Summer camp – that annual event kids in the city live for.  Exciting adventures, stimulating games, interesting Bible stories, and nurture – lots and lots of nurture.  Attention-starved kids live for this.  But there is much more to summer camp than meets the eye.  This is where fledgling leaders – former campers – get formative leadership training.  Teenagers with emerging influence in the ‘hood can be channeled into either destructive or redemptive ends. Guiding them toward becoming positive role models is an important mission of summer camp.  Rightly directed, these “big kids” become powerful influencers in the lives of younger, admiring children.  It’s an essential strategy for community transformation.

Because our staff who run the summer camps live in the neighborhood and have year round contact with their campers, continuity of relationships remains intact.  When camp ends, interaction continues.  And so does their guiding influence on the lives of their young neighbors.  They are living models of healthy marriages and wholesome lifestyles that counteract the negative norms of the street.

Summer camp is much more than a few intensive weeks of fun and nurture for children.  It’s an important part of developing new leadership, an essential strategy for transforming a neglected community.  Your sponsorship of a child (or several children) is an investment in their future.  A $100 sponsorship is one of the most worthwhile investments you can make.  I hope you (and your company or Sunday school class) will invest generously this year.

Grateful for your partnership in ministry,

Bob Lupton

A crisis requires emergency intervention;

A chronic problem requires development.

Address a crisis need with a crisis intervention,

And lives are saved.

Address a chronic need with a crisis intervention,

And people are harmed.

Have you noticed that many of the same people return week after week for free food from our food pantries?  Ever wondered whether our handouts were really helping or merely perpetuating a dependent lifestyle?  Admitting and verbalizing these observations, at the risk of appearing heartless, is the essential first step toward truly effective service.

The key to effective service is accurately matching the need with the appropriate intervention.

The universal need for food is a good place to begin.  Starvation is a crisis issue; hunger is a chronic issue.  When famine sweeps a land, or a tsunami devastates coastal cities, starvation becomes an urgent, life-and-death situation.  Emergency food supplies must be rushed in without delay.  But in a stable nation with abundant supplies of food and adequate government food subsidies, occasional hunger – not starvation – is the reality that faces the less advantaged.  Food insecurity is a chronic, not crisis, poverty issue.

Food security is what free-food advocates talk about these days.  That means access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.  The poor in our country, roughly 15% of our population, are food-insecure at least some time during the year.  Even though four out of five of these households receive food from the government, there are times when their cupboards are bare.

But food-insecurity is not a crisis issue. It is a function of chronic poverty.  Unlike during the great depression of the 1930’s when one in four of our workers stood in bread lines with no government safety net to rescue them, today more than 90% of our workforce is employed and our public subsidies are ample.  Hunger is not our problem.  Poor nutrition perhaps but not hunger.  Food insecurity is a chronic poverty issue and chronic problems require altogether different strategies from crisis problems.

Starvation is a crisis need;

Hunger is a chronic issue.

Address hunger (chronic) with a free feeding program (crisis)

And unhealthy dependency occurs.

As our hearts constrain us to intervene on behalf of our needy neighbors, we certainly want our responses to be effective.  And to be truly effective we must match the need with the appropriate response.  Distributing free food (an emergency response) is seldom an appropriate response to those facing chronic food-insecurity.  It may seem compassionate at the moment but in all likelihood it will prove to be more hurtful than helpful.

But isn’t it a crisis when a family does not know where their next meal is coming from?    Admittedly, this is a crisis of a sort, the type of crisis that spurs one to action.  Hunger is a powerful motivator.  It stretches budgets.  It drives creativity.  It forces choices.  It accepts peanut butter sandwiches over McDonald’s big-meals, cool-aide over coke, beans and rice over potato chips and dip.  Food insecurity may not be all bad.

