#244 | When Helping Hurts with Brian Fikkert

In a purely material sense, Western capitalism totally rocks at solving material poverty. Is it perfect? Of course not.

But the truth is, as you take Western style capitalism with Western institutions and you spread them to the rest of the world through the process of globalization, as places like India and China adopt those institutions and practices, economic growth does happen and economic growth does trickle down over time to help very poor people. And so if you want to reduce material poverty, I would say promote Western style capitalism as fast as you can.

The problem is that material prosperity is not the same as human flourishing.

Watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollos Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and.

I am your host.

And today in our show, we're having another one of our deep conversations.

As a pastor, there were initiatives that we did as a church, mission trips, community outreaches, and programs to help the community that actually end up doing the opposite of what we intended. Some good came from all of our initiatives. So it's not always a bad thing.

And I'm not trying to say that anything that you do is bad, but it's really not a pleasant thought to think through. Maybe our actions, our acts of service going on this trip actually did the opposite of the good that we intended.

And it's true there are some things that might be a great good on one level and on another level fail miserably and maybe even put things back a step in other ways. Confused? Well, let me just ask this question. What if our helping hurts?

Chances are, if you're familiar with that term, then you're familiar with the book When Helping Hurts. And that's who I'm going to be talking to today, one of the authors of that book, Brian Fikkert, because that book had a huge impact on our ministry.

You know, some people call it the law of unintended consequence.

And this can be a very uncomfortable topic because no one likes to be confronted with the idea that the things that they might have done actually might.

Be hurting other people.

Mission trips, service projects in the community, helping the homeless. Now, you might be really confused right now even further. How could our acts of service actually hurt people?

Well, you're going to see here just in a moment, and I'm not trying to get you not to serve.

In fact, I'm trying to get you to serve even more, but also more intentionally thinking through what your acts of service might do and remove any of the unintended consequences as best as you possibly can and further hone what you're doing to minister to the full person so that Jesus name might be glorified.

So I would encourage you to listen into this conversation as I talk with Brian Fickert, one of the co authors of the fantastic book When Helping Hurts. Happy listening.

Years ago I asked the question, if your church were to be taken out.

Of the community, who would notice?

You know, when that question came to.

Me, it was like hitting me with.

A ton of bricks because I started to ask myself, are we really doing.

Anything for the community?

Are we actually helping people? And I found out that we were doing a lot of different things, but it really wasn't making any change. And then one day I encountered a.

Pretty amazing book called When Helping Hurts.

By Steve Corbett and Brian Fickert. And I started to see God's vision for the world in a greater way than I'd ever seen before.

And today we are honored to have Brian as a guest onto the show.

And I'm going to give a little.

Bit of his bio for everyone.

He's a professor of Economics and Community development and the found and president of the Chalmers center for Economic Development at Covenant College. He is co author of the bestselling book that we're going to be talking about today.

When Helping 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 micro finance. Dr. Fickard earned a PhD in economics from Yale specializing in international economics and economic development.

He is the author of numerous articles in both academic and popular journals.

And prior to coming to Covenant College, he was a professor at the University of Maryland, College park and research fellow at the center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector. And today he is a guest on Apollo's Watered. So Brian, welcome to Apollo's Watered.

Travis, it's great to be with you, I think.

Are you ready for the Fast five?

I am ready for the fast five, even though I don't know what it is.

Okay, here we go. Who won the NFL draft from the NFC north this year?

Oh my word, look, there is a now and not yet to the kingdom of God, right? And so I take that perspective on all things, including the NFL draft. Eventually, God's team, the Green Bay packers, will emerge triumphant.

But we might have to go through an era of tribulation first.

Okay, well here's your second question, right? Which NFL team in the NFC north has the most hall of Famers.

Premier Packers. No.

Number two. Number one. I'm all sweaty. It's going to show up on the video. Bear down, Chicago Bears.

Dude, is that true? Yeah.

I've seen you post. Okay, full disclosure. Brian's from Wisconsin, I'm from Illinois, so there's a little bit of rivalry. And I've seen your Facebook post.

Do you know that Jordan Love, in his first year as starting quarterback at for the Green Bay Packers, God's team, had better statistics than any quarterback in all of Bears history ever.

Until this coming year. The already not yet with Caleb Williams. He is the quarterback elect. He is not entered into the fullness of his football kingdom.

I think I'm walking on close to a line of blasphemy, but.

Okay, so Reggie White, who is arguably, you know, one of the top defensive ends in all of human history, grew up in the same neighborhood I live in in Chattanooga, Tennessee right now. So I live on. Holy.

