Relief and (Re-) Development: Desparation and Dependency

Good intentions without action don't accomplish much, but what action is needed?.

I recently finished reading the book Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It) by Robert Lupton. Perhaps the best part of the book is this one:

...in 2001, six years after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and long after the city should have shifted to long-term development projects, churches and mission organizations still "market" the crisis and volunteers continue to flow into the city by the thousands, distributing free food and clothing to "victims." When relief does not transition to development in a timely way, compassion becomes toxic.

He quotes Roger Sandberg, former Haiti country director of Medair, in defining a progression from relief to development:

First stop, relief. Relief work occurs during and immediately following an emergency and includes not only life-saving interventions but also the alleviation of suffering.

Second stop, rehabilitation. Rehabilitation follows and overlaps with the relief phase. Rehabilitative work increases the capacity of a local community, enabling them to better respond to future crises. Rehabilitation also seeks to promote projects that restore services or livelihoods to a preexisting or improved level.

Third stop, development. Development interventions follow and overlap relief and rehabilitation phases. Development work is long term. It seeks to improve the standard of living for a population over many years or decades. In the best-case scenario, relief and rehabilitation inverventions are done with long-term development in mind....Very roughly, we might say that relief, rehabilitation, and development phases respectively last months, years, and decades.

This particular distinction between relief, rehabilitation, and development has been on my mind in the last several months in three areas of my life: local, national, and international.

On a local level, as a parish priest I respond to urgent crises through small grants from my discretionary fund--a fund set up by the church to be used at my discretion (hence the name) to address needs as they arise. Most of the time, it is used to do things like provide two quarts of oil and a tank of gas to needy folks heading for San Francisco or a hotel room for a mother and her kids fleeing an abusive husband/father. This is all good to do, but leaves me feeling dissatisfied because I know that I'm simply doing relief work, not solving the underlying problems. It also frustrates and angers me when I see an unending procession of need, sometimes event the same people over and over again. I have the dual feeling of being angry at being taken advantage of and yet ashamed of that anger because i know that ninety-five percent of thse folks have few other options.

On a national level, I've watched with increasing frustration as our national debate regarding cuts to the Supplimental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps) between, if you believe the two sides, the heartless, cold-blooded Republicans and the bleeding-heart, dependency-fostering Democrats. Below the partisan posturing is a disagreement about whether (and when) relief of suffering should stop and whether (and when) government should be in the business of rehabilitation and development to help people lift themselves out of poverty and need. There seems to be little discussion of how the government can facilitate increasing the capacity of people to respond to future crises--just whether we should still send checks or not. Additionally, the notion of separating people into "givers" and "takers" strikes me as a profoundly unhelpful way of wrestsling with the need to go beyond relief to rehabilitation and development. Throwing a drowning person a life-ring will not foster dependency. Jumping in and trying to hold them up means that both of you end up drowning.

On an international level, several months ago I spent a week in Haiti. That country is perhaps the poster child (yes, I appreciate the irony of the phrase) for perpetual relief verging on the toxic. Literally billions of dollars have been spent there, often with major strings attached in the name of accountability. At the parish I serve, St. Edward's, we are a part of consortium of churches and a school that have a relationship with St. Patrick's Church and School in LaCorbe, Haiti. Having had a relationship with people there for many years, we are beginning to discuss how to move from continually addressing immediate needs to building the capacity for the community to begin to provide for themselves. There is certainly a tension between what they perceive as their immediate needs and what we hope for as far as long term rehabilitation and development. Part of the challenge is that we have the luxury of taking the long view. A good example is that there is a need for a power source at this fairly remote chruch and school. As enlightened, developed-world folks, we would prefer to set up a small solar installation that would then be self-sustaining. However, our partner in Haiti would like a gasoline generator so that he could haul it around and use it for a variety of congregations and schools. Both make sense in their own way. On the one hand, we don't want to do what so many NGOs have done in Haiti and impose our own will on them. On the other, we don't really want to perpetuate a reliance on expensive fossel fruels. Difficult decisions.