Lest we become hard-hearted and err on the judgmental side, however, let’s proactively pursue some helpful responses to chronic hunger.  Of course, one of the best antidotes to food insecurity is decent employment.  Adequate income provides adequate food.  And, as ancient Talmudic wisdom contends, the highest form of charity is to provide a man a job.  Employment training and job creation is obviously a major shift from the food pantry paradigm but it is certainly one that should be considered.  Another alternative more directly related to food is the food cooperative – a “buying club” model that gives members legitimate access to surplus food through non-profit or church structures.  Another is a bartering system that exchanges food (and other commodities) for work performed in the community.  Rather than dependency-fostering emergency responses, these and other development strategies strengthen the capacity of people in need to assume greater measure of control and self-sufficiency over their own lives.

Compassion is essential but not sufficient – the mind as well as the heart must be engaged.

The Golden Rule of empowering service:

Never do for others what they have the capacity to do for themselves.

Your phone rings.  It’s the receptionist at the front desk.  She says there is a lady there who is asking for food.  You glance out your office window and observe an unfamiliar car parked in the church parking lot.  A man is behind the wheel.  You assume it is the car the lady at the front desk arrived in.  You close your laptop and walk down the hall, checking your spirit for any ignoble attitudes – residue from previous disconcerting encounters with the needy.  You will want to give this woman the benefit of the doubt, listen to her story with empathy and understanding.  But how will you know if what she tells you is the truth?  To even ask for verification will expose your suspicion.  Besides, you do not have the time right now to spend getting involved in what could be a complicated situation.  Your past experience has taught you that a request for food is often merely the tip of a pathological iceberg.

You greet her with a handshake and your warmest pastoral smile.  You listen attentively to her story.  It is believable enough and you do not question a word of it, not verbally anyway.  Her demeanor and attire offer no conflicting clues.  But you do not invite her into your office.  You take her request for food at face value and instruct the receptionist to fill a box from the food pantry and give it to the woman.  In less than five minutes the woman has thanked you profusely and has exited to the waiting car.  You return to your office, watch the car pull out of the lot, and settle back down at your laptop.  You have fed the hungry, you reassure yourself, given freely with no strings attached.  Now you can return to your sermon preparation.

But for some reason you find it difficult to stay focused on your reading material.  Your concentration is distracted by an uneasiness that disturbs your spirit.  Did you merely “expedite” this woman, dispatch her with an easy handout?  Come to think of it, you didn’t even get her name.  But you did give freely – that counts for something.  Should you have offered to pray with her?  Actually, she seemed rather relieved that you didn’t push for a more involved interview.  She was probably just as happy that she got what she came for without being subjected to a counseling session.  Yes, you handled it properly.  Back to the Sunday sermon.

But what if she was hustling, making the rounds to churches all over town?  Taking advantage of caring people?  Selling the food to support a destructive drug habit?  You would have no way of knowing if your charity was helping or hurting.  Not without some sort of an accountability system.  Where are all these questions coming from?!  Too late to do anything about it now anyway, too many Sunday responsibilities pressing in.  Maybe next week.  Right now you have a sermon to prepare.

But the disquieting thoughts persist. You decide to weave some self-disclosing remarks into your sermon about the biblical mandate to care for the poor and the difficulty in this culture of doing it rightly.  Perhaps this will provide you some measure of closure.

But by Monday, with the issue still churning in your viscera, you come to the conviction that it is God who is troubling your spirit.  You must face this dilemma and address it head on.  You call a fellow pastor to see how he deals with similar situations.  He tells you about a program that has been a godsend.  A Cooperative Food Ministry (CFM) that is supported by several churches in the area.  Participating churches collect food on their assigned Sunday, volunteers take it to the CFM center,  the CFM director records each donation, documents each recipient, accounts for each distribution, connects to a county-wide computer system that safeguards against fraud and double-dipping.  The cost is minimal, it provides good service opportunities for church volunteers, it is well-managed and accountable, and it fulfills the biblical mandate of feeding the hungry.  It’s the ideal solution, your pastor friend tells you.