Okay, well, then let's get into our further questions. Because you're a Wisconsin guy. I mean, you have to miss something about Wisconsin, right? Everybody I hear from, Wisconsin's like, it's God's country.

What do you miss most about Wisconsin now that you're living in Tennessee?

Well, it's actually the sports themes. I'm a huge packers fan, obviously. I love Milwaukee Bucks. I love Milwaukee Brewers. I mean, every night as I'm going to bed, I've got my iPhone.

I'm reading the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sports page on my iPhone as a way of, you know, drifting off into sleep. So it's all. It's Wisconsin sports for me.

What's your Bucks are out of the playoffs, man.

Okay, this is really not going well, this interview so far.

All right, how about this one? Okay, number four, you've traveled quite a bit in your role. What is the worst thing about traveling for you?

Dude, I'm six foot ten.

That's why I brought up the question.

I knew you knew this. So, you know, I get on the airplane and there's always somebody 4 foot 2 sitting in first class.

Their little legs are dangling like their feet don't even touch the floor. And all of my sanctification is at stake at that moment, all of it. And I go past that person, back to economy class, and I cram into the seat.

That's the worst thing by far. All right.

Okay, here we go. Number five. This one. This one.

Because you've traveled, if you could eat food in one region of the world, not the United States, that you've been to that. You could have that food for the rest of your life. It would be in what region and why Thailand.

I love Thai food. Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love Thai food. It's the best food. Yeah. Okay. There's a good Thai restaurant just a few blocks from my house here.

And when I eat chicken pineapple curry, you can taste the coming of the kingdom. It is in the bowl. It is in the bowl. And some people don't believe that any dimensions of this world make it into the new creation.

I am telling you, in addition to the packers chicken pineapple curry will be there. The bears will be asking for a cold drink of water. But anyway, go ahead.

All right, well, I have one more question, even though it's not on the list, just because guys that travel in different parts of the world, what's the strangest food you've ever eaten?

Yeah, so I was in West Africa and it was in somebody's house and they served me this slug and it looked like a bratwurst from Wisconsin. It was that big. And it was like this great big honkin bratwurst only was a slug.

And I've learned how to take things that I don't want to eat and shove them in my socks when the cook isn't looking and just walk out with it. But this thing was so big, there's no way I could shove it in my sock. I thought, how am I going to get through this thing?

There's another dude with me who actually he used to live in West Africa. And when the cook left, he goes, you're struggling, aren't you? He goes, give it to me, I'll eat it fast. So I gave it to him.

He shouted down, so I'm forever grateful to this brother for eating my slug.

Okay, well, we need to transition into the book. Our time is limited today. And I know you've written several different books. We talked about this in the pre show walkthrough.

How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor and yourself. Now, I want to start off with a pretty basic question for our audience.

Let's get into some theology here because you asked this question at the beginning of the book. Why did Jesus come to earth? Let's get into that. And that starts it for everything else.

You know, that really is the framing question for all of life, including our work amongst the poor. And it's so fundamental and so obvious. And yet my experience has been that when I ask Christians that basic question, why did Jesus come to earth?

They don't give the answer that Jesus gave at the start of his earthly ministry. American Christians in particular, if I ask them, why did Jesus come to earth?

They'll say, jesus came to earth to die on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins so my soul can go to heaven someday when I die. And I believe that's true. I believe that that is true. I don't doubt that for one second. There's variations on that theme.

Some will say that he came to save the lost. If you're a Calvinist, you'll say he came from the elect. But nobody ever says what Jesus says at the stars. Earthly ministry. Luke, chapter 4.

Jesus says in verse 43, I've come to preach the good news of the kingdom of God. That's why I was sent. And so we don't have to pit these various facets of his coming against one another.

They're all part of the, of the story, the large story. And the large story is the coming of his kingdom, the fact that he's ushering in a new heavens, a new earth. He's making all things new.

That's the story. And that frames all of our, every aspect of our lives. And it frames how we work with people who are poor.

Because the kingdom of God, I mean, is breaking through. It's the already that, not yet. And we're trying to talk about where we're sin is entered in and broken. These different relationships.

You break this down in the book of these different reconciliations that happen. Can you describe that for us right now?

Sure. So the next chapter, anyone helping hurts. Ask the question, what is poverty? If you ask most Americans what is poverty? They'll answer it like this.

Poverty is about a lack of food, a lack of clothing, a lack of shelter. Poverty is a lack of some material thing. And there's a reason that that's our answer. It's because Western civilization is highly materialistic.

We tend to look at life through material eyes. What's interesting is if you ask poor people both in the United States and around the world that same question, what is poverty?

They will answer it differently. They'll say things like, I feel shame, I feel less than human. I feel like I'm not really part of the team. I feel like people look down on me.

