Five Smooth Stones

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Five Smooth Stones Pastor Muriithi Wanjau, senior pastor, Mavuno Church, Nairobi, Kenya sermon given at Grace Chapel, November 1, 2015 summarized by Dana Wade, Emmanuel Gospel Center

Helping is part of the essence of being a Christian. I John 3:17 instructs Christians to carry each other’s burdens. But helping doesn’t always help. Sometimes the way we help is a problem. I Sam. 17:32-40 tells the story of David and Goliath. The context of the story is that the Philistines had invaded Israel, and all of the Israelites were afraid of their leader, a man 9’9” tall named Goliath who had been a warrior since his youth. The only person willing to challenge Goliath was a young untrained shepherd named David who had never fought in battle in his life. The Church in Africa is often in a similar situation. We are surrounded by giants of poverty, disease, violence, corruption, unemployment and lack of technical advances. It has become the poster child for international charity. We have gained the reputation of being perpetually needy – ever receiving, never giving. But many times, the paralyzing situations that face the Church in Africa, and the well-meaning help, often leaves the Church in Africa chained and unable to be everything that Jesus intended for his Church to be. King Saul’s response to the overwhelming challenges facing David was to try to give him his armor. This wasn’t just any armor, it was the king’s armor. Saul had good intentions, and he only wanted to help David succeed. But Saul was trying to help in a way that actually could have gotten David killed. When we believe the best way we can help others overcome their challenges is to give them our stuff (our money, our resources), then we are opening them up to other problems they didn’t have. This is true if you are want to help someone across the world, or in your city, or even in your own home. 1. We create dependency. Several years ago, a well-funded international Christian aid agency opened a free clinic in one of the slums of Nairobi. They had great intentions. But unknown to them, our church also had a clinic in that slum. Our clinic pioneered a model of affordable health care (such as buying generic drugs at wholesale costs) and passing these cost savings along to the patients. But when the international aid agency’s free clinic opened up, most patients went there, and the church struggled to keep its clinic open. The international aid agency’s clinic did well, and people were getting treatment. But after several years, the international aid agency’s donors became interested in something else, so the agency closed their clinic. So the people returned to our church’s clinic. We struggled to revive the clinic, which had almost broken down. But even more challenging, the people now

believed medicine was always meant to be free. They thought we were defrauding them by asking them to pay for the medicine, and this attitude almost destroyed the church’s clinic. There are many ministries right now in the Global South that would close down immediately if funding from the West was stopped. These ministries have created dependency in Africa. 2. We steal their dignity. Well-meaning gifts from the West often leave people in the Global South believing westerners are superior to them, and that the only people who can give are people from a different world. I once tried to apply for a missionary visa. The government official asked me where the missionary was. When I told him I was the missionary, the government official didn’t believe me, because he said missionaries are white. All people are created in God’s image, and that makes everyone a creator also. We are supposed to solve our problems. But the minute people stop believing they are capable of solving their own problems, they are left in a place that is less than God intended for them. They have been robbed of their dignity. I tell my congregation that God gave the Church in Africa everything the continent of Africa needs to solve its problems. The reason the UN and the World Bank are in business is because the sons and daughters of God don’t yet understand they have the dignity they need to solve their own problems. 3. We ignore their strengths. Whenever we just give our stuff to other people to try to solve their problems, we ignore their strengths. We fail to see that the resources of those who have less than us can also be helpful. They have resources, and these resources could actually be something we need. Maybe we need their resources more than they need ours. Saul wanted to help David by giving him his stuff, because he wanted David to become like him. “If it works for me, it must work for you.” But there are two problems with this. A. They are different heights. The clothes just don’t fit. As long as the Church in Africa primarily relies on the resources, technology, and models from the West to solve their problems, we’ll always be hampered and crippled, trying to wear someone else’s armor. B. In trying to give solutions to David, Saul misses the fact that David has solutions to solve his own problems. David didn’t have the height,

