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Relationship and Responsibility
Principles for encouraging healthy relationships between compassion ministry and local churches in developing countries
February 2003

Written by Robert Benson, president of Arms of Love International, in collaboration with John Mory, who oversees the Arms of Love Children's Home in the Philippines . 

One of the principal values of Arms of Love is to develop each children's home as a ministry of one or more local churches to children at risk in their own community. We believe that this approach has significant benefits to the children's home - which is envisioned as a surrogate family for the children - as it roots the home in the local people and culture, encourages ministry among people in the same community, and helps ensure the longevity of the project by connecting it with an indigenous, self-sustaining community of people.

We believe that the local church is also benefited through this relationship. Ministry to the poor is an integral and indispensable part of the expression of the kingdom of God and the call of the Christian church, and in less-developed countries, where the human needs are so staggering, the need for this demonstration of God's love is particularly pronounced. Through worldwide partnership, resources can flow from where they are most abundant to where they are most needed, and in this way, churches in the poorest parts of the world can meet needs in their communities in ways that would not otherwise be feasible.

At the same time, it is critical that we engage in compassion ministry in a way that is healthy for the establishment and growth of the local church. Our objective is for the church and the children's home to complement each other and for both to flourish - not for one to negatively impact the other. Accomplishing this is no simple task.

As with many strategic issues, there is no "correct" approach to the integration of church planting and compassion ministry in the developing world. However, as we have considered our collective experiences over the past years - the successes and the failures, the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches revealed over time - we have identified principles that are important to creating a healthy relationship between a significant compassion ministry (such as a children's home) and a local church, particularly in the context of less-developed countries. This month's newsletter is devoted to a consideration of these principles as well as their application to the Arms of Love ministry.

The focus of compassion ministry must be on developing relationship. If people come to a church only because of what they can get for themselves, in the way of a meal or a handout, the result will be an unhealthy church that will disintegrate when the thing that is attracting people ceases. To avoid this consequence, a church should not be built around a compassion ministry, but needs to be based on relationship.

Compassion ministry can be an important means of building relationship. If we genuinely love others - as Jesus has called us to do - we will seek to meet their needs. As we do so, we will encounter opportunities to develop meaningful relationships. Relationships give us entry into people's hearts and lives. Within relationships, people become committed to serving one another, and as people serve one another, their relationships grow stronger. That is the embodiment of authentic Christianity. When a group of Christians engage in ministering to the needs of one another and to the needs of others around them, the result will be a community of believers that will grow and endure the test of time.

Creating this result takes a significant amount of time and energy, because it necessarily involves getting to know people, investing in their lives, and building relationship with them. Going into a poor area, singing some songs, distributing some food, and leaving again accomplishes little unless it is done within the context of relationship. Relationship means eating in someone's home without giving thought to the conditions of the home, the food that is being served, or the lice in someone's hair. The only way we can really touch people's lives with God's love is if we associate with them and build relationship with them, becoming their friends as Jesus did. Jesus was called "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners," and we must follow His example.

The Arms of Love children's homes represent one implementation of this concept. Through outreach, we build relationships with children who live on the streets - children who have been abused by their families, scorned by society, often stealing and prostituting to survive. Those relationships lead to trust, and as the children are received into the children's home, the primary objective of the home is to develop new family-based relationships that will nurture the children, in the place of those relationships that the children have lost. Everything that we provide the children - whether it concerns their physical needs, emotional needs, educational needs, or otherwise - is provided within the context of relationship. And as we care for the orphaned and abandoned children of a community, we also touch the hearts of other people in that community as they see our demonstrated love and concern for their children.

The importance of relationship underscores the need to conduct compassion ministry through the local church. If the most effective way of touching people's lives is through relationship, we cannot effectively accomplish that in a developing country while living in the United States, England, or elsewhere. Nor can we accomplish that through two-week mission trips. To be effective, we must partner with the local church in conducting compassion ministry, and empower the church to reach the poor in its community.