They tend to define their poverty in far more psychological and sociological terms than we do. And that disconnect between how we define it and how they're experiencing it is why so often our poverty alleviation efforts don't work.

And what the poor are doing is they're actually expressing what I think is a more biblical anthropology than we are. The poor are bumping up against truth. They're bumping up against reality. And the reality is that we are not just material creatures.

I believe the Bible teaches that we're highly integrated body, soul, relational thingies. In that relational dimension is something that we tend to overlook in both Western civilization and the Western church.

Once you start to realize that we're actually hardwired for relationships with God, with ourselves, with others, and with creation, it reframes everything about what is human flourishing and how do we get to human flourishing for those who are materially poor and for ourselves. And that's what our book is trying to get at.

I think the book does an excellent job. It's helped a lot of different people from around the world understand this because so many people do have a desire to help.

But in some respect, we're not just battling the forces of evil, we're battling a lot of misunderstanding within the church itself. And one of the issues that we found, and I know that you actually talk about in the book, is a social gospel that you have battled against.

Why is it so important to keep that in perspective and address that issue within the modern evangelical church?

Yeah. Oh boy, you're not paying me enough to answer these questions, buddy.

So there's always been this tension in the church in America between kind of the word ministry and the deed ministry.

And at the turn of the previous century, evangelical Christians pulled back from social action, social engagement with the poor, because they viewed it as reflective of a more liberal theological framework out of a social gospel that seemed to be emphasizing deeds, but seemed to be de emphasizing the verbal articulation of the gospel. And so kind of in reaction to that, the Bible believing church tended to start to pull back from a holistic concern for the poor.

And you know, history is repeating itself. We've got the same thing going on right now.

We have those who claim the name of Christ, who are very focused on social action, on addressing oppressive social systems perhaps, or on meeting people's physical needs and they're not too excited about sharing the good news. Then we've got the other camp again reacting against that, going, you know what, those folks are all bunch of liberals.

We're going to back the proclamation again. And so we're seeing that repeated again in the present moment. I once asked my pastor I said, randy, you know, how do you.

How do you solve this tension of words and deeds? And he said, brian, words are good and deeds are good. You should never do any one of them very long without doing the other. And, you know, I like.

He has a way of crystallizing things. And he was saying to me, there's no blueprint. There's no. There's no easy recipe. It's different in every context. It's different every relationship.

It's different every moment. But at some point, we've got to get the. Both the words and the deeds out there. And I think that's a good way of summarizing it.

We often talk about the proclamation and the demonstration of the gospel, both of those things. And I remember one time I was interviewing a missionary and he said, so many churches will preach Paul, but they don't preach the prophets.

And I think if you have a steady diet of biblical diet, that will then influence you to see that they do go hand in hand. I mean, Israel, why are they judged? Especially in Isaiah 58, when it says, you know, your fasting is bad, it's bad fasting.

And I'm like, it's bad because he goes, you use it for your own self. You're not trying to help the poor. You're not trying. I mean, he goes through a huge list. And I actually put that into a sermon outline once.

Every one of those, I think it was like 30 points. I think the church was like, just kill us now. Just kill us.

It's true. So I was raised in the church, my pastor's kid. I was in Christian schools my whole life.

And if you asked me why was Israel sent into captivity in the Old Testament, I would have always said idolatry. Well, that's true. Idolatry was there. But you kind of get this sense that Israel was.

Every Israelite was walking around with this little BAAL idol in their pocket. They're just walking around worshiping this BAAL idol all the time.

Well, you know, it's interesting because In Isaiah, chapter 58, as you mentioned, boy, these people were religious. They were like going to midweek Bible study. They were going. They were where Jesus threw bracelets.

They were going to contemporary Christian music conferences. They were doing all the religious stuff. The outside, it was all there. And God's going, this is disgusting to me. Because you don't care for the poor.

Yeah, because we have to be able to help those that are around us. I mean, that's what we see.

And as you mentioned, what happened at the beginning of the 20th century with the separation between that social gospel, the liberal theology, and claiming it. I mean, some would even say there's certain theological systems that cause people to pull out.

You've already, in our pre show walkthrough, you talked about a certain principle that I find fascinating that I wasn't familiar with. And I want to know if you'd share that here just because I think it's very interesting where you're talking about what happened in the Civil War.

Can you describe that?

Yeah. So I am part of a denomination called the Presbyterian Church in America. And we come out of the Southern Presbyterian tradition.

And around the time of the Civil War, Southern Presbyterians developed a doctrine called the Spirituality of the Church. And I'm not the world's leading expert on this. I can point you to some folks who are. But it's so close to truth, you know.