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strength and sword of Goliath, but he knew how to use the resources that were plentiful in his context – the stones. He knew that as long as he had 5 smooth stones, his trusty slingshot, and the Holy Spirit, it was enough. When I look at the Church in Africa, I see many smooth stones. We have unique gifts and unique strengths as a culture that God has given to us that are a blessing not just to us, but that can be a blessing to the world.  Faith. When you don’t have stuff, you stop trusting in money or strategies. You start trusting in God. And we have an amazing ability to trust God for huge things.  Youth and energy. Half of the continent of Africa is under the age of 16. We’re going to have a larger workforce than China by 2040. I see that as a great smooth stone. We’re going to be able to send missionaries everywhere. What a great gift for the Kingdom of God.  Relationships. Africans are very hospitable. We do hospitality in ways that are amazing. We love to look after strangers. And when people from my church move overseas, we say, “Your home is now the home of a church plant in that city.”  Vibrancy. The Church in Africa is growing faster than any church ever has. By 2050, one-third of all Christians in the world will be Africans.  Simplicity. We can live in places that are difficult for anyone else to imagine, and we’ll survive and spread the gospel. Every continent has smooth stones. Every place you go, you’ll find gifts that God has already put there. And anyone you want to help has smooth stones that God has given him. Here is what I have learned about helping: 1. Listen Americans are amazing problem solvers. Typically when Americans go abroad, they see problems and do what they’ve been trained to do – solve problems. But when you come with pre-packaged solutions (“this works for us, try this”), it doesn’t work. Learn to listen and ask, “What are the smooth stones God has put into this culture?” God was there before you. If you stop trying to make them like you, you might find there are incredible gifts you didn’t even realize. 2. Join in If you really want to help, find out what God is already doing. When you join in, you resist the temptation to own the solution or plan it. Before trying to solve problems, build partnerships. Find out the passions of the people you want to help and what they are already doing, and help them with that. If they don’t already have passions and God has given you a heart to do something, ask if they would be interested in working together. When you do work together, make them

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the hero of the story. Step aside, and let them get the credit, because when you leave, you want to the solution to continue on. It takes humility to do this, but that it what it takes to really help. 3. Receive Find out what your smooth stones are, so you can bless others. But also allow others to bless you in return. It dignifies people and makes them feel like equals when you given them the opportunity to bless you. Learn to ask, “What do you see that you can do to be a blessing to me?” Allow them to speak into that. Their smooth stones may be what you need to take your giants down. 4. Share Jesus calls us to share with each other. The gifts we received from God were given so we can bless others. Don’t start with money in a relationship, because money distorts everything else. Maybe what the person you’re working with needs most is for you to find a market for their product, or maybe they need you to open your networks to them. Allowing their gift to bless others is much better than throwing money at them. We are living in unprecedented times. Because of the Internet, and factors such as the English language, we live in a time when different parts of the Church around the world can partner together for the advancement of the Kingdom. This calls for different types of solutions. It’s not “the West to the rest.” Instead, churches around the world are working together as brothers and sisters, in partnerships of mutuality and equality, walking together – you receiving from us, and us giving and receiving from you – and together glorifying God and loving one another. God says the world will know you by your love for one another. People don’t see equality and mutuality anywhere else in the world. Don’t just give money. Make time to go. Spend time, and understand. Walk the journey together.

you can listen to the sermon at http://www.grace.org/sermon/five-smooth-stones/

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When Helping Helps Rev. Bryan Wilkerson sermon given at Grace Chapel, November 8, 2015 summarized by Dana Wade, Emmanuel Gospel Center

