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DEVELOPMENT

During March and April of 2004 I spent nearly 4 weeks at Equip Ministries in Marion, North Carolina. It is a non-denominational training facility and demonstration farm to prepare missionaries to work in Third World countries. Recognizing that most young missionaries going out to the field today probably don’t know how to make their own bread, rehydrate a dehydrated infant, build a latrine, raise chickens or do their own slaughtering, Equip endeavors to give missionaries hands-on training.

I am writing this letter because I am excited to share with you what I have learned at Equip Ministries over the past few weeks. I don’t mean to teach or instruct, but my intent is to show you what I have learned. As you read over this, I am looking to inform you of my deepened understanding of God’s plan for the church and for myself.

I want to share some of the philosophies of development that I learned during the Equip courses. Those who know me well know that I devour learning how things work. I find great joy in building things with my hands and solving all kinds of problems. We learned a lot of excellent, practical skills. Yet what we were taught in the classroom setting of God’s concern for the poor and needy captured my interest even more than all of the really cool, hands-on stuff.

God is concerned with the poor and the needy. The “spiritual development” sessions taught by the farm’s director, Barrie, showed us numerous examples throughout the Bible of God caring for the needy. Since Barrie shared this with us, I have found references to the monetarily poor all over the place. For example, I was listening to the book of Job and one of Job’s “proofs” of his faith is that he treated the poor, the fatherless, the widow and the stranger well. Every practical thing we were taught at Equip is to be directly applied to helping the poor and the needy.

We were challenged to think of the Gospel in terms of salvation of the whole person. When we bring Jesus into the community - relationships, finances, food and health should all be addressed by the Gospel that we bring. The goal isn’t to get people saved before they die; it is to help find ways for people to live a healthy, prosperous life so they are then enabled to share the Gospel with others. We are to encourage the villagers to teach others all that we have taught them – knowing Jesus; good nutrition and health care; food production; and other life skills. I had to struggle with how I perceive the Gospel because I never thought of it in terms of the whole person.

When bringing the gospel to a community you can demonstrate the wisdom and compassion of God by using His word as a guideline for taking care of human health and spiritual needs. We will use sanitation as an example. God, knowing that people get sick from raw sewage, told the Israelites what to do with their human waste so the community would not get sick from it. In the Bible, God also tells us how to take care of skin rashes, how to prepare food safely, and how to live in relationship with others. An example of this approach is as follows:

Missionaries arrived in a village. They lived among the people for awhile and saw poor sanitation, poor nutrition, and high infant mortality. After a time, they gathered the people together and asked them to determine their greatest need. The villager’s response was shocking. “We need a soccer field.” The hearts of the missionaries said, “There are many babies dying.” The missionaries asked about this, and the reply was, “Babies die. This is not a problem. We are used to this.” The missionaries asked where the soccer field could be built. Land was donated by villagers. After a time, villagers reported that people were using the soccer field for a toilet area. The missionaries asked how the problem could be solved. A location was determined for a latrine, and it was built. As more latrines were erected, village health improved. As problems began to be solved, the missionaries showed the villagers a Book which had practical answers to all of their problems. Gradually the missionaries introduced God’s Word to the village by showing how it applies to everyday life. The missionaries did not impose their perceived priorities on the villagers. Rather, because the problems and solutions were the ones determined by the villagers, the villagers took ownership of the solutions.

Equip Ministries teaches Community Health Evangelism. This is not going overseas and doing “church planting” – the familiar model of evangelism to us. Rather, the missionary is encouraged to go among the poor and impoverished and live life with them. As the villagers come to accept the missionary simply living in their presence, the missionary is able to gradually introduce better nutrition and health practices. Meanwhile, the missionary is demonstrating the life and servanthood of Jesus.

In both the Medical Missions Intensive and in Food Production we addressed nutritional assessment and needs. In the first course I learned how to medically care for myself, other missionaries on the team, and villagers. The course was two weeks study from early mornings until late at night, focusing on tropical diseases. We had to do a lot of algebra to do drug calculations. Along with the diagnostic procedures and treatments, we had hands on labs. We learned to make splints and casts, set broken bones, and give injections (surface, intramuscular and subcutaneous). We also learned how to insert catheters (no, we didn’t actually practice on a person, as we did with the injections.) Toughest for me was the NG tube, which is the stomach tube which goes up your nose, down your throat and into your stomach. When someone put that into my already - sore throat, I couldn’t eat for a few hours! We also learned how to be midwives. (Nothing we learned about midwifery applied to the cow birth we witnessed during Food Production!)