YES!  This is just what you needed to hear.  It should be easy to make the case to your elder board that shifting the church food pantry to the CFM would be a much better way to minister to the poor.  Much more efficient and responsible.  It would eliminate those awkward interviews to get at the truthfulness of stories.  It would resolve those worrisome tensions over responsible or irresponsible stewardship.  CFM will handle all of this.  They’re the experts, after all.  A good accountable referral system is definitely what is needed.

                                                           __________________

 But you find that the new system doesn’t relieve all your anxiety.  Why does it still linger?   Why do you feel like in some way you have referred Jesus away from your door?   What is it about poor people, anyway, that so disquiets one’s spirit?  Their intrusiveness, the way they interrupt your schedule, the demands they place on your time especially when you are drawn into personal involvement with them.  And there seems never to be a clear solution to their plight, always more complicated than you were first led to believe.

You wonder, in your more courageous moments, if all this might somehow be more about your own salvation than that of those you are trying to help.  Might the appearance of Jesus in the form of a needy person be divine light to illuminate darker places in your soul – lack of compassion, self-protection, self-importance, impatience?   Ouch!  Too much reflection like this could be downright depressing.  Good sermon material perhaps.   But what over-worked pastor is going to relinquish control of his or her tightly packed calendar?   Not a chance.  It would be irresponsible.  You just wish Jesus had been a little more understanding of the priest and Levite in his Good Samaritan story.

Your phone rings again.

God doesn’t speak to me very often.  Not audibly anyway.  Certainly I have experienced the nudges and promptings of the Spirit.  That’s not so infrequent.  But seldom, only a handful of times in my sixty-eight year lifespan, has the divine Voice been so clear and forceful that I would confidently claim that God spoke to me.

The last time I heard a clear Voice was five years ago shortly after Peggy and I got married.  We had decided to begin each day with a devotional time together, something new and quite exciting to Peggy.  She is a cradle Catholic, raised and schooled in the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church.  Her faith is deep but quite personal and private.  I, on the other hand, am a preacher’s kid, Bible school graduate, and beneficiary of decades of animated preaching, energizing Bible studies and countless volumes of Christian books.  Quite naturally I took the lead in our morning devotionals.  Peggy was quiet at first but in no time at all was engaging in stimulating discussion.  It was a rewarding way to begin our days.

I thought it might be good to study some of Saint Paul’s writings together.  By looking directly into the scriptures Peggy might see for herself some of the questionable teachings in her church’s theology.  I tried to let the scriptures do the work on their own but found it hard to resist making corrective applications.  The priesthood of all believers, confession of sins one to another, justification by faith alone – the temptation was irresistible for me to point out that these pillars of Protestant reformed doctrine all had solid scriptural foundations.  It was all very disturbing to Peggy.  She wanted to see it in her bible.  So we started reading from the authorized Catholic version.  Same thing, no significant difference.  But rather than being enlightened by our study, she became increasingly distressed.  Her religious training had not equipped her to argue theology but rather to merely accept it, whereas I cut my teeth on religious debate.  My tradition is “protest”-ant, after all.  So while I was enjoying challenging her beliefs, she was becoming more and more disconcerted.

That’s when God spoke to me. The Voice broke into a particularly upsetting morning discussion.  “Leave her alone!  Stop tearing down her faith. That’s how she relates to me.  Encourage her.”  It was as clear as a bell, almost audible.  It came with such clarity and force that I stopped mid-sentence in my line of reason and closed the bible.  This would mark the end of my covert strategy to convert my new wife to my Protestant beliefs.

