Recently, Living Hope held a training session from an outside organization who's doing fabulous work in South Africa. They call themselves Warehouse (http://www.warehouse.org.za/index.php). This past year, I've been captivated by tools and strategies for helping relieve poverty - not just our outward eye-view of physical poverty, but emotional, spiritual, mental poverty. I've been reading, collecting ideas, thoughts, transforming personal ministry practices in these areas. The Warehouse's philosophy and tools hit me right where I'm at. God is so good about bringing the right people at the right time!
My favorite part of the training was identifying the 10 Human Needs. This list classifies and helps identify how people react and 'make up for' the lack of certain 'human needs' which lead to poverty mentality.
The 10 Basic Human Needs:
Participation
Creation
Affection
Identity
Understanding
Protection
Freedom
Subsistence (working, being useful)
Idleness (rest)
Spirituality (relationship to God)
After talking about these in depth, many 'poverty actions' came to mind. For instance, it always bothered me that during the month of December for Christmas Celebrations, families will spend hundreds of Rand on name-brand shoes for their children or new, expensive dresses for Christmas parties. I didn't understand why they would spend their December monthly income on such extravagant items. Why is the child down the road literally going without food for days, yet wearing Nike shoes? When studying the Warehouse method of identifying Human Needs, I now understand that some of these families will overcompensate in one area to overlook another. They spend their money on outward acceptance (name brand shoes) so that people will look at them as if they're able to provide for their children, they're able to afford 'extras.' When they step out of Capricorn, people won't look 'down' on them or judge their physical appearance. Essentially saying, "people's view of them is more important than their basic need for food and daily sustenance." And yes, the clothes wear out, the cycle continues ... I can go on and on about how all of us compensate for the lack of our Human Needs. This list and other training from Warehouse gave me tangible ways to spot these needs; they showed us how to prioritize ministry. They gave us ways to approach the community and ask individuals their opinions in order to gain favor with the locals and provide local-involved ministry (empowering the individual that you really want to engage and minister to)!
That's just a preview of my lessons learned. More to come. I urge you to soak in this lesson as well!
No comments:
Post a Comment