When the Church Gets it Right

I often focus on the times and instances the church gets it wrong. I cringe when Christians are too pushy, too loud, too legalistic, too obsessed with being right. But today I want to share a story of a small church in the Dominican Republic getting it right.

Teodora

Over the last couple of weeks on the Plant With Purpose blog, we’ve shared the incredible story of Teodora Sánchez, an inspiring woman from the small village of Loma Verde in the Dominican Republic. Teodora is a mother, grandmother, pastor, and empowerer.

Teodora has partnered with Plant With Purpose to engage her community in environmental restoration and economic empowerment. The stories of economic and environmental transformation are powerful on their own, but, as a traditional Jesus-cube-and-revival-evangelism evader, I was more struck by the story of SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION taking place in Teodora’s community.

Plant With Purpose has this really cool discipleship philosophy that focuses first and foremost on equipping local churches to meet the needs of their communities. We’ve started a rad project in the Dominican Republic called, “Church, Community, and Change,” where we partner with churches directly and empower them to be an agent of positive change for those around them.

As a pastor, Teodora is constantly looking for new ways to engage both the physical and spiritual needs of those around her. One issue that has plagued Teodora’s community is illiteracy. When Teodora heard about Plant With Purpose's new project, her eyes sparkled with joy at the opportunity to fight illiteracy.

And then she got right to work organizing an entire literacy campaign for her community. Teodora provided the vision; Plant With Purpose helped turn the dream into a reality.

Teodora says, “The Church, Community, and Change pilot was a great blessing from God. More than 30 people attended the literacy classes in January 2012 and more are expected to register throughout the year. Church members serve as the literacy facilitators.”

What a cool idea—church members who can read teaching other members who can’t read.  Awesome.

As the church serves, hope swells: community members build confidence, families become less vulnerable, economic opportunities emerge, and families gain hope for a brighter future.

Could there be a better picture of the church sharing the love of Christ with their community in word and deed?

I know it’s a little shameless self-promoting for Plant With Purpose, but I was touched by this story of the church getting it right and I hope you’ll be encouraged too.

Heard any good stories of the church getting it right lately?

Also, check out the Plant With Purpose blog or website to learn more about how you can get involved in the incredible work of the church around the world. 

*Photo credits: Plant With Purpose

A Better Answer

This is a follow up to yesterday's blog post, Solidaridad, which I suggest reading first. 

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"I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives. Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world." from Ann Voskamp’s masterpiece, One Thousand Gifts

This, this is the better answer to my haunting question: What does it mean to live in solidarity with poor?


“Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering.” 


How I wish someone had whispered this truth to me when I first opened my crowded closet; when I first swiped my ATM card for apricot face scrub and a new roll of floss at Target; when I first felt the summer sun warm up my parent’s patriotic front yard.

"It is joy that saves us..."

How I wish our study abroad discussions around solidarity had ventured beyond fair trade shopping and SUV bashing and into the fine art of learning to love our neighbors—poor or 1% or anywhere in between.


"Why would the world need more anger, more outrage?"

I mean, how are we supposed to love the poor if we don’t love ourselves? What kind of improved quality of life are we lobbying for if we can’t even recognize the God-like qualities in our suburban Christian friends?


I learned this lesson the hard way. Floundering and seething in an anger that quickly wore out its welcome.  In an anger that helped neither the poor nor the poor saps around me.

My first real step toward living in solidarity with the poor (on which I still have an immensely long way to go) was when I started to live in solidarity with myself. When I started to live in solidarity with my immediate neighbors. When I started to think that I was worth loving and that, maybe, the people in front of me—my Whole Foods Shopping, Invisible Children v-neck wearing peeps and my less well-versed in the rhetoric and fashion requirements of social justice friends and family alike—were worth loving too.

Solidarity began when I asked myself, like Ann Voskamp, Where can I bring life? Where can I choose hope?

How can I become the brave soul who focuses “on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small?” Where can I “discover joy even in the here and now?”

The surprising answer to the solidarity question is this: joy.

And in that joy comes a valuing of all human life and all of Creation, a heart that hopes, eyes that see the gifts, and lips that praise the Gifter.  This is the foundation of solidarity. This is the seed that blooms the hope to sustain a multitude of change agents bringing fullest Light to all the world.