The following morning we began reading a daily-bread-type devotional book – pablum that emphasized such basics as thoughtfulness, kindness, servanthood, forgiveness and other such practical lifestyle helps.  Peggy’s countenance brightened.  Our discussions turned positive.  One morning the reading was about “loving your wife as Christ loved the church and laid down His life for her.”  I had read that scripture many times but for some reason this time it stuck with me throughout the day, and the next.  It occurred to me that one of the most loving acts I could do for Peggy was to attend church with her.  I knew it brought her joy to have me sitting beside her in worship.  I had agreed to go with her on occasion but the Catholic mass did little to satisfy my spiritual appetite.  The music was dreary, the sermons uninspiring and the rituals unfamiliar.  But the message from that little devotional book kept re-playing in my spirit – “…as Christ loved the church…laid down His life for her…”  Could I, should I, lay down my religious preferences as an act of obedience, as an expression of love for my wife?

Most Sundays now find me sitting alongside Peggy in her church.  She often squeezes my hand during worship and smiles.  I try to get something out of the service though there is not very much that ignites my soul.  What I do feel, however, is the smile of God.  And that may be the best worship of all.

Go here to pre order your copy.

Cancer!  That dreaded diagnosis that grips the heart with ferocious fear.  It took Peggy down after four years of merciless battle.  And now it has invaded my body.  An elevated PSA test during a routine physical sounded the alarm.  A biopsy confirmed the worst.  Surgery or radiation implants were the recommended treatment alternatives.  But no guarantees.  That’s the way it is with cancer.

That was six years ago.  My urologist warned that prostate cancer was like a ticking time bomb, that it should be eradicated as soon as possible, no way to tell how aggressive it was or when it would spread.  But fear drove me to research the subject.  I discovered that males in the U.S. undergo surgical procedures at a rate twice that of other advanced nations but with no better survival rates.  I decided to wait and watch.

My PSA count crept slowly higher.  After five years it had not yet reached the perilous point but the evidence of cancerous growth was steadily increasing.  Decision time was approaching.  I was sharing my concern with my good friend, David Van Cronkhite, in a coffee shop one morning.  David is a high-energy Pentecostal-type who believes God routinely does miracles.  Without a moment’s hesitation, David asked if he could pray for me.  I consented, of course.  But he meant right there, out loud, in the coffee shop, with his hands placed conspicuously on my head.  His prayer was passionate, sincere and forceful.  I understood most of it (with the exception of some tongues which I did not have the ability to interpret).  When he finished I felt no different, except for the redness of my face.  I thanked him and we went on with our conversation.

I had nearly forgotten about the incident when a month or so later I got back the results of my next PSA count.  It showed a slight decline.  Three months later – another decline.  The growth had stabilized, my urologist informed me.  Wouldn’t need to see him for six months.  Yesterday I got back the six month report – again, no growth, stabilized.

Now, I’m a Presbyterian, both in affiliation and temperament.  I believe God can do whatever God wants to do.  But mostly I think God operates within the natural order of things (which is certainly miraculous).  Unlike David who sees supernatural miracles as the norm, I view them as the rare exception.  I do not understand how they work – they seem rather random to me.  And I certainly have no desire to revisit the confusing faith-healing arena that proved to be such a disappointing emotional roller-coaster ride with Peggy.  No, I feel much safer relying on common sense, conventional scientific research and entrusting outcomes to the hands of a loving God.

But I’ll tell you this: if my PSA continues to drop I may just turn into a charismatic!

The city of Atlanta for one reason or another likes to do roadblocks. This is where the police set up on a busy street and stop each vehicle to check drivers license and tags to make sure they are current, and if not they tow your car and sometimes arrest drivers. Last night I hit one of these road blocks pulled out my license showed the cop, he steps to the back of my car to check the tag comes back says “thank you and get that tag taken care of”. My tag expires at the end of December. I pulled into my office today at FCS and the parking lot was mostly empty and I thought to myself wow everyone has started his or her Christmas holiday. The 4 cars that were present in the lot which usually has an upwards of twenty cars a day belonged to the 4 administrative staff.

I walked in and there they were the four of them hammering away at the year end stuff that needed to be done, a note in my box to sign tax forms needed, checks to approve for payment, and donor thank you notes to go out.

