What will have a lasting impact?

The Dilemma: 

Here’s the way I see it: We can focus on issues, or we can focus on people. We can focus on projects or we can focus on hearts. 

Both are good, don’t get me wrong. But when it comes to sharing the Word of God, the people need to precede the issues and the hearts need to precede the projects. Would I like to see change in Uganda? Oh, how I would! Here are a few things I would like to see change, both here and around the world: 

• less corrupt government
• people being honest about themselves and one another
• parents believing in the abilities of their children
• no more abandoned children
• less theft
• people not sabotaging a place when they leave it
• no witch doctors
• better education
• access to clean water for everyone
• less poverty
• more respect

Those are just a few. Now, I can choose one or two and try to tackle it on my own, but I can see problems with that. For example, I wouldn’t know where to start when it comes to making the government less corrupt. I know what should change, but how does a foreign white girl go about changing politics in Africa? There are so many people involved and I don’t know a single one. I could picket I suppose, or do some sort of protest, but that’s not really my style anyway. 

Some things would be possible to handle on a smaller scale. Theft, for instance. I have had children steal from me. I have known children to steal from others. I can reprimand them and punish them so they are scared of stealing again. 

Or I can discuss with them why it is wrong. 

When it comes down to it, most things are heart issues. Look at that list again—if everyone obeyed Jesus’ commands (without focusing specifically on any of those issues), how many would no longer be issues? No more theft. No more corruption. More respect. No more abandoned children. People being honest. It is my belief that once people’s hearts are changed, they will address the issues themselves. After all, someday the youth and children are going to be running the nation. If they learn how to follow Christ while they are young, then when they become old and enter government they have a solid foundation on which to stand. 

The Question: 

With that in mind, I ask myself: What will have a lasting impact? 

Years ago I got together with a friend at a coffee shop and spent a good portion of the conversation telling her why I wanted to go to Africa and how much poverty there broke my heart. After my friend left, a woman from the next table over tapped me on the shoulder. She said she had been eavesdropping (finally, someone who admits it) and wanted to tell me about a program she had heard of, or maybe one she was involved in. It involved providing food for starving Africans, which sounded great! 

As soon as she left I got out my laptop and looked up the program. On the one hand, it had a compelling and impressive video illustrating the amount of food given to refugees or people in need in different parts of the world. It had statistics about the number of people who die each day from starvation and how many airplanes they could fill (because numbers on their own never mean much to us). And it said lots of good things about the food packets given out daily in these places. 

Now, I am all for keeping people alive, and I know food is a necessary part of that. But this “solution” was only a band-aid. If you feed them today, chances are you will have to feed them tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. What is the saying? “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” 

There are a lot of relief organizations that do a lot of good things. The problem with those, however, is that they address problems that already exist. What if we were to be proactive and try to attack these problems at the root so they fall out of existence altogether? 

Like I said, it’s a heart issue. 

Jesus was a smart guy. Sure, he fed masses of people at a time, but even then it wasn’t about the food. It was about Him. It was about what He was doing and what He could do. The food was merely an illustration of that. It was never His goal. 

Jesus, God-on-earth, spent three years pouring into not the whole world, and not an entire nation—twelve people. I know families here that are bigger than that. He did not make campaigns and hold protests (unless you count turning the tables in the temple, but I would call that more of a fit of righteous passion), He did not start food banks and He did not become king or president so He could change the world from the top down. 

Jesus ate with sinners. He healed blind men sitting by the side of the road. He taught the truth. And He spent most of His time educating and discipling a select few. Twelve, to be exact. A select twelve. 

Jesus taught them how to do life by doing life with them. 

Maybe you have seen those charts that show if you make two disciples, and they each make two more, and they make two more (so on and so forth), how quickly disciples can multiply. The chart makes a big, beautiful pyramid. And maybe you know someone (or maybe you are someone) who looks at that and says, “Yeah, but not everyone is going to make more disciples. The numbers will never add up like that. You can’t expect people to do so much.” While that is sometimes true, I ask you to look at Christianity. Jesus taught twelve. There are a lot more than twelve Christ followers in the world today. Something in that system worked. Jesus figured out how to have a lasting impact. 

The Point: 

This post began as an attempt to flesh out a personal vision statement for my ministry here, so let me finally get to the point with which I intended to start: education and discipleship. 

I have been here for over two years and been thrown into (and volunteered for maybe one or two) lots of different roles: librarian, reading tutor, head of the holiday program, cantata organizer, small-ish-part-time youth leader, disciple-maker, art teacher, dance teacher, guitar teacher. Some I like, some I don’t, some I am still doing and some I am not. Some days it is rewarding and some days I fail to see the point. Honestly, I think it’s like a lot of normal jobs. 

As I was trying to come up with a succinct way to say all that, I realized everything I do falls into one of two categories: education or discipleship. That doesn’t mean everything I do takes place in a school or a church. It does mean every craft, dance class, reading student and cantata performance is a method through which I get to teach and/or disciple the next generation so that (hopefully) someday they can tackle those bigger issues we all wish we could solve. 

(Keep an eye out for my next post to see what that looks like on a practical level.)