In his book When Helping Hurts, Brian Fikkert (a seasoned relief and development worker) tells a story from a mission trip to Uganda. Brian and a local aid worker went to visit Grace, a new Christian who used to practice witchcraft. They found Grace lying on the floor. Grace had tonsillitis, but because she was HIV positive, the local clinic refused to treat her. So Grace had persuaded a neighbor to cut out her tonsils with a kitchen knife. Now she had a very high fever because of an infection. Brian learned it would cost only about $8 to provide the penicillin Grace needed. Because he was afraid she would die, he reached into his pocket and took out the money. One week later, Brian saw Grace come walking into the church, looking healthy and grateful. Brian is confident he saved Grace’s life that day. He’s also equally confident he made a terrible mistake. The documentary Poverty, Inc. will make you think twice about ever writing a check or going on a missions trip or buying a pair of TOMS shoes. Although the film is unsettling, the answer isn’t to stop giving or trying to help. Instead, we need to find ways of helping that are good not only for the people we’re serving, but also for us and for all that God is doing in the world. Is. 61 is about Jesus and helping that helps. We rediscover Jesus as our Helper. Isaiah was a prophet during a dark period in Israel’s history. His mission was to warn the people of Judah (the Southern Kingdom during the time of the Divided Kingdom) of impending disaster, in hopes they would turn back to God. But because the people didn’t listen, the Assyrians overran them and carried the captives off to Babylon. In Is. 61, Isaiah is looking forward to better days, when they exiles will return to their land and rebuild their nation. A messiah is coming that will lead the return and restoration of the people. It’s important to note the messiah is coming to help the people, not to fix things. He’s coming to announce and preach good news (not to do or write checks), to bind up (not to heal), and to proclaim freedom and release (not to perform). This is how the dictionary defines help: “to do something that makes it easier for a person to do a thing or deal with a problem.” So when you help someone, don’t do for them, but instead do with them. Come alongside them with wisdom or some skill or resource or encouragement that enables them to do what they want to do or what they need to do. There’s a difference between helping and fixing. Seven hundred years after Isaiah’s time, Jesus identifies himself as the Anointed One and describes the kind of help he’s going to bring by quoting Is. 61. Jesus helps us to help others in ways that are good for all of us. Jesus didn’t come to fix things for us. He came to fix things with us. He came to help us become everything we were meant to be, so together we can help the world become everything it was meant to be.

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There are four characteristics of helping that really help: 1. When it’s holistic When we think of a poor person, we thing of materials things – food, water, shelter, clothing. But when a poor person talks about being poor, they describe it in psychological terms – they talk about humiliation, shame, despair, hopelessness, isolation. Help that really helps speaks to all aspects of life. Is. 61:1-2 says the Anointed One won’t address just physical issues, but also emotional and spiritual ones. If we share the gospel with a starving person but don’t address their need for food, they probably won’t feel very helped. But if we offer food but never share the gospel, then we really haven’t helped them either. If you move into a neighborhood and address immediate needs (food, shelter, clothing) but never address the systemic problems of poor schools, contaminated water or lack of financial capital, then you really haven’t solved anything. You’ve just alleviated a crisis until the next one comes along. Jesus brought holistic help when he came. When the crippled man was lowered through the roof, Jesus healed him physically and also spiritually (by forgiving his sins). When the crowd on a hillside was lost like sheep without a shepherd, he fed them spiritually and then fed them physically. When he quoted Is 61, the “year of the Lord’s favor” referred to the Year of Jubilee, when debts were canceled, land was restored to its rightful owners, and prisoners were released. This is systemic justice being established. 2. When it’s empowering Is. 61:3-6 looks forward to a better day. The prophecy was fulfilled in part 70 years later, when the people returned from exile and rebuilt their land. Ultimately it was fulfilled 700 years later when Jesus came and ushered in a new age. Note it’s the people doing the restoring and rebuilding. The Messiah came to empower and enable people to do what they were called and created to do, which is to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. We get to be heroes – players – in God’s story. That’s an incredibly empowering message. One of the most disturbing segments in Poverty, Inc. was the exposure of what’s happening in the Haitian orphan crisis, as many nations have rushed to build orphanages and facilitate adoption. It turns out about 80% of Haitian “orphans” have at least one living parent. But these parents have come to believe they’re not able to provide for their children, and outsiders can take better care of them, so they abandon them. So our efforts to help orphans has, in large part, helped create more “orphans” by the hundreds and thousands. It would be more helpful to come alongside what’s already in place and empower parents to be the moms and dads they want to be, so their children can grow up in their own families.

