's spelled C-H-A-L-M-E-R-S. C-H-A-L-M-E-R-S. www.chalmers.org. There's all kinds of stuff there. Awesome. Thank you so much, Brian, for being on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you, brother. Joy to be with you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.