Chapter 27: Churches at Work With the Poor
(This is chapter 27 of "Up and Out," a book condensing my long experience about how to best help poor people. I pledged earlier to get it up online as soon as possible, so it would be available for free to everyone trying to cope with helping the Katrina evacuees.)
(These are not things that need to be done during the first part of this emergency. Rather, this is for the time after that, when Katrina evacuees will be moving from getting immediate emergency assistance to trying to normalize their lives. That is when good programs to help them "up and out" of their situation need to kick in. The following is for that time.)
(For other chapters, look under "Categories" and click on the chapter you want.)
UP AND OUT: A GUIDE TO TRUE COMPASSION FOR THE POOR"
PART II: MOVING UP AND BREAKING OUT OF POVERTY
Section 3: Getting Into Action
Chapter 27: Churches at Work
The poor have always turned to churches for help. The church has always known it is supposed to help the poor. The Bible says so, over and over. In fact, Jesus said that whatever we do for the poor, the sick, the prisoners and the strangers among us, we actually are doing for him. And that whatever we fail to do for them, we also are failing to do for him (Matthew 25:31-46.) Judaism and Islam also teach that help should be given to the poor.
From the earliest days until now, the church has been involved with the needs of the poor. They are used to seeing poor people come to them for help. They help in many ways, some more than others, some better than others.
In these post-welfare days, various churches around the country have developed successful programs for helping people get off welfare and into work. They also help them in various other ways.
Their programs differ from each other to some extent. Yet they also are similar in many ways. Since they all address the same kinds of problems, that is not surprising. Most of these programs have elements of the basic program described in chapter 24.
Most churches, however, need to find ways to work with the poor more effectively. Although they generally do make a good-faith effort, their help is often the one-shot variety. There are not usually long-term changes in the lives of those helped. They do not usually know as much as they need to about their clients. They also do not know how to deal with their long-standing problems. They seldom have much in the way of a coherent, well-organized program. In short, they are not usually equipped to give “up and out” help—the only kind that really helps much.
Actually, most churches are hampered by their size. The great majority of churches are small. The kind of effort a small church can mount is not very big.
Even large churches are hampered in starting an up-and-out kind of program. They already have so many programs that one more can get lost in the crowd. If they have never been involved in up-and-out help, they will not know how, or how to begin. Or if they decide to start, they will often turn it over to an associate pastor who has many other assignments as well. That means it will not get the kind of full-time attention that is needed.
Whether the church is large or small, it is crucial that a new up-and-out program not fail. When a program fails in a church, it is very rarely tried again. It is best to do it right the first time, since there may not be a second chance. So the program probably should not be attempted at all, unless the church is prepared to do what is necessary to make it work.
Some of the best programs for helping the poor are to be found in some of the largest black churches. They are close to poor people and familiar with their lives. Churches are also the most trusted and powerful institutions in the black community. So they are well positioned to help.
Hispanic churches are in much the same position in their communities as the black churches are in theirs.
Predominantly white churches often want to help, but do not know how. They are often located far from poorer areas, so their volunteers either have to travel some distance to where the poor are, or the poor have to travel some distance to them.
Although all these churches want to help the poor, they are in differing positions to do so. The mostly-white churches have a much larger base of resources with which to help. Not only do they have more money: they also have better resources of education, training and experience. Their volunteers can usually contribute more to the training of clients than members of poorer congregations.
The poorer congregations have many, many more people who need help, but few volunteers who are able to give either financial or non-financial help.
The more prosperous churches have fewer needy people, but more potential volunteers with the resources needed by clients. How to get them together?
More prosperous and less prosperous churches are usually in widely separated parts of town. The geographical distance between them is not a small matter. It makes getting together difficult.
There are also cultural differences, different ways of looking at things. There are concerns about others coming in from one church, and running a program in another church. There are concerns that helper churches have about such things as financial accountability, organization, promptness, etc. that can be a constant source of friction.
Clearly, these churches need to find ways of getting together to help the poor. Even though the largest churches that have large numbers of poor members can often manage their programs very well themselves, financially and otherwise, many cannot. They are just not large or strong or prosperous enough.
There are basically two ways for a church to have a good program that truly helps the poor. One, if the church has the size and resources, is to have its own, stand-alone, completely independent program. In effect, they will create an in-house charitable organization.
The other way is for the church to join with others to have a program.
Even the stand-alone church is well advised to invite in experts to set up its program, train its people and monitor it for at least a while.
For the churches that cannot do that, however, there are a couple of ways to proceed. One is using the services of an outside faith-based charity that helps several churches to set up and run internal programs.
Another possibility is for several churches to get together and set up one charity among them, their own charity, to serve them all. It would start up and oversee their individual programs, or even one unified program.
Some such method might also be used to bring together those churches where there are few resources with those who have much more. A geographical location somewhere between the poorer and richer sides of town, with plenty of parking, good lighting and public transportation is a practical solution. It could go a long way in bringing such churches and populations together in one program. Or there could be several unified programs, at one location.
If government grants become a possibility for such faith-based efforts, arrangements such as these could make those grants easier to get.
Getting such grants, however, is only the beginning.
They must be used and administered according to very specific requirements. The administrative parts of these grants can be so difficult for the inexperienced to comply with, that programs can stall or even go under.
When resources are pooled, however, there is more experience and more technical know-how available. That makes getting, using and keeping grants much more feasible.
There is much evidence that the faith-based approach to helping the poor is the most productive way. Faith-based charities have some of the best results with the poor.
Also, Churches are by far the best environment for the poor. They have unique social resources of closeness and caring that are unmatched. And their spiritual resources aid and feed the inner being as well. Churches are the natural, at-home place for the poor.
But faith-based help from churches will not take place on a large scale unless people of faith decide to spend much more energy and resources on the effort.
It also is not likely to happen until churches seriously begin make joint efforts to do it, either in partnerships or clusters of their own making, or through a free-standing faith-based charity designed to work with several churches. Joint efforts are the right way to make it happen.