When we work through and alongside members of a local church - with resources, short-term teams, and otherwise - we do more than give a person physical assistance. We contribute to the formation and growth of relationships between members of the church and people in the community. Through those relationships, people's lives can be impacted in a significant and permanent way, long after they receive the meal or clothing that we provided.

Moreover, by connecting compassion ministry with a local church rather than a foreign entity, we create stronger accountability for the people involved in conducting the compassion ministry. People will feel more responsible and accountable for the use of resources if they are working with and underneath local leadership within their own church, than if they are simply receiving money directly from abroad.

Compassion ministry must promote responsibility rather than dependence. A healthy compassion ministry is one that creates a sense of responsibility in the life of a person, rather than dependency. A person who becomes able to care for himself, rather than continually relying upon someone else to care for him, will be much better off in the long term and will be able to live his life with a greater sense of dignity and purpose. Genuine love will seek to accomplish that result of self-sufficiency - only a selfish love will seek to maintain a relationship of dependence.

This principle has numerous practical implications. This may mean providing a person with some assistance, but leaving the remainder for him to provide for himself. In the Philippines, for example, the Vineyard church in Tagbilaran City sponsors the educational expenses of more than 100 poor children in the community. However, the church never sponsors more than half of the children in any one family. In this way, the church helps the family while not completely supplanting the family's responsibility for providing for the educational needs of their children.

Some types of compassion programs can be specifically designed to promote a person's self-sufficiency rather than developing dependency. In the Philippines, the church is planning to offer vocational training programs that will give people useful job skills and help them start their own businesses. A program that will help a person provide for themselves will always have a longer-term impact, and provide a significantly greater benefit to the recipient, than a one-time or ongoing "hand-out."

This necessarily looks different when we are providing comprehensive care for abandoned children in a children's home, but we work toward the same result. The short-term situation is one of complete dependency, but the long-term objective is complete self-sufficiency. Our goal is to accelerate the education of the children and to provide vocational training so that, when they leave the children's home, they will be able to meet not only their own needs, but the needs of their future families as well. We can also encourage responsibility in the children by involving them in household chores rather than doing everything for them, involving the children in helping other children in the community, and instilling in the children a desire to serve others as they grow older. If we can reintegrate the children into their community as financially self-sufficient adults with a heart to serve others, they will not only support their own families, but sow back into the church, meet the needs of others in their community, and contribute to the further growth of the church.

A healthy church is one that has a core group of people that are not dependent on foreign support. This helps ensure that even if foreign funding suddenly disappears, the church will remain. Accordingly, while a compassion ministry affiliated with a church may have substantial foreign funding, we must ensure that the church itself does not become directly or indirectly dependent upon that funding.

It is also important that the church have identity apart from the compassion ministry. Compassion ministry should be part of the definition of the church, but it should not solely define the church. The church should be known as a community of people that welcomes the outcast, cares for people wherever they are at in life, and gives aid to the desperate. But the church should not be "defined" by a compassion ministry to the point that it is perceived as being synonymous with a medical clinic, a feeding program, or an orphanage, as such a perception will discourage participation by those who do not share that particular need.

This principle, as with the others, has specific application to the Arms of Love ministry. While Arms of Love funds the children's homes, we try to keep some degree of physical, financial, and functional separation between the children's home and the church. We view the children's home as being a part of the church, but it must not define the church. This has many ramifications. For example, the staff might overlap, but should not be co-extensive. The children and staff attend the church, but should not primarily comprise the church. The children's home receives financial support from abroad, but the church must develop its own support locally. And in the long run, we encourage each children's home to develop support within its own country, with the hope that it will also become financially self-sufficient in the long-term.

