Loving Our Neighbor: A Thoughtful Approach to Helping People in Poverty

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part One: The Biblical Call to Love Our Neighbor

Chapter One: The Beatitudes as a Guide for Loving Our Neighbor

Chapter Two: Loving Totally

Chapter Three: Walking the Way?

Chapter Four: Requirements of Faith

Chapter Five: Poverty in the Bible

Part Two: A Thoughtful Approach to Deciding How,

When, and Whom to Help

Chapter Six: When Someone in Need Approaches You

Giving Money Directly

A Better Way to Respond

Giving Money for Long-Term Solutions, Not Quick Fixes

Summing Up

Chapter Seven: Helping Others: Servant or Sucker?

Trying to Understand Those We Want to Help

Techniques You Can Adopt: Mantras, The Three Vs, the A-B-Cs, and L.E.A.R.N.

Double Standards

Servant or Sucker?

Exercise: Agency XYZ Application

Chapter Eight: Different Approaches for Offering Assistance

Responding to Anyone at Any Time

Setting Appointments

Chapter Eight: Different Approaches for Offering Assistance (cont.)

Assisting Only Referrals

Directing Requests to an Appropriate Organization

Creating a Fully Staffed Program Within the Church

Partnering with Others in Your Community

Choosing Any Combination of the Above

Chapter Nine: Setting Up a Direct Aid Ministry

Exploring the Itch

Whom/How/When to Serve

Implementing the Plan

Warning!!!

Summing Up

Worksheet: Setting Up a Direct Aid Ministry

Chapter Ten: Helping a Family in Need

Getting Started

Developing a Relationship

Maintaining a Healthy Process

Possible Pitfalls

Worksheet: Helping a Family in Need

Exercise: Cathy

Chapter Eleven: Evaluating Benevolence Requests

Background of Your Congregation

Source of the Request

Involvement of Your Congregation

Organizational Information

Possible Results of Deciding to Support a Request

Worksheet: Evaluating Benevolence Requests

Chapter Twelve: Motivating Members to Help

How Groups Can Help

How Individuals Can Help

When Members Do Not Help

Exercise: Why I Am Afraid to Get Involved

Part Three: Poverty–The Big Picture

Chapter Thirteen: Branching Out

Levels of Poverty

Is the Need Housing or Income?

Touring Blighted Areas

Chapter Fourteen: Justice and Charity Are Not the Same

Charity

Justice

A Room Full of Masks

The Shalom Balance of Justice

Economic Theories Affect Our Lives

Exercise: A Creed for Helping Others

Afterword

Notes

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all the wonderful congregations who are involved with United Ministries and who encouraged me as a minister and as a community leader.

The program participants of United Ministries are the true teachers for making wise and compassionate decisions. Each person who trusted me with his or her story, who challenged the staff about why you won’t help me, or who smiled broadly upon reaching a goal inspired me to keep working and growing. Thank you to all who shared your lives here.

The board of directors at United Ministries gave me the wonderful gift of the freedom to preach, teach, and write. After twenty-four years as the executive director, they released me from all administrative responsibilities to do what makes my eyes sparkle. By bringing in Keith Trout as the executive director, the board assured the ongoing success of United Ministries and encouraged me to follow my passions and dreams through developing and directing Our Eyes Were Opened, an outreach of United Ministries. Their support and encouragement are true blessings to me.

Debbee Gordon, Bruce Schug, Becky Bouton, Rufus Perry, Lynne Shackelford, Jean Gayle, Nancy Orders Smith, Claire Winkler, and Dot Elmore, volunteers on the Church Relations and Volunteer Committee, encouraged me from the beginning. They saw the raw material and cheered me on as I lived with the possibilities of what might come of those disconnected pieces of paper. Their belief in me and the book got me through some rough spots in this process. Thanks to each of you. You’ve truly been angels to me.

Jan Snider called me from Nashville after hearing, through the grace of God, about my workshop, Helping Others: Servant or Sucker. In our discussions on the phone, she said, If you’ve got a book inside of you, now’s the time to write it. She lit the spark of possibility and cheered me on to dream beyond my little corner of the world. Thanks for your inspiration.