Satan really deceives us, doesn't he? He often gets in there.

I used to tell my kids when they were little guys, you know, when you're driving down the street, it's not like there's going to be this big fork in the road with Satan standing there saying, come this way, with a big sign that says, I'm Satan and there's another fork the other way is Jesus saying, come this way. Satan's too smart for that. He's subtle. He gets in there, he tricks people.

And you know, the Southern Presbyterian said, you know, the church is fundamentally from another world. Christ says, my kingdom is not of this world.

And the church as an institution ought to be primarily focused on articulating what the scripture says and not try to do all things in society.

And so there was this sense of the church has a particular calling in society that's different from the calling of government, that's different from the calling of business, that's different from the calling of the family. And so it sounds a lot like Abraham Kuyper's sphere sovereignty kind of idea that each social institution has its own role and its own calling.

But then they kind of twist a little bit to say because the church has its well defined sphere, it should not be concerned with the things of this world, it should only be concerned with spiritual things.

As a result, you had people, you know, elders and pastors who owned slaves, who on Sunday morning would get up and preach the gospel of getting our souls saved and getting our souls beamed out of here to heaven. It's actually a Gnostic kind of thing, to be honest with you.

And so you end up with a church that is only speaking to the spiritual dimension, to getting our souls saved, and isn't willing to speak to issues of social justice, isn't willing to speak to ethics in society as a whole. It's a twist on sphere sovereignty that takes us down the wrong path of a church that's basically involved in owning other human beings.

Even as it's preaching the good news of the gospel in a limited sense, it's a mess.

See, this is where I find it interesting. As the devil has gone about it, as you've talked about, he's okay with people being religious. He has no problem with that.

He has no problem with people going to church. He has no problem. But it's when they remove different parts of the gospel, he's happy with that or separate them from one another.

And this is why we have to integrate back. Jesus was very concerned for the poor and the poor are all around us.

You give some sobering statistics and I'm sure they've probably changed since then, but when we're talking about poverty, what kind of percentage of the population are we talking about and how much are they actually living on? Let's go world and then let's bring it down into the United States.

Yeah, brother.

I don't have all the, all the data at my fingertips to give you those numbers, but you know, depending on how you define it, the World bank often uses a poverty line and they keep changing it because of inflation and so on, but I think right now I think it's $3.10 per day. And so they ask what percentage of the world is living under $3.10 per day? I think we're at something like 35 to 40% right now. Of the world.

Those numbers. It's been a while. Yeah, it's been a while. But it's interesting. It's hard to get all these ideas across.

In a 25 year period, the percentage of the world living below $1.90 per day was reduced by 50%. It's one of the greatest accomplishments in all of human history.

In a purely material sense, Western capitalism totally rocks at solving material poverty. Is it perfect? Of course not.

But the truth is, as you take Western style capitalism with western institutions and you spread them to the rest of the world, through the process of globalization, as places like India and China adopt those institutions and practices, economic growth does happen and economic growth does trickle down over time to help very poor people. And so if you want to reduce material poverty, I would say promote Western style capitalism as fast as you can.

The problem is that material prosperity is not the same as human flourishing. What we're seeing is anxiety and depression are exploding in Western civilization.

We've got the stuff, we've got the material prosperity or not flourishing.

What we're also seeing is that even as places like India and China are experiencing rapid economic growth, adopting Western style institutions, even as material poverty is plummeting, anxiety and depression are also increasing in those places. We're exporting both the good and the bad of Western civilization. It's because we're working on the wrong anthropology. We need a flourishing economy.

We need, my view would be a particular kind of capitalism, but it's got to look different because it's not promoting human flourishing.

I want to ask you so many questions about those books. I mean, there's so much that's there.

There's a lot to unpack there, brother.

Some of our people right now are going, you lost me, I'm not an economist.

Sorry, sorry.

Me personally, I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs right now because I want to get into this stuff because I find this absolutely fascinating, but I want to break it down into where our people are.

Okay, sorry.

No, no, no, nothing to be sorry about. This is awesome stuff and I think we all need to have our minds stretched a little bit to think it through.

But now I want to kind of bring it back and say, let's talk about people going on mission trips, right? Because this is where, this is where I think a lot of our people that are in the churches that experience it, they want to go on mission trips.

They go and they're bringing in these goods, right? They're helping people. But how much of a difference are we making? Now you've already said that we've seen poverty begin to drop, extreme poverty.

Are those the results?

I mean, yes, Western capitalism has gone to in societies, but when we go into a culture and we share Jesus and we're bringing these material goods, are we actually helping or are we hurting people? I mean really, that's the thesis of the book, right? When helping hurts. Because if we don't help in the.

