Shaun Groves

Debrief: It’s Your Turn

Shaun Groves — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:37:23 +0000

At the end of every Compassion blogging trip I lead the bloggers in a time of “debriefing.” It helps us process what we’ve experienced, get some of the nasty destructive thoughts and emotions out and begin thinking about how we’ll re-enter a society that hasn’t been where we’ve been.

Last night I started the debrief by telling the story of John 9: Jesus and his disciples saw a man born into physical poverty. He was blind from birth. The disciples asked Jesus whose sin the man was being punished for. Did God smite him with darkness because of his own mistakes? Or his parents? Who’s fault was it?

Jesus didn’t point fingers at human errors. He pointed to God.

…this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

The bloggers and I have walked this week through the worst poverty I’ve ever seen. And we’ve wondered at times why it exists. Political corruption and apathy plays a role. Complexities of world markets, educational systems, and the environment factor in as well. But then there’s God’s glory to consider.

The “glory” of God is the “full measure” of God – his total character and ability. The complete image of the Creator. Parts of that image don’t show up well against the gray backdrop of an affluent culture. To see some parts of God some of us need to see him against the darkness of poverty.

In such bleakness we see the full extent and efficacy of God’s physical, economic, physical and spiritual provision. Only among the hungry can some of us see daily bread as the miracle it is. Only among the dying can some of us see breath as the gift it is. Only among the hopeless can some of us see Jesus as the Rescuer he us.

In the dark slums of Kenya we’ve all seen God moving from house to house, child to child. His image is a little more complete than it was before Kenya.

Last night I asked the bloggers to share what they saw of God this week. They were encouraged to tell the stories they couldn’t blog. I asked them what snapshot from the week would stay with them even in the old folks home. They did. We cried. We laughed. We made promises to each other and God, talked through the difficulties of going home, and prayed for God’s help. Then laughed some more.

Now it’s your turn.

I don’t usually allow anonymous comments but I will this once. What did you see of God this week through our blogs? What snapshot will stay with you for the rest of your life? What promises do you need to make to yourself and God going forward?

Please share. For the glory of God.

Frequently Asked Questions About Compassion International

Shaun Groves — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:24 +0000

I speak on behalf of Compassion International more than a hundred times a year. I feel like I’ve heard a million different questions regarding Compassion and poverty. A handful of them though are in heavy rotation.

I’m in Kenya right now on Compassion International’s fifth blogging trip! And those same few questions are hitting the comment sections of our blogs with the same frequency. So, how about some answers and responses from my vantage point? I’ll do my best.

We have poverty in America too. Why isn’t Compassion doing anything about it?

Certainly. Unfortunately, people of every nation are in poverty’s grip. Even America, which is the 4th wealthiest country in the world according to the World Bank, has been touched by poverty.

To serve America’s poor, Compassion International launched a holistic child development ministry in 1973. After 30 years of studying the effectiveness of that ministry, it was decided that America’s poor would be better served if that ministry was spun off as a separate organization. It exists still today as YouthPartnersNET. Like Compassion International, YouthPartnersNET “works through partnerships with churches, youth workers and faith organizations to reach out to children and young people in the United States who suffer from spiritual and physical poverty.”

Why is Compassion spending money to fly bloggers to Africa when that money could help the poor?

Compassion is the only non-profit in the child development category to have received Charity Navigator’s coveted four-star rating eight consecutive years in a row. The American Institute of Philanthropy has likewise awarded Compassion its highest rating and Worth magazine placed Compassion on its list of the top ten most fiscally responsible charities.

Compassion, like all non-profits, must spend some money in order to raise money. Every marketing investment is scrutinized before and after it is made. Compassion has taken FIVE blogging trips because the return on investment is far higher than that of traditional marketing.

Every effort is made to reduce investment costs. For blogging trips, this includes purchasing hotel stays (with meals) and airfares at reduced group rates. And in the end, the investment made is more than worth the thousands of lives transformed by the generosity of sponsors.

Is Compassion forcing children to become Christians?

We Christians are sometimes, rightfully, criticized for being hypocritical – for not consistently living out what we believe. Christianity teaches that the deepest poverty a human being can experience is of a spiritual nature. It would be inconsistent and hypocritical of a Christian child development organization to offer physical but not spiritual assistance. So Compassion does so.

Compassion ministers to the physical and spiritual needs of many Hindu, Muslim, and atheist children around the world. Every child, regardless of religious background, is exposed to Christian teachings but, like the offer of clean water and food, the choice to accept these teachings is purely up to the child.

If a child does not believe in the God of the Christian faith, they receive no less love and care from Compassion. The care they receive differs in no way from the care given Christian children.

Have more questions to ask?

Shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment. I’ll reply shortly.

Thanks.