In the second course I was introduced to many different facets of food production and preservation.

For instance, if you introduce goats to a village you provide meat and milk. The milk can be used to produce various forms of cheese. Turning the milk into other products increases its shelf life, aiding in the preservation of food. The cheese will last longer than the goat milk itself, and can be used in additional products. Organizations such as The Heifer Project make farm animals available to families.

In a number of places, burnable material for a fire to cook food is extremely difficult to obtain. Equip taught us how we can make simple stoves that burn wood very efficiently. We can then teach a villager how to make these extremely efficient stoves, giving them a trade to support their family. (I made one in the backyard as soon as I got home!)

I understand better how to teach nationals how to grow, harvest, preserve, and add value to their foods. Missionaries can teach nationals the skills they need to support themselves. The Gospel is for every aspect of life. For many people of the world, there is no perception of a future. Many native languages don’t have a future tense. The people only know the past and the present. Thus, they don’t think in terms of ways to invest in the land and produce beyond the needs of the day. The Gospel offers them a future.

Source: Mercy Ships Newsletter – August 2003

From March to June 2003, Mercy Ships Community Development Services worked in D’Ando-Agbadzanake, a village area an hour and a half from the port of Lome, Togo, training locals in water, sanitation, healthcare and hygiene. The team also supervised the construction of a clinic and schools. Mercy Ships helped organize construction on a school building. Over 200 locals from the villages pitched in, carrying sand and supplies. Local masons and carpenters worked together with Mercy Ships team members.

The water and sanitation team, led by a local man, worked with 20 men from seven villages. Mercy Ships provided training as well as some of the materials. The villagers provided labor and local materials, as well as some finances to solidify their involvement and contribution to the latrine project.

“By having villages involved with their people as well as with a little money it gives them a buy-in to the project. At the end of the day, we want this to belong to them, not to Mercy Ships. When the villagers understood the concept that they had to be involved themselves, that this wasn’t just a project that would be done for them by outsiders, they liked the idea. They realize with the training the representatives have, they have something to offer to other communities. With the knowledge they have, they can really make a difference in the health and welfare of this region.”

In another area, 54 women attended classes to learn practical and theoretical skills. They desired to learn skills like soap making and bread-making that would help them profit from resources already available to them. The team also addressed health issues – a nurse spent her days advising Abbadzanake’s traditional birth attendants.

“We started the women’s projects in Sierra Leone when we realized we had vocational training for men and none for women.”

Students are now in possession of rich resources that will benefit them, their families, and ultimately their villages.

Source: Christian Relief and Development, Edgar Elliston, ed; World Publishers, page 17:

Willis Banks, an obscure Presbyterian evangelist who worked in a backward area of Southern Brazil, showed concern for the economic development of the people to whom he ministered. He built the first brickyard in the area, brought children to live with his family, taught them to read and sent them out to teach others. Using a home medical guide, he treated infections, tuberculosis, malaria, worms, and malnutrition. He introduced better methods of agriculture and care of livestock. He built the first sawmill in the area and constructed machinery to cut silage.

An anthropologist visiting the area 20 years after Bankes’s death recounted a striking illustration of the community development which resulted. He visited two isolated villages, both situated in virtually identical circumstances with inhabitants of the same racial and cultural backgrounds. One was Presbyterian and had benefited from Banks’s evangelism and leadership in community development. The other continued to follow the traditional folk Catholicism.

The people of Volta Grande were Presbyterians. They lived in brick and wooden houses. They used water filters and in some cases had home-produced electricity. They owned canoes and motor launches for travel to a nearby city. They cultivated vegetables along with the traditional rice, beans, corn, manioc, and bananas. They had two small herds of diary cattle and produced and consumed milk, cheese and butter. They received and read newspapers, had the Bible and other books readily available , and all were literate. The community had pooled its resources to build a school and donated it to the state with the stipulation that a teacher be provided and paid. Consequently, there was an excellent primary school there, and many of its graduates continued their studies in the city. Religious services were held three times a week even though the pastor visited only once a month.

On the other hand, the inhabitants of Jipoura lived in daub and wattle houses with no furniture. They engaged only in marginal agriculture. They did not boil or filter their water. They had no canoes, used tiny kerosene lamps for light, and were mostly illiterate. There was a school which had been donated to the community by a few Japanese families who had once lived in the area, but the people showed no interest in maintaining it and had ruined the building by stealing its doors and windows. leisure time was filled by playing cards and drinking Cachac, a kind of cheap sugarcane rum. Alcoholism was common.