Right way, that's it.

We can actually causing long term effect.

Okay, so if, go back to the original question we talked about. What is poverty? If poverty is about a Lack of material resources.

Then a short term missions trip that goes and hurls out shoes and other kinds of things. I gotta be careful here. That's the solution that's easy to take on a larger scale.

We should just get airplanes and fly all over Africa and drop stuff out the bottom of airplanes on people. But I wish it worked that way. But it doesn't. Because poverty isn't fundamentally about a lack of material resources.

Africa's full of natural resources. It's full of them. You're from Chicago, man. You got nothing compared to most countries in Africa in terms of good natural resources.

You're stuck with crumm, the bottom of Lake Michigan and the bears. It's much better to be in most parts of Africa than it is in, than it is in Chicago by far.

You got alewives rotting on the shores of Lake Michigan and smelling everything up. Chicago is a wasteland, man.

You're just digging a hole. I mean you were doing so.

Africa's got a lot of natural resources. There's parts that are desert, but it has a lot of natural resources. The issue isn't fundamentally about a lack of resources.

The issue has to do with how people understand their relationship to God, self, others and creation.

And those relationships are severely broken, both because of lies in various forms of African traditional religion and I would argue because of what colonialism did. The Fall happened. The Fall. Okay, you're getting me. Look, right now, right now the US Church is seriously divided.

Are people poor because of social oppression or are they poor because of personal sin? This is dividing American culture. It's dividing the American church. This is the stupidest argument in all of human history.

Go into your churches and ask kids in Sunday school, in kindergarten what did the Fall affect? And they're going to say everything. Well then what happens when they grow up? Somehow we become Republicans and Democrats.

Dude, the Fall affects everything. Of course individuals are broken. Of course systems are broken. Of course it should be a softball.

So when we go into a place like Africa, we ought to be asking is why are people's relationships with God, self, others and the rest of creation broken? That's the question we ought to say to ourselves what the church of all ages has said.

Individual sin, the flesh, broken systems, the world and Satan's attacks. The devil. The world, the flesh and the devil. This is the theology of the church throughout all ages.

Now are you going to solve the world, the flesh and the devil by handing out shoes and a one week missions trip? You're not. It's ridiculous. It's A very small thing in the larger story of the world, the flesh and the devil.

You cannot solve poverty in a short term missions trip, but you can make it worse. Here's why. The vast majority of people around the world who are poor are suffering from a marred identity.

They've lost a sense of who they are as image bearers of God Almighty.

Both their religious perspective and their experience with colonialism has confirmed in them that they are less than human, that they can't affect change in their environments, that the world is controlled by outside forces, either white people or demons. They can't affect change in their lives.

And so we rush in on a short term missions trip, hurling around resources, taking over the local vacation Bible school with our puppets. We run in and we take over and hurl resources around. And what it does is it confirms in them what they're already feeling. I'm less than human.

I can't do anything. Outside forces run the world. White people run the world.

And so our very act of compassion confirms in people the very thing that's paralyzing them, that they're less than human, they can't affect change. And so what we've got to do is change our approach to an approach that says you're creating the image of God. You have an inherent dignity and worth.

You are called to steward those gifts. You are called to do something. How can we encourage you to do that more effectively? It's a completely different approach.

It is a totally different approach.

Now some people, and I know there are people listening to this show, they've never been on a mission trip before and they're like, well, wait a minute, what do I, what am I supposed to do? I don't understand this.

I want to break it down even further because you, you give this illustration in, in the book, you talk about this in some respect. It's an. You've changed the names of the churches and some of the figures, but they're based on other stories and it's Creekside Community Church.

To me, that story, it was riveting to me because that's my, that was the story that I saw happening. Can you bring that story out for us?

Because I think it perfectly illustrates what we're trying to help people understand as we're trying to be gospel agents and kingdom ambassadors, witnesses where we are.

Yeah. So that is a true story.

And it comes out of a major American city where you have a, a very financially well resourced Caucasian church that's trying to support inner city ministries that are primarily led by black folks. Working in black communities.

Well, for decades, what happened is that inner city ministry made up stuff for the white church to do because the white church once a year would want to come in and do something to feel like they were accomplishing things. And so the inner city ministry made up things for them to do. Why don't you paint the walls of our offices? Why don't you go and do this?

Why don't you go and do that? That inner city ministry didn't want those things done. Their walls and painted over so many times that the walls could hardly stay up anymore.

But the reason that the inner city ministry made up this stuff was because they knew that the white church wanted something to do. And why would they do that? Because they want the money from the white church.