Sight For The Blind

Shaun Groves — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:18:33 +0000

Eliud is eighteen.

An orphan for ten years, he lives alone in a home made of cardboard, wood and corrugated metal. It’s eight feet long, five and a half feet high and five feet deep.

Because of a sponsor named Nick in Northern California, Eliud has enough – but you and I would call him poor.

Eliud prefers it that way.

After an intensely intimate conversation in Eliud’s home…

We walked together through the second largest slum in Kenya. Past the homes of it’s 800,000 residents.

We sloshed through a mixture of mud and garbage. Two new friends talking in the rain about wealth and poverty.

“I’d like to ask you a difficult question,” I warned. “I’ve been waiting a long time to ask someone this and I’ve finally found someone wise enough to answer it. Are you ready?”

He smiled slightly back at me.

“What does it mean to be ‘rich’ or ‘poor’? How much must a man have to be called rich?”

“Well,” he said, “I think it is true that a rich man has great wealth and a poor man does not have his basic needs. A rich man has new cars and a big house. The poor do not have basic needs.”

We passed a small opening in the sea of rusted metal. Inside, pornography played on a television for men with a few shillings. “Cinema” the sign read.

“In my country,” Eliud said, “to be rich requires corruption. I would rather be poor with God than rich with a corrupted life.”

We turned a corner and walked down a driveway onto church property where lunch was being prepared. Brad and I stopped under an awning and drank in Eliud’s last words of wisdom.

“A poor man can see forward. A rich man becomes blind until he cannot see good and wrong.”

There was a long pause.

“You’re right,” I finally confessed. “I am rich. And it makes me blind sometimes. I once thought I was too poor to share more but then I met my first sponsored child. She showed me how much good $38 can do. You are an amazing young man. Nick is helping you by being your sponsor but you are helping him by being his sponsored child. You are helping him see the good God can do when we share.”

His eyes watered just a little. Payback for all the tears these kids in Kenya have wrung out of me this week.

Even in this recession of ours the average American has a big house, more than one car, spends around $100 every month on soft drinks and more than $50 each month on cable. Not basic needs. We are rich.

There is only one reason more than 800 children from Kenya are still unsponsored at Compassion.com today : Because the wealthiest Christians in the world have become blind. We don’t see the extent of their poverty or our riches. We can’t see the good in sharing and the wrong of being an average American.

I sponsor three children and one leadership development student. Thousands of kids have been sponsored by my blog readers and concert audiences. My family and I simplified our life a few years ago so we’d have more to share. But God’s not through with me.

God is still opening my eyes. I’m dividing my water and electric bills, my fast food and magazine subscriptions by $38 tonight and I’m seeing more good to be done.

I pray your eyes are opened by Eliud’s words too. Please see and sponsor a child.

“Two things I ask of you, O LORD;
do not refuse me before I die:

Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.

Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.

-PROVERBS 30:7-9

Better Than Oprah & Crab Cakes

Shaun Groves — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:45:27 +0000

My first job was painting miniature wooden ducks for a mail order duck of the month business. Seriously. I was fourteen and just sat around watching game shows and Oprah that summer with a paintbrush in hand.

Then there was Chick-fil-A. Because, well, I love Christian chicken and having Sundays off and Jennifer worked there and Jennifer somehow looked like a supermodel in navy blue slacks and a maroon visor. Also, I got all the chicken I wanted. And did I mention there was chicken?

In college I handed out samples of crab cakes, lasagna, chicken pot pies and whatnot to the shoppers of Sam’s Wholesale. The grandmothers I worked with “accidentally” cooked too much and gave me the leftovers. I don’t think I bought groceries once that year.

For the last decade I’ve been a soft rock star. (If you’re new here, I say this out of equal parts self-deprecation and self-loathing.) I get to travel around the world (aka Florida & North Carolina) singing about God, “working” for only 90 minutes, staying in hotels where someone else makes the bed, and meeting thousands of fascinating people.

I’ve had some great jobs with amazing perks. Then there’s leading Compassion Bloggers.

This job requires me to be organized – and that fits me about as well as an XXL. When recruiting bloggers for these trips I’m rejected again and again. I work with a brilliant group of internet marketers at Compassion who routinely, unintentionally, make me feel like a five year-old at the adult table. When I’m on these trips I miss my wife and my three kids deeply.

There’s a lot about this job – like any job – that’s difficult for me. But the perks? Well, I get to see children released from poverty. And Americans released from wealth.

And have-it-togetherness.

And a God with borders.

And the mountain-from-molehill cares of life.

I get to witness God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. The miraculous. The hellos and the goodbyes of family made from strangers.

The first world colliding with the third world, bringing release to both.

And that beats Oprah and free crab cakes any day. And rivals Christian chicken too.

I love this job.