Like my license plate these are things don’t cross my mind very often, but thank God there are people whose talents, gifts, and thoughts are on these details.

I am usually on the road flying from one place to another either recruiting young people to come do Mission Year, teaching at a church, visiting a donor, or trying to inspire folks to serve well. All the while there is team back in the office holding down details that never even cross my mind. They are as much of the new ideas that I come up with as anyone. In fact they are the ones to make sure the legalities are done.  Creating a 661 feet mural, bringing in 200 volunteers, doing a event in New York with leaders, or riding a bike 160 miles all are wonderful projects that our admin team handles every day. Even on days when my thoughts are of holiday cheer and gifts they are plugging away to make sure things are covered for when I am driving down the road.

This morning in the mail there is envelope from the city addressed to me. I open it and it’s the sticker for my tag and new vehicle registration for my car. My wife, a detailed person, had obviously thought about this and paid it long before yesterday. While I was somewhere dreaming and speaking she was handling the detail. When January hits for our organization it will come in smoothly because there is team two days before Christmas working diligently to get the details covered.

My appreciation for every person in my life that helps organize the craziness that is Leroy Barber.  That is something I am thankful for today.

Wise men, from the east.  That’s how Matthew described them.  Magi, leaders of sufficient import to gain a personal audience with Herod the Great.  Three of them plus their considerable entourage.  Tradition has ascribed to them names – Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar – imaginative attempts to create the illusion that we somehow know who these shadowy figures were.  But we do not.  Likely they came from Persian aristocracy where Zoroastrianism and the highly regarded science of astrology were woven into a polytheistic culture.  Highly educated men, doubtless, given their obvious knowledge of religion, literature, science and political protocol.   But why they appeared in Judea, a remote outpost on the edge of the civilized world, and just as quickly disappeared, remains a mystery.

They claimed to be following a star.  Or perhaps a unique configuration of stars.  They had deciphered from undisclosed sources that a world leader, a Jew of great importance, would be born at the precise time and location where certain stars aligned.  If this calculation were true, they could have the distinction of being among the first to pay homage.  So convinced were they of their conclusions that they set out on a journey of many months, planning their itinerary to coincide with celestial movements.  Vigilant nighttime observations had led them into Herod’s jurisdiction.  The Judean king seemed surprised by their mission, and obviously very interested.  He encouraged the travelers to continue their quest and report back to him if and when they located this infant-king.

The wise men did indeed find the king they sought.  Their assumptions proved to be correct.  And they presented to him gifts befitting royalty – gold, frankincense and myrrh.  But they did not return to Herod’s palace to report as instructed.  Rather, they slipped quietly out of the country (and out of recorded history) by an unknown route.

How did three prominent members of pagan Persian society end up in the Christmas story?  Where did they gain the insight to search for a great Jewish king?  Could they have unearthed ancient Hebrew prophesies from centuries-old archives of Cyrus’ dynasty?  Or perhaps their study of religions familiarized them with the persistent Jewish expectation of a great deliverer, a Messiah.  But how did they come to the belief that the stars would reveal the timing and location of the birth of this king?

Magi (from which our word magic derives) were members of the priestly caste of Zoroastrians who had an international reputation as astrologists.  Combining spirituality and scientific observation, these “wise men” devised elaborate systems for predicting from celestial movements events in the human world.  How strange that in the practice of their pagan art they should divine the Messianic arrival – when the studious priesthood of Israel did not.  Fascinating, too, that God would use foreign wealth to bankroll the heavenly child during his early years in exile.

The Magi were three of the small cast of unorthodox characters who would appear in this divine drama.  At the opposite end of the social spectrum were a handful of illiterate shepherds who received a special personal invitation to the little king’s entry.  But no other public fanfare.  Oh yes, there were the two insignificant seniors at the temple – ancient Anna and retired priest Simeon – who received a private revelation when the child was presented for circumcision.  But no others, besides his parents.