I have no easy answers to any of this, but it does strike me that we need to be having these sorts of conversations at all levels of government and within our churches. Just writing a check, as much as it helps in the short-term, stops at relief without moving beyond that. If we can get to the point of true partnership where we help people to get and stay on their feet, perhaps we can move beyond the gridlock in both government and society.

The Umbilical Cord of Christianity

For many years, I've struggled with the developing tradition of inviting people to receive communion prior to being baptized. It is specifically prohibited in the canons (rules) of the Episcopal Church, and yet many churches do so. It is often referred to as Communion Without Baptism or CWOB. Perhaps the most visible example of someone coming to faith in Christ through this practice is Sara Miles who wrote Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion. She is just out with another book Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead. I just read an interview with her and I'm struck again by how she really battles against the church's attempt to control or constrain God. I'm struck by her faith and by the fact that she accurately portrays some of the chief obsticles to that faith that lie within the church itself.

As I thought about that, I thought about how we think about baptism and communion. The idea is that we join in this meal at God's table after we have been born (actually, re-born) into God's family through baptism. In other words, we're born and then we are fed. That makes a certain kind of sense. However, if one takes this metaphor a bit further, how are "pre-Christians" or yet-to-be-(re-)born Christians fed before they are born into God's family? In other words, what provides the "womb" in which a person's first cells of faith can grow and the "umbilical cord" that provides the "nutrition" or spiritual food without which the unborn-again person will spiritually starve? It seems like, for Sara, that umbilical cord was, at least in part, communion itself.

I don't know exactly what to do with this metaphor, but I do think it is worth asking whether the church is a place that provides a safe place for spiritual growth and the "food" necessary for such growth or whether the church can only provide solid food, as it were, to those already in God's family. If it can only feed those who are already Christians, then we become essentially spiritually barren--unable to receive the gift of the beginnings of a new life that is growing within someone and nurturing it to in climax in someone's rebirth. Thomas Brackett, the Program Officer for Church Planting and Redevelopment of the Episcopal Church, talks about "midwifing" what God is already doing--nurturing it and helping it along. How might we best do that, I wonder, and what would it take to move from hospital or restaurant to birthing center?

D025 and Speaking the Truth in Love

Predictably, the Episcopal and Anglican world is abuzz over the passage of Resolution D025 at General Convention yesterday. While I could go on and on about it, I'll defer to Greg Jones at Anglican Centrist, with whom I very much agree, for an excellent article about it. The short, short version is that D025 states clearly the current state of much of The Episcopal Church regarding gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gender (GLBT) ordination, the Anglican Communion, and the "listening process." It's actually a little more vague and nuanced than I'd prefer (just call a spade a spade, for God's sake!) but it is what it is.

My preference for clarity has less to do with putting out an "in your face" statement and more to do with the inevitable multiple interpretations of the resolution from conservative and liberal ends of the spectrum. Conservatives are already crying "they've chosen to walk apart" and liberals are already dancing in the streets over the "end of the moratorium" on consent to the election of GLBT bishops, or the "repeal of B033" (the resolution asking for restraint in such consents). It is neither. Predictably, it is a middle course which simultaneously asserts our desire to be a continuing member of the Anglican Communion while also asserting that we are not free to violate our own Constitution and Canons nor to simply ignore the ministry of GLBT persons in our midst. Some Standing Committees and Bishops will still withold consent from GLBT bishops-elect, some won't. Some dioceses will elect GLBT folks to the episcopate, others won't. Sounds suspiciously like what we have now, without the ecclesiastical slight of hand or smoke and mirrors of saying one thing and doing another.

In any case, other pieces of legislation are in the pipeline and the next few days will result in a flurry of resolutions being passed, so there will be much to comment upon. All those of us in pulpit and pew can do is pray for God's will to be done, Christ's peace in the midst of everything that is going on, and the Spirit's power to grow and sustain the church through trial and tribulation.

