Futility or Effectiveness?

After reading about the Church in America’s anemic response to the problem of extreme poverty in Richard Stearns’ landmark book, The Hole in Our Gospel, we began talking with people – lots of people.  And in these conversations, a common thread quickly emerged.  That is, many people would like to help the world’s poorest, but have some very legitimate concerns about the real-world effectiveness of giving to address extreme poverty.  In other words, many want to give, but are afraid that their gifts won’t really make any difference.  It is this sense of futility that keeps many of us from acting on the biblical mandate to help the least and the last… on the sidelines, out of the game.

The concerns responsible for this sense of futility – we call them roadblocks – are reasonable and serious, and deserve to be addressed.  These concerns have to do with:

• the seemingly insurmountable size and scope of the problem of extreme poverty;
• the well-known stories of waste, fraud, corruption, unintended consequences, and ineffectiveness that have surrounded many efforts to help the least and last;
• the frustration experienced by those who would prefer to give through their churches, but realize that only a tiny percentage of their contributions go to serve the world’s poorest.

Truly, these are legitimate concerns.  For those who wish to exercise their stewardship privileges intelligently and responsibly, they are formidable roadblocks indeed.

But the story doesn’t have to end there, with God’s people on the sidelines.
Each of these concerns, or roadblocks, has a sound, workable, biblically grounded solution – a proven solution. Dismantling these roadblocks is one of the driving purposes behind our work at Givers by Design — the articles located under the Effective Giving tab deal with these roadblocks and their solutions;
we encourage you to check them out!