And so you've got this dynamic where the frontline ministry is making up stuff for the supporting church to do to keep the supporting church happy, when what the supporting church is actually doing is hurtful to the work of the ministry. This happens all the time in the us. It happens all the time internationally.

I have a friend who is a missionary in a country in Asia and one of his major supporting churches in the pca, my denomination wanted to come and do a really culturally inappropriate form of evangelism. It made absolutely no sense. None. My missionary friend said, brian, I have to confess to you, I let them do it because I need their money.

So you've got this very wealthy resource church in the US going over to Asia doing goofy things.

And the missionary there says, well, I'll help you do it, even though I know it's goofy and even though we have to clean up after, I'm going to have to clean up the relational mess after you leave because I need your money. That's the dynamic now. I actually believe there is a role for short term trips, but the role is not a frontline role.

The primary manifestation of Jesus Christ in that community in Asia or in the American city is the ministry that God has already placed there. That's the primary incarnation of Jesus Christ in that community is the local church or local ministry that's there.

Our job as outsiders is to support the work of that local church or local ministry. So they are front stage, they're center stage. Our job is important, but it's a backstage role.

It's babysitting the kids of the pastor or the missionary so the pastor can take his wife out for dinner because he's exhausted. It's listening to his story, it's praying with him, it's encouraging him. It's coming back and supporting him financially, it's cheering for him.

It's an extremely powerful role, but it's a backstage role. It's a supportive role. It's a different job.

It is a different job, but one that I think you draw attention to within the book that I found very appreciative. So much so that when I finally went into a different country, they said, what do you want to do?

And I said, I have no idea, because I don't know your people and I want you to know what you hope that we accomplish, because I don't want to do anything. You know your people, we don't know your people. How do you want us to serve? And I think they very much appreciated that.

And again, this is what I gained from this book because I would have gone and probably done what else? And I've been a part of those mission trips where we went in with vacation Bible school and flannagraphs.

And I remember one time we were working on a reservation in Oklahoma and we. We went for the first year we did vbs, and I couldn't figure out why we were doing it.

We went to the second year and we went to go do vbs, and all the community was gone because they'd gone on a mission trip to do VBS someplace else. And I was like, what are we doing right now? That made me really stop and think.

And so when I went into a community, wherever we would go, we would say, what would you hope that we can do to help you? Because we know that you're holding the relationships. We don't.

We don't want to bring our Western stuff that's here in our different approaches to ministry.

And it was funny because I went.

Into Liberia and I said, what do you want us to accomplish?

And they said, we want you to.

Preach, which I thought was odd. And they said, preach on the five on the seven deadly sins. And I thought, okay, that's weird.

But I did, and I spent some time with them first, and I said, I want to know what you hope to have accomplished here.

And they said, well, our community, our church, our denomination, which is the most conservative in all Liberia, supplied 60% of the soldiers that committed such atrocities in the war. And we want to figure out why. And we think this sermon is going to help bring it out.

And so I spent time with them, I took illustrations, and I actually sat down with the translators ahead of time, and I said, does this make sense? Does this communicate? And he goes, no, I don't understand. Okay, then let's get rid of it.

Because you realize I'm coming here to serve and support and. And I learned that from this book because I realized, hey, we, we need to do this better. I mean, because we've made mistakes.

We'd gone into Liberia and we were building something and. And the Liberians are standing around like, why are you taking my job?

Except why are you taking my job? Okay, now you're getting me. All right, two stories.

So.

And I gotta be a little careful how I tell one of them. So I'm going to change the details to get at the Point a major organization, huge, huge US based organization.

And let's imagine that what they do is they take used clothing and they distribute it in Africa. I'm changing the details to get the point across.

Well, when they bring used clothing into Africa, that depresses the price of clothing and it drives out of business all the local clothing producers. So I said to the head of that particular organization, does it bother you that your program is damaging the local economy?

And his answer was, no, not at all. Because in each of the shirts we put a little message that says, jesus loves you. I said, so let me get this straight.

You're communicating that Jesus loves you by having Jesus wipe out the local economy? And he paused and he said, it doesn't bother me. That's a theological issue. Goes back to the first question you asked me at the start of this podcast.

Why did Jesus come to earth? Jesus Kingdom is not just about getting souls beamed up, out, up into heaven and flooded on like ghosts.

Jesus Kingdom is about the renewal of all of creation. Jesus cares about our souls, he cares about our bodies, he cares about trees, he cares about rocks, cares about the whole thing.

Jesus would never use a method of evangelism that wiped out an economy. He created economics, he's sustaining economics, and he's ushering economics into the new creation. And so our theology frames our practice.

This brother's theology was basically a get the soul beamed up out of here theology. Let me give another example, by the way. That's a huge organization.