Read the stories behind the pics in this post:

Kenyan For Checkers

Shaun Groves — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:35:49 +0000

I Rode Across Africa On A Camel Today

Shaun Groves — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:23:20 +0000

I rode across Africa on a camel today.

Across this ancient land where God likely breathed the first breath into man. I traversed it the way noble chiefs and princes once did.

You can see for miles from such heights. Miles of majestic plains dotted with gazelles and zebras and the best of God’s handiwork.

There is something incredibly timeless and royal about sitting astride one of these mammoth beasts.

I rode across Africa on a camel today.

Because the ferris wheel was too far away to walk.

I don’t see what’s so funny about this, Keely.

I really don’t.

If you’d like to read something more profound check these bloggers out.

The Parable Of The Zebra

Shaun Groves — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:25:35 +0000

One girl occasionally petted my head, trying to get my Pentecostal hair to lay down. The rest of the groupies peppered me with questions.

I felt like an oddity in a sideshow – Like siamese twins or the snake boy, a giant white stickman from across the ocean is quite a spectacle for the kids of the Maasai tribe.

“How many children do you have?” one asked in perfect English.

“How old are you?”

“What is your favorite meat?” they asked.

I answered all of these questions with a straight face and total lies. Thankfully, these girls have been given the gift of interpretation for my gift of sarcasm. Good job, Compassion. The ice was broken.

“I have 27 children.”

“I am 70 years old.”

“I like to eat lions. But they’re hard to catch now that I’m 70. I’m not very fast anymore.”

Then we talked about Beyonce’s music, and how to kill a cobra, and sang Lord I Lift Your Name On High with much more groove than I’m accustomed to. And one girl advised, out of nowhere, that I never eat a zebra no matter how hungry I get because they are beautiful.

Then Penini, a girl sitting on my left who’d been petting my skin the entire time, asked me, “Why are you white?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “God just made me white and made you beautiful brown.”

“I’m not beautiful,” she said with an appreciative grin. So I played along and told her again.

“You girls are all very beautiful.” And they smiled.

“Why did God make black and white people?”

“Well, that’s a great question,” I said, and I took Penini’s fingers and wove them into mine. Black. White. Black. White.

“These two colors are beautiful together don’t you think? Like a zebra.”

They seemed to like that answer. And they said I should sponsor a girl from Kenya because they are the most beautiful.

This post made possible with photos from the very talented Ryan Detzel & Keely Scott.

Kenyan For Soccer Ball

Shaun Groves — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:24:54 +0000

Kenyan For Earrings

Shaun Groves — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:04:12 +0000

A Bridge For Cows & Miracles

Shaun Groves — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:29:43 +0000

We walked for a mile or so from the Compassion project on jagged roads made of red clay.

Down a steep hill to a small metal home.

And met “grandmother.”

She told us her story: Her oldest daughters skipped town and left grandmother with five grandkids and one daughter of her own to raise.

One day she enrolled her two youngest grandchildren into Compassion International’s sponsorship program. A great day not just for two but for seven.

As social workers, board members and pastors from the Compassion project got to know grandmother and her kids, they slowly uncovered the depth of the family’s poverty. No beds. Almost no food. Battling the physical and mental effects of malnutrition. No ability to make ends meet and no hope of breaking free of poverty’s grasp anytime soon.

When Compassion sponsors met the needs of two grandchildren they lightened grandmother’s load tremendously but it wasn’t enough. What else could be done for her?

Compassion could write grandmother a check every month, or drop food off at her house daily, but that would create dependency. That kind of help hurts.

So the Compassion project staff instead wrote up a grant proposal, essentially – a proposal asking Compassion headquarters in the US to release funds above and beyond a sponsor’s $38 each month: Money that would help grandmother help herself and her entire family.

The money was not handed to grandmother but was used by local Compassion staff to buy her a cow.

Unbeknownst to Compassion or grandmother at the time, the cow was pregnant. Two for the price of one! “A miracle,” she said.

Today grandmother has three cows producing milk for her family and plenty to sell to neighbors too. With the money from milk sales grandmother bought a cart and a donkey so she can carry hay, milk and logs – cutting this sixty year-old’s workload dramatically. And with a consistent income now she can feed her own family and that independence has put the biggest smile on her face.

Grandma is a proud cattle rancher now!

Think of sponsoring a child like building a bridge. On one end is you and Compassion. On the other is a child in need of education, food, clothing, healthcare, play and hope. But when that child’s family is “highly vulnerable“, that bridge allows Compassion’s care and your letters of encouragement to pour into the whole home.

Sponsorship is a bridge. And sometimes, across that bridge, walks a couple cows, a donkey and a miracle.

Build a bridge.

Thanks to Brad Ruggles and Ryan Detzel for the great pics of our visit to grandmother’s house.