Steve McDonald was my longtime buddy at United Ministries. He was work partner, challenger, and friend through the seminal stages of many of the experiences which grew into Loving Our Neighbor: A Thoughtful Approach to Helping People in Poverty. Because of health issues, he is no longer my foil and confidant but is still reflected in these materials.

Stephanie Brandenburg came to United Ministries at the critical time for giving birth to Loving Our Neighbor: A Thoughtful Approach to Helping People in Poverty. She did whatever needed to be done, held me together when the process got bogged down, and took care of those details which greatly aggravated me. What a timely gift from God. Stephanie, thanks for your friendship and your wonderful expertise. Rebecca Owens took care of many of the details of producing a manuscript. Once again, the timing of her coming to me was exquisite. Thank you, Becca, for your eagerness for the project and for your patience with me.

My family has supported me throughout the years. My sons accepted that their mom, in addition to being their mom, was passionate about United Ministries and the people the organization serves. They made sure I never took myself too seriously and always (well, almost always) assured me that we share a deep and intimate bond of love and care. In giving me daughters-in-law and grandchildren, they enriched my life beyond measure. Finally, to my husband, Jim Banks, who makes me laugh and rubs my feet, thank you for being my partner on this life journey. You are my best friend and most trusted companion.

Beth Lindsay Templeton

March 27, 2008

Introduction

Loving Our Neighbor: A Thoughtful Approach to Helping People in Poverty came about because individuals and congregations have asked repeatedly for help in knowing when and how to respond to people who ask for financial handouts. Churches, businesses, civic organizations, and school groups wanted to help but needed assistance in making wise and compassionate decisions. They asked for specific workshops. Individuals stopped me on the street with questions about how to help. Congregations asked me to preach about mission. Donors challenged me, asking why United Ministries, the nonprofit I led, did certain things in certain ways. All these questions, opportunities, and challenges led to the development of the information within this book.

Throughout my twenty-five years of working with people who need assistance as well as with people, church groups, and civic groups who want to help, I have heard comments such as:

My church does not know how to deal with folks who ask for assistance. People may call on the phone, walk in during the week, or show up when we have a fellowship gathering. At times we are very lenient and help anyone who asks. At other times we are hard-nosed and help very few people. Because we really don’t know what to do, we end up doing nothing. (Patti W.)

I pulled myself up. Why can’t they?(Wade C.)

I was downtown and a guy came up to me and told me he needed to get cleaned up for his job interview tomorrow. He said, ‘Just look at me. No one would hire me looking like this.’ So we chatted a bit and I put him in my car and took him to a motel where he could get a good night’s sleep and take a hot shower. I bought him a change of clothes and dinner. Later, I was downtown again and this same guy came up to me with the same story. I retorted that he’d told me this tale months ago when I’d helped him. I really let him have it." (James C.)

I really want to help others. I simply don’t know what to do! (Harry H.)

You may have said similar things yourself. I know these statements come from a deep and sincere desire to help. I also know that frustration and lack of understanding negatively affect people’s ability to care. Loving Our Neighbor will:

1.   Give you an understanding of the biblical call to help.

2.   Help you understand those who live in poverty.

3.   Advise you of various ways you can help others.

4.   Show you how to organize a direct ministry for your church.

5.   Help you deepen your thoughts of the social and economic conditions that lead to poverty.

As a nonprofit executive and a minister, I have been privileged to work with people who are poor as well as with groups and individuals who want to help. I have heard numerous laments from people needing help and from people wanting to help. Those in need wonder why no one wants to help. Those who want to help wonder why their assistance is not appreciated or does not produce good results.

Even though you want to help, in the past you may have made a bad situation worse by giving money to someone who used it to support a drug habit. You may have gotten angry at the people you wanted to help because they wouldn’t behave as you thought they should. You and other potential helpers may not have known what to do.

At other times we all have come up with solutions which would work for us—people who have a strong support system and economic stability, who are privileged by skin color, age, or birth, and who are educated. Some of us cannot understand why others who don’t have those same advantages cannot get their lives together. Our local paper ran an article about a young college graduate who decided to hop a train from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Charleston, South Carolina, with $25 in his pocket. Within six months, he had saved $2,500 and had a furnished apartment. This young man’s story reinforced his belief that if a person would just apply himself, get a job, and stick to a plan, then life will turn out okay. [1]

Many of us need to believe that. We need to know that when we stay in school, apply ourselves at work—whether we enjoy it or not—and play by the rules, our lives will be everything we wanted. To believe otherwise is simply too scary. The newspaper story was delightful and inspiring to people who operate with these beliefs. We cannot imagine why everyone cannot do as this young man did.