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Helping hurts when it does for other people what they can do for themselves. Helping helps when people discover skills and resources they never knew they had. Helping hurts when it creates dependency. Helping helps when it builds capacity. Helping hurts when outsiders come in and get the credit. Helping helps when local people become the heroes. Jesus was empowering. He told a group of ordinary peasants (people who didn’t have much money) they were going to change the world. Jesus spent 3 years teaching tax collectors and fishermen how to preach, teach, heal and cast out demons. He taught, trained and empowered them, and gave them the Holy Spirit. They discovered they could do things with God’s help that they’d never imagined before. 3. When it’s relational Helping needs to be grounded in relationships marked by humility, mutuality and equality. The people of Israel were ashamed of what had happened to them. They had betrayed, exploited and taken advantage of each other. They had broken their covenant with God. And now they were the laughingstock of others nations. But Is. 61:7-9 looks forward to a day when their dignity is going to be restored. They will be respected by other nations, they will treat each other fairly, and God will be their God again. In Walking with the Poor, Bryant Myers says, “Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work; that are not just; that are not for life; that are not harmonious or enjoyable. Poverty is the absence of Shalom in all its meanings.” Jesus was relational from the very beginning. Before he ever appeared on earth, he was given the name Emmanuel (“God with us”). The first thing Jesus did was form a community of people around himself and with be with him and go out from him. He spent most of the three years he was on earth hanging out with people – walking, talking, breaking bread, washing feet, serving, and building relationships with people. Jesus spoke about servanthood, forgiveness, generosity and kindness – things that require us to be in relationship with one another. We describe missionaries and associates around the world as “partners” because we’re in this together. We both bring resources to the table, and we both bring our brokenness to the table. We need our brothers and sisters around the world as much as they need us. We need to be in relationship with each other so God can do something wonderful in our midst. So as we spend time with partners around the world, we go as listeners and learners. This relational principle is important right here at home as well, as we try to serve our city. We’re part of Greater Things for Greater Boston, along with other churches. We are building friendships across racial, geographic, denominational 3

and age barriers, because we believe if we’re in relationship with each other, good things will happen in our city. 4. When it’s sustainable When helping really helps, it sets in place practices, relationships and systems that will endure everlasting change, even after the helpers leave. Is. 61:11 describes people as oak trees. Oak trees produce tons of acorns. There is no doubt oak trees know how to sustain themselves for generations to come. So the final image we have from Is. 61 is of a garden that seeds itself. The garden is a source of beauty and sustenance and community, year after year and generation after generation, for the whole world. Help that is done the right way changes the landscape. It creates a new ecosystem in which life flourishes and keeps on going, long after the helpers leave. Jesus came, he helped, and he left after three years. He changed the world in 3 years because he set in motion something that would outlast him. He set in motion a movement that 2,000 years later is making life better for people all over this planet. We, along with our partners, are part of that movement. When Brian Fikkert gave $8 to pay for penicillin for Grace, he violated all four of these principles. It wasn’t wrong to want to save her life, but he went about it the wrong way.  He violated the holistic principle, because he reinforced the idea that he was strong and had resources, and they were inadequate and inferior. By giving the money immediately, he prevented Grace and her new church family from coming together in prayer and learning to look to God first for all of their needs. So he helped her physically, but spiritually and emotionally they all missed opportunities to grow.  By reaching into his own pocket, he disempowered Elizabeth (the local aid worker who had gone with him) and the entire church community. Brian later realized there was $8 in that community that could have saved Grace’s life, but he had deprived them of the opportunity to be creative in solving their own problem, and to be generous.  He violated the relational principle because right away he came between Grace and her new church family. Grace was very sick, but she wasn’t going to die that day. There was enough time for the church to rally around her, which would have allowed all of them to experience God at work in their midst, and then find healing.  The solution Brian offered wasn’t sustainable. He was getting on a plane in a few weeks, and they needed something that would be in place long after he left. The church and the pastor were there, but he had disempowered them because Brian had made himself the hero rather than making the pastor the hero.