In retrospect it is not difficult to see that this Kingdom the Christ-child came to introduce was unlike any other human institution.  It crept quietly into history, by-passing the Temple establishment, avoiding public display.  It engaged unsuspected and unsuspecting players to accomplish its purposes.  It was explained by interesting (if not obscure) stories rather than by compelling theological treatises.  A child could understand, Christ said, but the prominent and learned would stumble over its simplicity.  It would upset convention by challenging religious traditions and by inviting into its membership social outcasts, repulsive ethnics, and enemy occupiers and collaborators.  For thirty-three brief years the world would catch direct glimpses of this Kingdom through the liberating, troubling words and example of its heaven-sent King.  The prominent and learned, whose systems He upset, would in the end make of Him a public example of what happens to anyone who threatens their hallowed domain.

But this Kingdom did not end with the inglorious death of its King.  Its quiet presence still slips into human history, engaging the unsuspected and unsuspecting to accomplish its purposes.  It continues to elude the restraints of orthodoxy.  It still invites into its fellowship social outcasts, estranged ethnics and political enemies.  Children still recognize the wonder of it.  And those with child-like faith.  And for those who dream of peace, who search for signs of a Kingdom that has come (and is yet to come), for them Christmas is an absolutely magical time.

This Thanksgiving Americans have much to be thankful for.  Ninety percent of us are working.  Our standard of living remains the highest of any nation on earth. Our government is stable and our economy is growing.  We enjoy more freedoms than any people in human history.  Yes, we have much to be thankful for.

Which is not to say that we have no problems.  The nine-percent-plus unemployed Americans are certainly struggling.  Foreclosures continue to dislodge people from their homes. Lifestyle levels are slipping.  Congressional gridlock is frustrating and political wrangling is ugly.  To be sure, there are plenty of reasons to voice our dissatisfactions.  And that we are free to do.

But it is not Pollyanna to offer up heartfelt thanks to God for the abundant blessings we enjoy. Even the most destitute of our land – those sleeping under bridges and in shelters – are nourished by the surpluses of food and the milk of human kindness that flow freely, particularly at this time of the year.

There is one group of struggling people in our city who are especially grateful this Thanksgiving season, people of meager means who have discovered a unique way to multiply their limited food budgets.  Unlike other families who will stand in line for the Thanksgiving meal prepared by volunteers with Hosea Feed the Hungry, these families will feast around a family dinner table in the warmth of their own apartments.  These are the families who are members of the Georgia Avenue Food Cooperative.

Several years ago the Georgia Avenue Community Ministry tested out a creative method to enable their food pantry recipients to collectively secure their own food at great savings.  The church, as an authorized social service agency, could purchase surplus food for their pantry from the Atlanta Community Food Bank at 12¢ a pound.  Individuals, of course, could not.  What if a group of food pantry recipients pulled their money, processed it through the church, and thereby gained access to food bank bargains? Thirteen families volunteered for the experiment, invested $2 each and the Georgia Avenue Food Cooperative was launched.

Care had to be taken, of course, to respect the food bank regulations that limited food purchases to only authorized non-profit organizations.  Co-op members, though prohibited from purchasing food directly from the food bank, could however pay dues to a church-sponsored program.  By combining co-op member contributions with the church’s food pantry budget, the church could then be the legitimate food receiving agency for the co-op.  The idea worked.  The original thirteen families quickly swelled to 50 with growing waiting lists.  Soon the church fellowship hall was overwhelmed with excited co-op members, ordering, sorting, boxing and distributing food.  A steering committee was formed.  A secretary from the group was elected to keep records, then a treasurer to collect dues. Before long a reasonably functioning organization of dues-paying members was humming.  Community life emerged.  Members prayed for one another, shared meals, fellowshipped, carried food to shut-ins.

Today there are five co-ops that comprise the Georgia Ave Food Cooperative, each with 50 households.  Their bi-weekly dues, now $3, yield for them an average of $100 worth of groceries.  No longer must they stand in dignity-depleting lines waiting for handouts.  They have their own, self-managed association, under-girded by the church, that multiplies both their grocery dollars and their self-esteem.  Little wonder that their homes are filled with thanksgiving this season.