The real story of the newspaper article was not that the young man made it. After all, he had a college education, he was white and good looking, and he understood middle-class ways of thinking and acting. He did not come from poverty where the rules of the middle class are unknown. Reading between the lines of the news story, his family was stable, he knew how to speak in formal, educated English, and no one in his immediate family was an addict or mentally unstable. He could interact with employers because he intuitively understood their language, their rules, and their values. Charleston, the community of his experiment, had an adequate public transportation system. He had no medical emergency. Of course, he was able to succeed.

The real story was that many of us believe that his story can be true for anyone in our country. After all, we are a bootstrap nation. We believe that we create our own destinies. We are masters of our fate. We can be whoever and whatever we choose to be.

Tell that to someone who grew up in a family where violence was a routine occurrence. Every night a child’s sleep was disturbed by screaming and the noises of fighting and throwing things. Every day that same child could not concentrate in school because of sleep deprivation and so fell farther and farther behind. Tell it to someone who had an undiagnosed learning disability, dropped out of school, and was limited to working three part-time jobs in order to care for the family. Tell it to someone who worked for years in the same position, only to discover she was no longer employable when the plant closed. Tell it to someone whose employer could not afford to provide health care and the heart attack meant loss of everything material. Tell it to the young person of color who is suspect because his name sounds foreign.

Many of us want to blame people who live in poverty for creating their situation. It protects our own sense of security. Until we realize that we have been enriched by situations, experiences, and systems of privilege that are not of our own making, we will continue to see with only limited vision and understanding the problems of our disadvantaged neighbors. We will not grasp the depth of the challenges or the height of the obstacles faced by people who live in poverty.

Because I had been given the opportunity to know deeply people who live in poverty, I realized I could help others who did not have that privilege to understand what my United Ministries program participant friends were facing and struggling with. Because my first career was as a teacher, I could develop workshops, seminars, and simulations which helped people open their eyes. Because I am a minister and believe that people of faith are called to reach out to others and to be partners with the Holy God in creating communities of wholeness and peace, I could articulate my understandings from the perspective of faith. Because I led a human services nonprofit for twenty-four years, and because we tried a lot of approaches that did not produce the results we wanted, I could speak with authority about what worked and what didn’t.

Through the years I was invited to meet with church groups who wanted to help but knew they lacked understanding. I watched United Ministries’ program participants respond to our program staff’s trial-and-error efforts as we all learned how to provide life-changing opportunities. I discovered a significant disconnect between what people wanted to do for others and what actually resulted. People who wanted to help needed insight into issues of poverty so they could reach out with wisdom and empathy. I realized I could help people who had power, money, and a desire to care and to understand more about people who live in poverty. I could help people with resources feel the challenges poverty creates, challenges far different from their own. I knew people wanted to know what kinds of questions to ask and which to avoid. I could help them learn to see the world with eyes opened beyond their own limited experiences. I knew people wanted to develop real relationships with people in need and to do more than simply write a check. I knew they wanted to feel good about helping others, and they wanted their help to build strength in the lives of the people to whom they reached out.

With this desire to increase understanding, I began to preach, teach, and write from the experience I had gained from listening to the program participants of United Ministries. Loving Our Neighbor: A Thoughtful Approach to Helping People in Poverty grew out of all the conversations, setbacks, and successes of the last quarter century. People who received services at United Ministries as well as those who participated in my workshops and seminars in the community challenged me. They, along with United Ministries’ board, volunteers, and staff, trusted me with deep questions. Members of congregations who listened to my sermons or participated in a Bible study, Sunday school class, or retreat guided me to new levels of understanding. Groups large and small gave me the platform to try to articulate and share all I was learning.

I had already developed handouts for use in our community. The next logical step was to write Loving Our Neighbor: A Thoughtful Approach to Helping People in Poverty.

The book is intentionally designed to be user friendly. It can be read cover to cover. It can be used over several sessions in a church school class, adult discussion group, or service committee conversation. Questions, worksheets,