Empowering destitute people towards transforming communities

3Understand the obligation upon us as helpers

Whereas chapter 2 focuses on exploring the different problems involved in destitution, chapter 3 stresses the urgent obligation upon helpers to become involved in missions with the destitute.
Three very important insights emerge from this chapter. Firstly, we as helpers must do missions with the destitute, not to them. Secondly, we do not take SHALOM to destitute people, but rather discover SHALOM with them, in this way empowering people to experience ever greater degrees of the SHALOM which God intended. Thirdly, missions with the destitute always involve reciprocal conversion, where helpers are constantly “converted” while their own viewpoints, beliefs and practices are challenged by their experiences with destitute people.
Much attention is given to the kind of missions we should be involved in as helpers when we do missions with the destitute. It is important to understand this, since our understanding of missions with the destitute affects our inherent drive to be involved with the destitute in ways that empower them. This type of mission must:

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  flow from the Missio Dei, where we understand that we are active participants in a much larger mission, namely God’s mission. As helpers, we become instruments in God’s hands as He incarnates His mission of love to people, bringing SHALOM into people’s lives.
  
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  cause us as helpers to become “church with others”. The basic concept is that helpers do not function as a church for the poor or the destitute that reaches out to them in a one-way fashion; but that the latter become part of the church in every sense of the word, an active part of a missionary community: therefore the church becomes church with them.
  
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  drive us to aim for comprehensive salvation which addresses personal sin, but also the sinfulness of a broken world that itself breaks people. This kind of salvation urges helpers to minister to the destitute in their total need, both in terms of individual need and the need of society regarding destitution; soul and body; present and future.
  
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  promote a quest for justice. As such our missions must constantly advocate social justice by actively working for a world where love, peace and a community of brothers and sisters, openness and self surrender to God, will be less difficult.
  
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  contain evangelism as an inherent part, where evangelism is seen as part of the broader obligation of missions with the destitute. Evangelism is then perceived as mediating the good news of God’s love in Christ that transforms life, proclaiming, by word and action, that Christ has set us free.
  
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  promote liberation, where our missions manifest God’s preferential option for the poor by demonstrating an intimate solidarity with suffering people.
  
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  provide hope in action, where the destitute are made aware of Godly possibilities where previously there had been none. In this regard as helpers we must create hope by choosing to do so on the basis of what God has done and is still doing today.
  
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  involve prophetic dialogue. This simply means that helpers involved in missions with the destitute must be part of a community that not only gives of itself in the service of the world and its cultures but also learns from its involvement and expands its imagination.
  

It should be clear that this kind of missions approaches people from both the “inside-out”, and from the “outside-in”.

The kind of missions needed to empower destitute people necessitates a different kind of church, where helpers function as the “public church”, a “church of the market plain” that meets destitute people where they are, on the street and in gutters, and empowers them there. Such a church is foreign to the prevalent ideas of “church” in our society, yet we need to become one if we want to empower destitute people towards SHALOM. The obligation and calling are clear!

4Grow in understanding of destitute people

As we do missions with destitute people, we need to grow in our understanding of the people with whom we journey, in order to help them better to be empowered. At the same time the manner in which we perceive destitute people will directly influence the way we do missions with them.
We have little hope of “connecting” to them, or of engaging them, if we possess no understanding of who they are and what they experience. Chapter 4 explores this matter in considerable detail, borrowing many insights from the social sciences.
A strong case is made for a viewpoint from which one grows to see the destitute as individual people with dignity, needs, strengths and feelings; people experiencing destitution with all its negative connotations that break down their personhood. The destitute are people trapped in the ugly realities of the poverty cycle, where they experience different kinds of powerlessness and ill-being that negate the experience of SHALOM.
A key for empowering destitute people is to view them as people created by God (therefore possessing innate dignity), with strengths which must be discovered, and then used to empower destitute people. This approach literally means that everything helpers do in their mission with the destitute will be predicated, in some way, on helping to discover and embellish, explore and exploit people’s strengths and resources, in the service of assisting them to achieve their goals, realize their dreams, and shed the irons of their own inhibitions and misgivings. In this way their own strengths are harnessed to help them grow towards SHALOM.
Some of these strengths could be the different ways in which destitute people experience God. Helpers can build on these experiences as they work with destitute people to empower them.

5Doing missions with the destitute by creating a continuum of empowering care

Chapters 5-7 flesh out a model and strategies that provide “guidelines” for the praxis of missions with the destitute. These guidelines are intended to offer greater intentionality and focus to helpers’ efforts in empowering the destitute towards SHALOM.

A comprehensive model was proposed, which can be developed step by step. Using the model as a foundation, the guidelines and strategies developed in chapters 5-7 can now be drawn together. Please follow the numbers indicated on the model as the threads are drawn together.

Missions with the destitute: A continuum of empowering care God at work with people 5 7 1 2 4 4 1 3 1 6
1	Missionary action of three kinds

In this model, missionary actions of three possible kinds are distinguished: helpers could be involved in one kind of action, and focus their efforts on this, or a combination of them. They include:

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  Missionary action to prevent people from becoming destitute
  

This would include actions such as advocacy, social justice action, actions that strengthen communities towards achieving sustainable livelihoods and any other kinds of action that would make it more difficult for people in our context to become destitute.

