No announcements found.No announcements found.No announcements found.No announcements found.“Death creates an economy that makes life precious. One of the ways of naming that preciousness is friendship.”
Stanley Hauerwas
Stanley Hauerwas
Christianity and AID work – what’s the connection?
Fiona McLeay
At the onset of major crises like the recent hurricane in Burma or earthquake in China, armies of aid workers magically appear ready and able to provide assistance with desperately needed fresh water, food parcels, medicine, shelter and clothing. These high profile events can at times obscure the longer-term projects carried out by the same groups dedicated to broad development such as child sponsorship, micro enterprise development, health care, education and community-building enterprises. It is a mixed bag of government and private agencies - some more effective than others. Many, but by no means all, emerge from a strong base of religious belief. I work for World Vision Australia, which is an aid and development NGO with an explicit Christian ‘faith base’ to its mission and values. The role of religion and in development is thus one that we wrestle with every day.
| My question is ‘does the religious (in our case, Christian) connotation
of an NGO make any difference? Should it make a difference to the way
things are done and the projects that are undertaken? The short answer,
in my view, is a definite ‘Yes’. But how and why does it make a
difference? Most people in Australia are familiar with the work of World Vision. But the Christian ‘faith base’ is less well known. The organisation was founded in the early 1950s by American pastor, Bob Pierce. During the 1960s, World Vision expanded its activities in response to the needs of refugees from Indochina and those affected by natural disasters in Bangladesh and several African countries. As part of this expansion, World Vision Australia was established in 1966. World Vision Australia (WVA) today is part of the global World Vision partnership, which works in about 100 countries (with a physical presence in about 80 of these).1 |
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All offices share a common vision:
| Our vision for every child, life in all its fullness. Our prayer for every heart, the will to make it so. |
The first part of the statement ‘ … life in all its fullness …’ references one of the central claims that Jesus made about his own mission – that He came ‘that they may have life, and have it to the full’.2 Immediately you can see from this that the work of WVA is about more than just social or economic development. As a faith based NGO, we assert that there is a spiritual element to development; that people are more than just matter and mind, but that they have heart and soul needs as well.
| The second part of our vision statement reflects our core commitment to
changing the hearts and minds of those with power, influence and
resources. The change we seek is reflected in the prayer of our
founder Bob Pierce – ‘Let my heart be broken by the things that break
the heart of God’.3
WVA seeks a ‘heart change’ in others to bring about a fundamental
change of perspective. This entails seeing the world as it really is –
with its pain and promise, and seeking to be part of what Christians
understand as God’s plan for its renewal. You can see in both the vision statement and Pierce’s prayer the roots of our philosophy of development – what we call ‘transformational development’. The aim is to see transformation in the people we work with, the people who support us in the work, and indeed ourselves. This understanding of what development means influences both the method we take to bring about development and how we view ‘success’. |
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Wrapping around the whole vision statement is the motivator for our work – our Christian commitment. This Christian commitment is in turn lived out through love. Many other Christian aid organisations have similar aims and motivations to ours. Jesus, when asked which was the most important of the Ten Commandments, took the opportunity to restate the entire law into two principles:
| Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and
with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbour
as yourself.4 |
This love of God and love of neighbour – this intimacy with God and involvement with others – is to underlie all Christian action.5 And as the story of the Good Samaritan makes clear, our neighbour is not simply the person who lives next door, but is anyone who needs love and compassion.6 This includes not just family, or friends or even fellow countrymen, but encompasses our enemies too.
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