I know of a brother who worked for a Christian relief and development agency in the Dominican Republic. And I said to him, how do you deal with all the short term teams from America that come down all the time? He said, oh, I've got that figured out.

I said, what do you do? He said, well, what I do is they come in and they all want to accomplish something, and so they want to get something done.

So I give them an impossible job. I tell them, go move that mountain over there. And I give them a shovel.

And after about three hours, the Americans are exhausted and they realize they're never going to accomplish the task. I said, what happens then? He said, well, they just collapse in exhaustion and they just say, can we just hang out?

And that's what we actually want them to do, is just hang out with us all week. And so basically, I grind them into submission and they hang out with me and the locals all week. That's what we want. We want relationships.

But he said, I have to. A relational understanding of what a human being is is different from a material understanding. We're coming out of material framework.

It's the wrong understanding what a human being is.

And what is the. And I know you got to go. We're. We're short on time. The danger is, Is paternalism one of, one of the biggest dangers that are there?

Can you, can you elaborate on that? I, I remember elaborating on that after reading your book.

I brought it into a sermon and that was one of the key points, is we have to be careful of paternalism. Some people, though, are hearing that for the very first time. Paternalism? What do you mean, paternalism? What are you talking about?

Elaborate on what that is and why it's a danger.

So paternalism can be defined as regularly, consistently doing things for people that they can do for themselves. You want to be careful with this because we all the time do things for people they can do for themselves as kindness. So I'm a marriage counselor.

You didn't know that? You thought I was an economist. I'm gonna give you some marriage counseling.

When you're lying on your sofa watching the packers beating the Bears, you're in nirvana. And your wife says to you, would you please go take the laundry out of the washing machine and put it in the dryer?

It's a really bad moment in your marriage if you say, honey, I don't want to be paternalistic. I think you can do that on your own. Go transfer the laundry on your own. Bad move. Really bad move.

We do things for people all the time they can do for themselves because we want to support them and encourage them and they're tired or whatever, so don't be an idiot. I once had two young ladies who'd read When Helping Hurts. And they said, Dr. Fickert, we read your book and you know what we did?

There was a 95 year old lady on the street corner and she asked us to help her walk across the street. We said, no, we don't want to Demean you. You can walk across the street by yourself. And so we stood there and cheered for her as she walked.

I'm gonna face Jesus someday. And it's gonna say, brian, people used to help old ladies across the street because your book, they don't anymore. Not well done, servant.

Don't be an idiot. Be nice to people, help people.

But if you're constantly doing things for people to the point where they're not using their own gifts and their own abilities, because you're rushing in and doing things that they could do for themselves, that's paternalism. It's rushing in, it's taking over.

It's doing things for people that they can do for themselves on an ongoing basis to the point where they're not actually using their own gifts. They're watching you use your gifts. That's the problem. And we tend to do that in our missions work, both in the US and around the world.

We rush and we take over.

And rather than recognizing the gifts of the people that are already there and fanning the flames of those gifts, we crush people's ability to use their gifts because we take over. That's the problem. And you know, it's so often. Let me just add this real fast.

So often we say to ourselves, okay, so I did some things this week on my short term submissions trip that probably weren't that great, but it was just one week. What we forget is that we are one of 52 short term missions trips that have happened in that location this year. And so we're part of a larger drama.

Haiti, my word, the whole Haitian worldview is that outside forces run Haiti, demons run Haiti and Americans Run Haiti, NGOs Run Haiti. That's the worldview.

Every time we go on a short term mission trip to Haiti and we take over and we distribute resources, we exacerbate, we perpetuate the story that's been woven in the course of centuries there. We're part of a larger narrative. We're not in isolation.

Now.

I know some people are hearing this saying, whoa, I am so confused right now. Because really what we're getting into is it's not that we're saying that missions is bad.

Just like eating a meal is good, but you can eat too much or eat the wrong stuff, and it can actually cause a lot of damage. So what we're saying is how you go about it, the why you go about it, and how do we affect change?

Because what we all want to do is not just ministry for ministry's sake.

We want to do ministry that actually helps people come to the saving knowledge of Christ at the same time enabling flourishing of society so that other people can grow in their dignity. And they already have dignity. It's already there. Not that we're giving them dignity. They have it.

We're affirming the dignity that's there.

There is so much. And I know that we have only scratched the very surface of this.

You have another appointment that you have to go, and I want to have you back.

I want to continue this. I want to get into deeper conversations on economics and talk about the North American church and how we can do this better.

We didn't even get a chance to do that today.

But I want to finish up with one final thought. We offer a concluding thought and we say to people, here's your water bottle for the week. We are. Apollo's watered, so what's a water bottle?