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  Missionary action to heal destitute people
  

Actions that prevent destitution will not directly affect people who are already destitute. Therefore we need actions that will assist destitute people to heal and become whole again – in this way empowering them towards SHALOM. These could encompass actions such as outreach and engagement that build trust and instil hope; the fostering of social ties that will promote being part of a community of care; “motivating change”; the healing of people’s inner pictures; the development of new beliefs; services such as health care, reconnection to housing and employment etc.

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  Missionary action to stop people from becoming destitute again.
  

These might include actions such as giving a voice to destitute people that promotes ownership and involvement in their own continued growth and development.

2	Empower towards SHALOM

The aim of our missionary actions (doing missions with…) is to empower destitute people towards SHALOM, where they will grow, change and develop so as to experience a greater degree of this SHALOM on a personal level. The meaning of SHALOM was discussed intensively in Chapter 3.
It is important to remind ourselves as helpers that we do not bring SHALOM to the destitute as if it is not already there among them; rather, we “unveil” or reveal SHALOM by discovering ways in which SHALOM has manifested, is currently manifesting and should manifest, past, present and future, together with the destitute, in our world – all this simply because God is ahead of us, already at work where we are going. This, to my mind, furnishes the correct perspective on SHALOM as the aim and goal of missions that empower destitute people.

3	Missions with the destitute

We are involved in missions “with” people, not “to” them or “for” them. This means we journey with people, and in this process of reciprocal influencing, reciprocal conversion takes place.

4	“Inside-out” and “outside-in” empowerment

These encompass strategies for missions with the destitute that operate to empower destitute people from the inside-out (as discussed in chapter 6), and strategies that function to empower destitute people from the outside-in. The purpose of both internal and external empowerment is to prevent destitution, heal destitute people, and keep them from becoming destitute again. In this way internal and external empowerment constitute part of all the three kinds of missionary action in which helpers can engage, as was discussed above. Internal and external empowerment overlap, as was discussed in Chapters 2, 6 and 7.
Internal empowerment refers to missions with the destitute from the inside-out, which focuses on the internal empowerment of individual destitute people, and on the processes involved or linked to this type of empowerment. It implies approaches that will enable helpers to empower destitute people to become whole, grow, change and develop on the inside, so that they will become self-motivated to alter their own lives on the outside (inside-out). It will encompass strategies, outreach and engagement that engender trust and instil hope; the fostering of social ties that will promote being part of a community of care; “motivating change”; the healing of people’s inner pictures; the development of new beliefs.
On the other hand external empowerment denotes strategies and interventions that will empower destitute people by creating an external environment or situation that should enable them to grow, change, develop and become whole, as they choose to. Missions with the destitute from the “outside-in” deals with issues mostly outside of destitute people’s direct control, therefore “external” to them, such as access to housing, or clinical services, or access to empowering communities, or advocating social justice, and a number of other issues. Missions from the outside-in can roughly be divided into two categories, namely (1) clinical services and (2) community development approaches, which may overlap.
Social services include services (whether lay or formal) that reconnect people to housing, employment, communities of care, clinical services such as health care and services aimed at successfully reintegrating destitute people into society (like CTI).
Community development approaches centre on the empowerment of communities, so that these can take better care of their people, and even become a safe harbour for destitute people introduced into those communities. This goal is achieved by means of different strategies focused on community empowerment towards sustainable livelihoods, such as Asset Based Community Development, and efforts to take care of the environment.

6 5 &

Engaging in missionary action both informally and formally

Helpers should be aware of, and foster engagement in missionary actions that empower destitute people towards SHALOM in both informal and formal ways.
Engagement simply refers to the process where helpers facilitate, advocate and catalyze the process of transformation so that destitute people can become empowered.
Informal engagement should be perceived as the “public church” taking action to do missions with the destitute, in other words where the “whole community of God”, meaning specifically Christians who are not practising professionally in the social sciences etc. and other members of the church, become involved in missions with the destitute. They reach out and befriend destitute people with God’s love (in whatever way is appropriate). Consequently trust develops, relationships are built, hope is instilled, and destitute people become more open to be empowered. Possibilities for this informal engagement could include finding destitute people on the street and then providing necessary goods (such as food), or undertaking other actions that may assist helpers to connect with destitute people. Once trust develops, helpers could start offering the possibilities of other services, and can then link destitute people to those services, which would be termed formal engagement.
Formal engagement refers to endeavours by specialized professionals which are aimed at empowering the destitute and which might include organizations, specialized individuals such as social workers or medical professionals, or counsellors. Often people will be referred to this kind of help, or they might be “taken by the hand” through informal engagement into more specialized (formal) empowerment agencies.
This would include services like reconnection to housing; clinical services, services that help destitute people reintegrate into society in successful and sustainable ways, reconnection to employment, and health care. Any professional services needed to empower destitute people to function better can be termed “formal”.
Part of this engagement will encompass the fostering of helpers’ competencies, as discussed in chapter 6. The purpose of this is to make sure that helpers adhere to and practise good values when engaging people in order to help them, so that those helpers (whether lay people engaging informally in missions with the destitute or specialized professionals engaging formally) can influence clients without robbing them of self-responsibility (or dignity, or personhood).

7	…within the sphere of God at work with people

As helpers, we are acting within the greater sphere of God at work with people, we are part of His mission, we are involved in missions (meaning that we attempt to engage destitute people in God’s way, as best we understand that way now). Helpers should take courage from this, for it is still God that empowers helpers, it is still God who goes out before us, it is still God who truly changes lives – we are but participants in what God is doing.