What determines a healthy relationship between the local church and compassion ministry is the lack of dependency, not proportionality. A small church of even twenty-five people, who are outwardly focused and passionate in their dedication to the gospel, can accomplish greater things than a church of a thousand people who are inwardly focused. Accordingly, while we must be careful not to create a scenario where the church becomes dependent upon, overwhelmed by, or overshadowed by a program of compassion ministry, we must be equally careful not to limit what a church can accomplish by making presumptive assumptions based on its size.

The scope of a church's compassion ministry need not be rigidly or artificially restricted based on some quantitative proportion between the number of people in the church and the number of people being assisted by the compassion ministry. Instead, the scope of a church's compassion ministry should be driven by the heart of the people, their vision, their dedication, and their ability - realistically - to oversee the ministry.

The greatest key to success of any compassion ministry is the staff and the volunteers who conduct the ministry. First, the ministry must have an overseer that is willing to empower the staff and engage them in ministry the moment they come on board. Second, the staff must be completely committed to the ministry and willing to pour out their lives for the people they serve. The heart and attitude of a staff worker or volunteer will be readily apparent to the people being served. Staff that view their positions as little more than paid employment can infect others with a callousness and lack of caring that can undermine the effectiveness of the entire ministry. Third, starting the church first provides an opportunity to develop at least the initial, core staff from within the church, who will then share the church's vision and heart. Most staff problems arise among people who are hired from outside the church, who sometimes have significantly different values and objectives.

For these reasons, the staff and the volunteers ought to determine the scope of a compassion ministry program more so than the size of the church. An empowered, dedicated, passionate, and cohesive staff - who have the support and involvement of other members of their church - can successfully implement a program that ministers to significant needs and/or significant numbers of people. Conversely, a lack of staff, a lack of vision and commitment, or a lack of cohesiveness will doom even the smallest program.

The Tagbilaran City Vineyard in the Philippines started a lunch program for children at risk five years ago. Even when the church only had twenty people, they successfully conducted a lunch program that fed about 450 children a week - and each of those children represented a family that could be reached. The fruit of this program was not realized for many years. But the lunch program provided an opportunity for relationship with the children's families. Today, about 65 adults related to those children are attending three different home groups, and 15 of those 65 attend Sunday services.

Ministry to the poor is an indispensable part of the expression of the kingdom of God, and should therefore be present even during the earliest stages of church planting. The proclamation of the gospel and the demonstration of the gospel must always go hand-in-hand. We must tell others of God's love for them, but then we must also demonstrate that love by caring for their needs and building relationship with them. People are tired of being told that Jesus loves them, they want to see that He loves them.

This is true whenever the gospel is presented … whether a church is well established, or just getting off the ground. At every stage of church development, we need to look outward before we look inward. The difference when we are first starting out is that compassion ministry should be done on a small scale, with the goal always being the development of relationship and the cross of Christ. Even the first handful of people starting a church can use their personal resources to care for the needs of others, in small ways, so as to share God's love while also demonstrating that love.

Larger "programs," such as a children's home, are best undertaken after the affiliated church is already established. In Senegal, where we started from scratch, we are allowing the church to become established in its own right before starting the children's home. Then when we do start the children's home later this year, we will be able to draw the key staff from the church. Then we intend to monitor the growth of the home so that it does not outpace the vision and passion of the church or its ability to properly oversee the ministry. But even in the first few months of church planting, the pastors used their own means to care for the needs of those they were developing relationship with.

The expression of God's mercy in meeting people's needs should always be present. There may be practical wisdom, for example, in exclusively targeting the middle class for an initial church plant, with the idea that as the church grows, it will have sufficient resources of its own to help the poor some day in the future. But is this God's approach? Did Jesus focus his ministry on the middle class and the wealthy, with the strategy of then commissioning them to help the poor? Or did Jesus also go directly to the poor and destitute, ministering to their needs, and commissioning them to take the gospel to the nations?

Jesus made no distinction based on class, wealth, position, age, sex or ethnicity as He ministered to others. He reached out to and welcomed everyone who sought Him. And so should we as we follow in His steps.