Aside from the urgency of sharing the gospel, perhaps no other issue challenges the Church and its mission like poverty.
The poor are all around us: in our churches, our communities and throughout our world. More than 45 million Americans and 900,000 Alabamians live at or below the poverty line, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Another 1.2 billion people around the world live in extreme poverty — subsisting on less than $1.25 per day, according to the United Nations.
The issues surrounding poverty and poverty relief are complex, according to Ryan Hankins, executive director of M-POWER Ministries, a faith-based social services agency in Birmingham. Even understanding what poverty actually is can be difficult, he said.
“Poverty is everywhere and it looks different everywhere,” Hankins said. “Poverty in Birmingham is different than poverty in Africa or in Boston or in Perry County. Wealth in one community is middle class in another community and poverty in another.”
Poverty generally is characterized by an individual’s lack of money, goods or means of support. However, it is wrong to think about poverty only in financial terms, argues Ruby K. Payne, an educational consultant and author of “A Framework for Understanding Poverty.”
“The reality is that financial resources, while extremely important, do not explain the differences in the success with which individuals leave poverty nor the reasons that many stay in poverty,” Payne writes.
Payne asserts that factors such as literacy, physical health, a dependable and trustworthy support system and appropriate relationships and role models are just as important. The presence of these resources can help individuals leave poverty; the lack of them often means staying in poverty.
The Church is usually good at providing relief in the form of financial resources like food, clothing and emergency assistance but much less effective in meeting the long-term needs that help individuals move out of poverty. Meeting long-term needs requires an investment in relationship building, said Bethany Rushing, director of development at M-POWER.
“If we’re going to be like the church in Acts, where nobody had any needs (Acts 4:34), we have to get involved and ask questions: Do you need a ride to work? Do you need someone to watch your children? We have to look for practical ways to serve the poor in daily life,” Rushing said.
That means putting aside the idea that anyone who works hard enough can maintain or improve their financial situation and recognizing how circumstances can play a role in poverty, Hankins said.
Different circumstances
“Put yourself in a situation where you lose your job. Maybe you’ve got some money in the bank, a safe home and a good church family who will bring you food. It’s an inconvenience but you know how to manage it,” Hankins said.
“But what if you’ve just moved to a new city and don’t know anybody. And you lose your job. And you get a cancer diagnosis. It doesn’t take too many of those times for an inconvenience to become a crisis.”
Such cases of situational poverty may be hard to recognize, according to Payne, since those who find themselves facing a crisis after a death, job loss, divorce or chronic illness may refuse help or deny there is a problem. However, these individuals usually have some resources (education and/or family support, for example) or at least a working knowledge of the resources that might be available. In these cases the Church, when it knows of the situation, can often step in and provide resources to help.
In contrast generational poverty is defined as having been in poverty for at least two generations. The generationally poor have fewer resources, fewer role models and weaker support systems, according to Payne.
For the Church, they also present a more complicated challenge.
One common misperception — perhaps the most hurtful — is the assumption that the person who is poor, hungry or homeless is not a Christian, Hankins said.
“People seldom say that, but it’s evident when churches or ministries say things like ‘we don’t want to just meet their physical needs, we want to share with them the hope of Christ.’ That’s a wonderful, right thing to do, but it suggests that the person who has physical needs doesn’t know the hope of Christ. That may not be true,” Hankins said.
Taken a step further, that idea can suggest that a lack of faith is what got the person into a difficult situation, Hankins said.
Reconciled to the Father
“The implication is that if you knew Jesus, you wouldn’t be poor, hungry or sick. It opens up theological paths that believers don’t want to go down and suggests potentially that Jesus came to just feed and heal people. In truth Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father. There is nothing in Scripture that says that being reconciled to the Father also prevents you from being hungry.”
So while the poor may in fact need spiritual guidance, breaking the cycle of poverty also is about helping people develop tools and resources, Hankins said. Two things that help individuals move out of poverty are education and relationships.
Rushing said, “We get asked here, frequently by volunteers who are church members, ‘I know that you help people, you teach people to read, but when do you do ministry?’ What M-POWER does — adult literacy tutoring, GED programs, career readiness and health care — it’s all ministry.”
“People in a situation of poverty have decided they want their lives to look different and we are helping meet their needs in a practical, helpful way so that can happen.”
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