How satisfying it is to be in a position to share our abundant blessings with those who have less, and do it in a way that enhances human dignity!   How grateful I am for caring friends who understand the importance of accountable compassion!  Thank you for investing with us to see this movement grow.

Geralyn came up for air during an intense schedule at a global conference on “Schools that Pay for Themselves” in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.   She retreated to a nearby pub with several of her peers – educators and service professionals from around the globe.  Relaxed easy conversations meandered from policies to practices to personal experiences, the variety of unique cultural backgrounds adding color and flavor to the interaction.  One topic of particular interest to this group of socially conscious practitioners was the disastrous impact of charitable aid that has flowed for decades into sub-Saharan Africa.  Geralyn, a community developer from the United States, recounted her frustration with church mission groups that travel to developing countries, suitcases bulging with presents, eager to perform “work” in poor villages in the name of Christian service.  “At the sight of Americans, small children come running from everywhere with their hands out.  We produce a culture of beggars,” she lamented. 

An African educator sitting at the table was noticeably silent during Geralyn’s comments, deep in thought.  “I never understood why Americans who came to our school loved to paint so much,” she finally said.  And went on to describe the bizarre routine that students in the high school in her village went through each time a mission group from the States was about to arrive.  The students were instructed to besiege the school building with sticks and stones and handfuls of mud, making it appear to be in serious need of a paint job.  She could never figure out what it was about painting buildings that Americans loved so much.  But if painting is what they wanted to do, then the need for painting is what the students would create.  In the four years she was at the school,  their entire school building was repainted five times by mission groups from America.  “All we cared about was what they had in those suitcases,” she said.   

So what is it about painting that we Americans love so much?  It’s not really painting that we love – everyone knows that (except African children).  We do love to serve, however.  We want to meet the needs, the real needs, of people for whom life is very difficult.  This desire comes from somewhere deep within our soul.  It is an imprint of the Divine.  Yet, as pure as our motivations to help may be, those heavenly impulses when practically expressed inevitably become entangled with less noble earthly realities.  Contaminants seep in and taint the goodness of our intentions – such polutants as pity that diminishes dignity, dependency that discourages enterprise, deception that undermines relationships.  We paint because we pity.  We paint because we believe that the poor cannot help themselves.  We paint because we have been led to believe that painting is really helping.

I have led more than my share of painting projects over the years.  I’ve recruited hundreds of weekend volunteers, hustled up paint, rollers, brushes, drop-clothes and ladders, and lined up needy homeowners whose houses needed a facelift.  The fellowship was always fun and the satisfaction of helping a family in need was its own reward.  But the one complaint I heard repeatedly from the volunteers was: “Why isn’t the family out here working with us?” 

Lazy?  Unappreciative?  Embarrassed?  It took a few years and a few trusting relationships to figure out the answer.  It is hard on one’s pride when a hoard of pitying painters descends on one’s home – even worse when the neighbors observe it.  It broadcasts a message that this family isn’t capable of keeping up their own home.  And is a painted house really a top priority for a family struggling to keep their utilities turned on? 

Painting is good.  Let’s be clear about this.  But it’s how we go about our painting that determines whether it is a blessing or a blight.  Is painting really needed?  Obviously not for the rural school in Africa.  But if it is needed, do the owners see it as a high enough priority to be the first investors, to provide on-site leadership for the project?   The outcome is far more positive – for both givers and recipients – when homeowners supply the paint (and maybe even a lunch) and invite supportive friends to assist in applying it.  This feels more like a partnership than a pity painting party. 

Americans do love to paint.  But as any experienced painter knows, the preparation is as important as the application.

Want to examine other principles for effective service? My new book Toxic Charity has just come off the press.  You can order your copy through FCS here.