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(Pastor Bryan then asked Jeanette Yep, Grace Chapel’s pastor of global and regional outreach, and James Misner, global director of church partnership at World Relief, to share examples of how this looks practically. Jeanette: For many years, Grace Chapel participated in Prison Ministry’s Angel Tree ministry. Prison Ministry would ask people who are incarcerated what their kids might like for Christmas. These wishes would be written on pieces of paper. Families at Grace would take the slips and purchase and wrap the gifts. Then volunteers from Grace would deliver the gifts. It’s a great way to tangibly show the love of Christ. But as our team looked at the project closely, we realized this type of gift-giving had unintended consequences. We began to hear that sometimes grandmothers would receive the visitors, and the other adults in the family would hide or go out the back door, because a stranger bearing gifts (no matter how well-meaning) is still a stranger. So the other adults in the family felt ashamed they had to rely on someone else to provide Christmas for their family. The adults lost dignity. So our team began asking how we could make heroes of local partners with people they were already working and in relationship with. We asked local partners to tell us about people they knew who needed gifts. We wrote the items on slips of paper, and families at Grace took the slips and bought and wrapped the gifts. But the local partners delivered the gifts to people they knew. This took a good idea and made it better, because it was empowering, relational and dignifying. James: Two villages in Malawi are separated by about 3 miles. There is no school in Village A, so the children from both villages go to school in Village B. But there is a river between the two villages, and during the rainy season (which lasts half a year), it’s impossible to get across the river. The only way to get between the villages is a trip of about 27 miles, which made going to school impossible. So the children in Village A couldn’t reach their full potential because they missed so much school. Because Grace Chapel and World Relief had trained pastors in these villages to identify needs in their community and then meet those needs, the churches decided to build a bridge over the river. The churches didn’t wait for the government, or the politicians, or Grace Chapel or World Relief to solve their problem. They used local resources, and now the children go over that bridge every day. James: There are a lot of orphans in Malawi. One woman became an entrepreneur because through a program connected to Grace Chapel, churches in her village helped people become entrepreneurs. After this woman started her business, she saved enough money to send her children to school. When they were finished, she saved more money and was able to adopt an orphan boy and pay for his schooling. Jeanette: We view short-term missions teams as learning opportunities. We want all short-termers to learn from our cross-cultural host partners. When the emphasis is on doing rather than learning, short-termers lose out on the benefits of genuine relational friendships that can occur when we put ourselves in the posture of learners. Going as learners means going with a different attitude than a doer. When I train short-termers for trips, I ask them to go on a hunt to discover how God is already at work in the place they’re going. We don’t bring God from Lexington – he’s already at work there. I also 5

ask short-termers, “What do our friends do better than we do?” We have things to learn from them. James: The message isn’t to stop giving. It’s to give more sacrificially and to give more extravagantly. Give better and smarter. Here are some principles: 1. Giving through Grace is wise. Follow their lead and guidance, because the staff has spent a lot of time each year thinking about how to do it. 2. Give in ways that allow others to give to their community. What’s important is for people to know the church from down the street came and knocked on their door and intervened in their life. So make local churches the heroes. 3. As you give and engage, recognize that transformation takes a long time. For example, it takes a refugee an average of 17 years to find a permanent home. Westerners tend to jump from one cool thing to the next cool thing. But as the Church, we’re called to dive in deep for the long haul. 4. Give in a way that recognizes both spiritual and physical transformation is necessary. If you solve all of the developmental issues of the world (kids are going to school, orphans are cared for, etc.) but if people don’t know they can have a relationship with Christ, we’ve missed the mark. But if everyone knows about Jesus but they’re living in abject poverty, we’ve also missed the mark. So give in a way that calls people to repentance in all areas of life.

you can listen to the sermon at http://www.grace.org/sermon/when-helping-really-helps/

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