General Convention, Day Three

If I had subtitled this entry it would be: Relationships and Resolutions. Today I sat in on the debate on the sole resolution regarding the Anglican Covenant being dealt with at this convention, a resolutions that resolves that we "provisionally accept" and agree to live by the first three paragraphs on the Ridley-Cambridge draft of the Covenant. There was a great deal of discussion of relationships, communion, etc... and whether our church should "lead" by provisionally accepting the Covenant or, on the other side, whether we needed a covenant at all to accomplish the mission and ministry of the church and sustain and strengthen the ties that we already have with other churches of the Anglican Communion. There was even some question about whether the Church of England would ultimately be able to sign the Covenant since it would appear to hand control of the established Church of England to a higher (foreign) authority. Since the Church of England is an established church and thus beholden to Parlament, that could be problematic.

Right after I left the hearing, I ran into my old field education supervisor who is now working in the American Anglican Council. While he and I would likely disagree on most things, I was able to greet him warmly, show him pictures of my children, and thank him for the pastoral care he game my family and me during my field education time. It struck me that what we are really being asked to do with all of the resolutions regarding the Anglican Covenant and repeal of resolution 2006-B033 is to chose our relationships. Are we as a church going to push ahead with celebrating the committed relationships of GLBT people, perhaps at the cost of both relationships with other churches in the Anglican Communion (but perhaps not between the people of our two churches) as well as relationships with people alongside whom we have served? I don't know, and the choice of honoring one set of relationships at the possible expense of others is one that I'm personally happy that I won't have to vote on. I will, however, have to live with any consequences of that vote or votes, so I am definately praying for the bishops and deputies. It will be an interesting next few days.

Then this evening we had a GTNG dinner gathering at 6:30 p.m. and a GTNG "post-dinner" gathering at 8 p.m. I was glad to have time to sit and chat with folks I haven't met before, have met only online, or haven't seen for a while. Sometimes, I think, the church mechanisms get in the way of such informal but life-giving relationships. Until tomorrow....

Relatioships Rock, Issues Bite!

It has been nearly a month since I last put fingers to keyboard and posted to this blog. Of course, Holy Week and Easter were there, so there is some justification for silence. Mostly, however, I wanted to give some time to the random thoughts drifting around my brain to form some sort of coherent whole before "uploading" them to blog text. Friends of mine are far more qualified than I am to opine on the various theological and ecclesiastical goings on right now in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. However, I did want to highlight one particular essay, written by The Rt. Rev. Pierre Whalon, Bishop in Charge of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe. I'm a big fan of Bishop Whalon's, not least because he attempts to chart a center course in an era where polarization is the norm. His latest effort is a reflection on the Anglican Covenant where, among a great many other things, he says:

What matters most is in fact what the Ridley Preamble claims: is this Covenant a means to make our contribution to God’s mission in the world more effective?

Many years ago, a number of us in Gathering the Next Generation (GTNG), what I refer to as a "Generation X mission society" came together for a regional gathering. The unofficial theme of that gathering was an assertion that: "Relationships Rock, Issues Bite!" Though more nuanced, I find that same sentiment in both Bishop Whalon's essay and, interestingly, in some of the reviews of the Covenant itself. Efforts to make the Anglican Covenant into an Anglican Contract and to make it proscriptive rather than descriptive seem to be waining in favor of putting out a document that sets out in very simple theological terms the basis of our common mission and life together--and it isn't that we agree on all the issues, either! I look forward (though with a perhaps too jaundiced and cynical eye) to the debate that will commence with the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council and, in this country, with General Convention 2009. I hope that it focuses on our unity in Christ and the relatioships we have with one another, rather than any sort of doctrinal conformity. We'll see...

When Church Inhibits Community

As the Lambeth Conference fades into history and as clergy and laity enjoy the waining weeks of summer and gear up for the beginning of the program year, I am thinking of how often the institutional policies and processes that are designed to define and defend the Christian community from outside threats sometimes end up choking the life out of precisely what they are designed to protect. I've often likened the church to an aircraft carrier--incredibly tough, durable, and very difficult to sink but has a very difficult time turning and has an incredible amount of momentum. Like the United States during the Cold War, the church has built up defenses over the centuries to large scale threats to its institutional life. However, in this post-Cold War (and post-Christian) world, there is more call for speedboats than for aircraft carriers. In other words, things like the emergent church movement and other ways of deconstructing the institutional church and replacing it with a more agile form of Christian community seem to be more effective in the 21st century ministry context.

