As Director of Missions and Outreach for my church, I spend a good deal of time thinking about poverty and poverty alleviation work, which is ultimately the core of all mission activity. Poverty can be defined as broken relationships. Broken relationships with God, self, others, and creation look different for each of us, but we all have areas that need healing. I find missions and coaching work intersect as a vehicle to work toward the healing each of us needs.
Genesis 3 describes the original sin of Adam and Eve, from which all broken relationships originate. Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett in When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor … And Yourself explain the repercussions of this original sin,
The Genesis account records that all four of Adam and Eve’s relationships immediately became distorted: their relationship with God was damaged, as their intimacy with Him was replaced with fear, their relationship with self was marred, as Adam and Eve developed a sense of shame; their relationship with others was broken, as Adam quickly blamed Eve for their sin; and their relationship with the rest of creation became distorted, as God cursed the ground and the childbearing process.
Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett
All these broken relationships are examples of poverty. This diagram provides a visual of the broken relationships which do exist in both the materially poor and the non-materially poor.
In this diagram, under the relationship with the rest of creation, you can see a poverty of stewardship that appears differently in materially poor and non-materially poor cultures. In a materially poor environment, you might see the generational cycle of fatalism – why even try, we will always be worthless, but in a non-materially poor environment, you might see the generational cycle of workaholism or overachieving.
Another critical connection is under poverty of being. Often those in poverty, like those living at the garbage dump in Guatemala City, already have a low self-esteem because of how their society views them. Combine that with a North American mindset, we often think we know best how to help people on a mission trip. Both of these poverty mindsets can be re-enforced, and damage done if a mission trip comes in, builds a house for the family, confirming the North Americans know how to do it and the Guatemalans do not.
A major aspect of what I do, is constantly reframing the way things have been approached in the past. This is where I see the intersection of missions and coaching. As mentioned last month, coaching provides an opportunity to reframe your mindset. An important step to combatting poverty of all kinds, whether physical, emotional, mental or spiritual, is changing your perspective and realizing the origin of our poverty. Perhaps your church or nonprofit is wanting to look at things from a different perspective. I would love to help, contact me to talk about options.
KATHY PIERBURG 