What Can Your Church Do to Help the Poor in the U.S. ?

By Dr. Brian Fikkert, Chalmers Center for Economic Develoment

    It is hard to believe, but the percentage of the U.S. population that lives below the poverty level of income is the same today as it was 35 years ago. Despite three and a half decades of economic growth and amazing advances in science and technology, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in human history has made virtually no progress in reducing the incidence of poverty within its own borders. In fact, the U.S. has the highest poverty rate of any industrialized nation in the world.

    While there is widespread disagreement as to whether government programs have helped or hurt the situation, most observers now recognize that the despair and sense of meaninglessness that so often characterize America’s poor cannot be solved via welfare checks alone. Like all of us, the poor need the hope of the gospel of the kingdom, a hope that in Christ there is healing for our deepest hurts. And the task of proclaiming this gospel in word and in deed has been committed to the church - to your church.

    But what can your church really do to help? Truly loving the poor involves not handouts but ministries that restore the poor to being what God created them to be: productive human beings who are able to support themselves through their own work. That sounds difficult, and it is. Your church has limited time, money, and expertise. Are there really things that you can do to minister effectively to the spiritual and physical needs of the poor? The answer is a resounding “yes!” This article will give you some practical ideas on how to move ahead.

1. Develop/Nurture Mercy Ministry Vision: Probably the most difficult step is simply getting started. Pastors often tell us that they struggle to impart a vision for holistic ministry to their congregations.

2. Develop a Church Assessment and a Community Assessment: Pastors are unsure how to mobilize their members to reach their communities. Pastors are also sometimes unsure what the greatest community needs actually are. So along with developing and nurturing a mercy ministry vision, a congregation has to conduct both a church assessment and a community assessment to integrate the holistic vision into the life of the church, call and equip the members of the congregation to action, and acquire a deep knowledge of the community and its needs.

    Fortunately, there are now resources available to help you get over these hurdles. In CHURCHES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE – REACHING YOUR COMMUNITY WITH GOOD NEWS AND GOOD WORKS (Baker Books 2002), Ronald Sider, Heidi Rolland-Unruh and Philip Olson describe the results of a recent study of holistic congregations in the United States and introduce some outstanding tools that have emerged from this research.

   While there is no easy recipe for success, there are principles and tools that can help your congregation to develop a greater holistic vision and to assess both it and the surrounding community in order to develop an appropriate ministry. Following this church and community assessment, your congregation will need to decide if helping the poor via economic development — i.e. helping the poor to support themselves through their own work — is the proper focus for your ministry. It might not be!

   For example, if your congregation is full of medical professionals and there are significant health needs in your community, then perhaps the appropriate ministry focus for your congregation should be a holistic, healthcare ministry of some sort.

3. Is God Calling Your Church to Economic Development? If you conclude that addressing the economic needs of the poor fits your church’s capacity and community’s needs, you will then need to decide exactly how to intervene. There are a number of different economic development options that your church might want to consider. The first two items in the list below, Jobs Readiness & Placement and Microenterprise Development, are approaches that help the poor to generate more income.

    Although the Chalmers Center continues to believe that this is a viable approach internationally, we are no longer recommending this approach for most churches and Christian organizations in the United States. Research is finding that microenterprise programs in the U.S. move only one percent of their clients from welfare to self-employment. Furthermore, most of the clients of microenterprise programs are not the poorest, having higher levels of education, assets, skills, experience, and support networks than other low-income people do.

When one considers the relative complexity of running microenterprise programs compared to the other interventions, it seems that the costs outweigh the benefits of this approach in most situations.

    The next approach recognizes the fact that it is one thing to earn an income, but it is quite another thing to use that income wisely.

     The final two interventions featured, Individual Development Accounts and Housing, enable the poor to turn their income into wealth. Income is the flow of revenue that we receive for our work, while wealth is the stock of assets that we build up as we save and invest for the future. Historically, public policy in America has focused on trying to increase the incomes of the poor and has paid little attention to their need for asset accumulation. However, recent research has shown that increasing the net worth of the poor is very important for enabling them to weather the shocks that often come their way (e.g. loss of a job, health crisis, etc.) and for helping them to build a better future.

May God bless your church as you seek His guidance for your next steps in ministry.

Dr. Brian Fikkert is Professor of Economics and Community Development at Covenant College and Director of the Chalmers Center for Economic Development. The Chalmers Center is a training and research organization that equips development workers, missionaries, and laypeople to promote self-sufficiency among the poor in U.S. and International contexts. Visit www.chalmers.org to learn more about the resources offered by the Chalmers Center..