Who wants to live the better answer?

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P.S. I am still stubbornly passionate (although no longer belligerent) about reducing my injustice footprint and learning to live and act in ways that serve, support, and empower the poor.  I would love to talk shop with anyone interested in living more justly, sustainably, and joyfully.

But how, you ask?

You can read more of my thoughts in my post on fighting both first world apathy and third world poverty or dive into 7 Practical Tips (and delicious writing) from Jen Hatmaker, author of  "7 : An Experimental Mutiny AgainstExcess."  Or check out Julie Clawson’s fabulous book, EverydayJustice. Or find out more about my favorite poverty alleviation non profit that I just so happen to work for: Plant With Purpose. 

You Are Not Alone In This

When I look back on my experience of studying abroad, being exposed to poverty, and questioning my faith, I see a lot of anger, outbursts, and alienation. I attacked people who didn't understand my newfound obsession with recycling, fair trade, even Cuba. I didn't know how to communicate the burning burning burning urgency in my heart to DO SOMETHING about injustice.

I thought I was alone. No one knew what I was talking about. Everyone else was a materialistic hypocrite.

Turns out that was not quite healthy. Or true.

Ironically, my newly expanded global worldview led to an implosion of sorts. A narrowing of my world and my interests. Every relationship, every conversation, every action became solely about me: my thoughts, my anger, my doubts, my responsibility.

I thought it was up to me to single handedly save the world, which I quite obviously sucked at. I thought I was the first person to ever be confronted with this dilemma.

In the middle of this all out war on my friends' and families' sanity, I read a poem by Wendell Berry in his book, What are people for?, that actually made me feel quite foolish for wanting to do it all on my own. It was the kick in the pants that I needed and yet subsequently ignored as soon as I read it. (I told you I didn't exercise the healthiest coping mechanisms). Here are a few lines that stood out to me:

“Seeing the work that is to be done, who can help wanting to be the one to do it?

But one is afraid that there will be no rest until the work is finished and the house is in order, the farm is in order, the town is in order, and all loved ones are well.

But it is pride that lies awake in the night with its desire and its grief.

To work at this work alone is to fail. There is no help for it. Loneliness is its failure.

It is despair that sees the work failing in one’s own failure.

This despair is the awkwardest pride of all.”

I lived there, in that awkward pride, for a good couple of years, allowing my deep desire to serve and do good to divide and exclude instead of combine and include. I forgot I was supposed to be fighting against evil, oppression, alienation, and loneliness instead of my country, my social class, my friends, my family, myself.

When I began interning at a non profit called Plant With Purpose, where I now work, I was forced to remember that I was not alone in this fight against poverty.

Plant With Purpose has been around for over 25 years, partnering with the rural poor to overcome poverty. I know I latch onto some pretty unsound ideas from time to time (really, I really think I’m fat at 110 pounds?), but I would have had to have been monstrously dense or delusional to continue to believe that I had invented social justice and no one anywhere was doing anything of any value to end poverty.

It’s a lesson I’m still learning (not that I still think I invented social justice), but to work together. Learning that people are more important than ideologies. Learning that cooperation is more important than my beloved creativity. Learning that we are in this together.

Last night I watched the premiere of 58: The Film, a new campaign spearheaded by Compassion International to end extreme poverty. It’s a collaboration of ten Christian non profits working together to DO SOMETHING about poverty.

I admit I’m biased because I work at one of the ten organizations, but I think it’s pretty darn inspiring to see a group of organizations (competitors) joining together not to compete for donations or prove they have the best and most buzzwordy poverty alleviation strategies, but to motivate us all to reject not each other but our apathy. To embark on a radical rebellion against selfishness and competition when we’d rather rebel against our God-given responsibility to love our neighbors well.

It is the opposite of this awkward pride. It is an example of Wendell Berry’s “good work” that “finds the way between pride and despair.” By which, “we lose loneliness: we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us.”

Thank you to everyone in my life who has reached out their hand to me and ushered me out of loneliness, pride, and despair, and into the good work we were created to do.