I say that because I was very interested to read Andrew Gerns's reflections on Lambeth in 'The Lead' section of the Episcopal Cafe, where he begins by writing:

In many ways the Lambeth Conference had dual personalities. There was the listening, engaging personality of the Indaba groups, along with the Bible Studies, the worship. Then there was the organizational side where the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Communion Office and the Bishops attempted to find a structure by which the Communion could hold together.

I would assert that what emerged from the Lambeth Conference was a highly relational understanding of church, with bishops engaging one another face-to-face and, in many cases, finding that while their official institutional churches were on opposite sides of the sexuality debate and other issues, they personally got on well together. It was when they attempted to find a structure to reflect and protect those relationships that they seem to have reverted to previous win/lose and us/them institutional polarizations.

As I see this on the international scene, I'm also preparing for a church board program planning retreat this coming Saturday and reflecting on the interrelationship between people and programs. My hope and prayer is that, partially as a result of this retreat, we come to a fresh appreciation of our identity as brothers and sisters in Christ and members of Christ's body, the church. There is a great temptation to resist taking risks, leaps of faith, in order to protect the institution from failure. Yet if the church (locally, nationally, or internationally) simply sees itself in a defensive way--as an defense against "the world, the flesh, and the devil" and not as a network of care for those both within and outside its walls then we will simply rot from the inside and all that will be left will be the walls and stained glass windows protecting a "faithful remnant" inside.

I hope that as the Anglican Covenant process unfolds in the next year that it will find a way to support and uphold the face-to-face relationships that are, after all, the true foundation of the Anglican Communion.

Anglicanism: Catholic, Protestant, neither, or both?

More than a week ago I ran across the Open Letter to the Bishops Gathering at Lambeth in which Dr. Ephraim Radner more or less begs those attending the Lamebeth Conference to "decide, resolutely, that those bishops from these churches who are in agreement to press forward in ways the Communion has now clearly and consistently repudiated [that is, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada] no longer partake in your common councils." Additionally, he states that "If the Lambeth Conference cannot take it upon itself to act with clarity and evangelical coherence in the face of the threats to our common life, you abandon us."

I must confess to being extremely conflicted about this letter and its assumption that the bishops are somehow the sole arbiter of truth and discipline in the Anglican Communion. It is much the same sense in which the gathering of the Primates has assumed legislative, judicial, and executive powers far beyond what any council or synod has had before. Were we the Roman Catholic Church, we might well be used to doctrine being sent down to the masses (no pun intended...) from on high (either Pope or Council of Bishops) but there is enough of a Protestant strain in our makeup that we naturally recoil from any such seemingly autocratic rule.

On the other hand, Archbishop Rowan Williams has noted that bishops have what he refers to as a "unique charism" both implicit in their office and explicit in their ordination vows. As has been said repeatedly, the church is not inherently a democratic establishment. To the extent that it is, it inherited that character from the secular world, not from biblical mandate or church tradition. After all, the successor to Judas was selected by lot, not by vote. I don't think that it is an accident that there bishop, priest, and deacon are all nouns with no verb connotations (as opposed to Pastor, Minister, etc...). When clergy in the Episcopal Church are ordained, the bishop asks the Holy Spirit to "make" that person a bishop, priest, or deacon. Being a Episcopal deacon or priest (and, presumably, bishop) is not simply a job, it is a way of being. That sort of idea, that one's very "ontological status" is changed at ordination, is very catholic and not very protestant.

I hope that as the Lambeth Conference moves on, the bishops there can see their "unique charism" not so much as enforcers but as teachers, communicators of the experiences of God as told by a spectrum of the wider Anglican Communion. While this sort of result may not make the news, and will certainly frustrate conservatives, liberals, and those who would like to place people in such neat categories, it might well enable us to transcend issues and really talk about how we can proclaim the redemptive power of Jesus Christ in our own missional context.