A concluding thought that we can give to our audience today that enables them to embrace Christ but also seek the flourishing of society where they are. So what's one concluding thought that you can give to our audience today?

Well, I got it. I need a little more than one. Just. Just.

Fine.

All right. So the first thing is if you think what I'm saying is that we should do less to help the poor. That's not what I'm saying at all.

I actually believe that whatever you are giving to help the poor, you should quadruple. But you should ask who you're giving it to. What kinds of organizations are you supporting?

Are you supporting organizations that are empowering the poor through meaningful relationships? Or are you supporting organizations that are aimlessly hurling around resources that are communicating the wrong message to people who are poor?

A relational approach to ministry is way more expensive than a material approach, folks. It's not that expensive to ladle soup out. That's easy. It's very expensive to walk in deep relationship with another person.

We need people to pay for staff to hang out with poor people. I don't have the time to do that. That's not my calling. But I can contribute to organizations that do that. So that's the first message.

I'm arguing for more, not less, just different. Okay? The second message is the fall has affected every part of society.

And so wherever you are, wherever you're working, you have a chance to be what 2 Corinthians 5 calls an ambassador of reconciliation. We're not all called to go work in missions. We're not all called to go and work in the inner city.

Maybe you're an insurance Maybe you work in an insurance company in a major American city.

You know what, you're in a position to impact a lot of lives through the better design of insurance policies that can actually help people who are poor. Maybe you're a banker. There's things you can do in banking to actually provide financial services to poor people.

You can use your creativity, what Amy Sherman calls vocational power, to actually help change a broken world, to make it a place where people can flourish. And that's the good news of the kingdom of God. That's what it means to be a reconciling agent is to live into God's redeeming story.

These are good truths to hold on to. And I would recommend people getting the book.

You've got a few other books that are out there, all of them talking about the same type of subject that I think will help so many Christians saying, hey, I really want to make a difference. But I feel like the things that have been done have just been haphazard.

They've not been intentional, they've not considered it, the holistic nature of it.

And I think your book really brings that into focus as we really do want to move the needle ministry wise, not for ministry sake, but for the, the furtherance of Christ in his kingdom. And Brian, seriously, I want to have you back. I want to be able to talk more when we have more time. And I want to thank you for coming on the show.

It's been a delightful conversation except for the Green Bay packers reference. I don't know why you had to bring, you know, devil into this, but that's okay. But it was so good to have you on the show.

Thanks, brother. Fun to be with you.

As you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of Brian's work. In fact, it was that book that helped change the trajectory of our ministry. We started reevaluating everything that, what we were doing and why.

We didn't want to just have programs, we didn't want to just reach out to the community to say that we were doing something. We wanted to do so strategically thinking about the entirety of the person.

And when we started to do that, that's when our church started to be transformed.

We went from being a small church in retreat that was continually losing members every year to one that really tripled in growth and became a thriving multi ethnic group of people passionate about the glory of God. It is a profound book. And whether you're just starting off in ministry or whether you've been doing it for 50 years, it doesn't matter.

You need to get this book. It will change everything that you know and really reshape what you're doing now.

I want to invite you to listen in next week, by the way, because we have another extraordinary guest who's going to be joining us, one who has profoundly shaped our understanding of cultural dynamics and the church's role within society. So I want you to think about this.

Imagine someone who not only coined the term culture war, but also foresaw significant societal shifts, including the tragic rise in school shootings. This is exactly what James Davison Hunter has done.

His insightful analysis and fearless challenges to Christian leaders have sparked conversations that continue to resonate Today. James will be joining us to discuss his latest book, Democracy and Solidarity, on the cultural roots of America's political crisis.

It's a conversation you're not going to want to miss as we delve into the deep cultural currents that influence our nation's political landscape and what it means for us as believers as we're in the midst of this political season. James Perspective is not only just informative, by the way, it is transformative.

His previous works have guided countless leaders in navigating the complexities of modern society with wisdom and grace. If you are passionate about understanding the times we live in and how to faithfully engage with them, I would encourage you to tune in next week.

This episode promises to be one of the most enlightening and impactful discussions we have ever had. Your listening, encouragement, prayers and financial support help us to reach and equip leaders just like you, right?

We are dealing with the same things you are. Leaders who are tired of the status quo and really want to make a difference where they are. Leaders who are desperate for continued growth.

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We just finished up our first course, God's Greatness, your Mission, where we explored God's purpose for us in the world. Now we're in the final stages of launching our second class, the Story of God.

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I want to thank our Apollo's water team for helping us to water the world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered. Stay watered everybody.

And I'm on a roll.