Today I recently received an appeal from a missionary working in a poor country who wanted me to consider sending a donation to support national pastors.  The missionary stated, “This country is economically devastated.  The churches do not yet have the finances to support their pastor full-time… we need to channel financial gifts to them each month.”  I can relate to this, because I too have sent out appeal letters for my African friends and ministers living in poverty.  For many years I helped train ministers and plant churches in the midst of absolute poverty and can tell you the needs are real.

However, even if every one of us sends a donation it does not solve the problem of their living in a continual state of poverty.   I assure you that unless we look for a lasting solution we are in most cases creating dependency.  To be honest, this perpetual donor-mentality, even though it is well intentioned, creates more problems than it solves.

During the nearly two decades I spent working as a missionary, it was my privilege to work alongside called and anointed Ugandan believers, nearly all of whom were living under the heavy burden of extreme poverty.   My approach was to mobilize funding from churches and concerned individuals in the States which was then used to buy land, help build buildings, support national ministers, and subsidize other activities.  This seemed to generally be the way missions worked in the 80s and the 90s, and those of us that were there know that in many if not most cases there was a dependence on funding from wealthy overseas churches.  Even though this might not have been the best way to do things, a great harvest of souls was reaped during those years. 

My wife and I were recently in a conference in Uganda with approximately 100 African ministers from five different nations.  In addition to planning and strategizing for future outreach, I wanted to hear from them.  When they shared their hearts with me, 90% of their input seemed to always revolve around the issue of financial provision and the horrible toll poverty has taken on their families and congregations.  We even found out another 100 ministers we invited were unable to attend the conference because they simply could not afford the cost of bus fare.  One Ugandan pastor said, “The poorest are the ministers of the gospel.  Many in our nation believe the church is just for poor people.”   Hearing this broke my heart.  They were poor when I first met them in the early 80’s, and most of them are still poor.  I know it’s God’s will for them to prosper, so what went wrong?

I want to begin by saying "thank you!" to everyone who helped make our recent five-day conference in Uganda a huge success.  It was truly a powerful time of minstry, fellowship, and interaction.  We had right at 100 delegates, all of whom were bishops, overseers, pastors, and senior elders who represented literally hundreds of churches.  Bishop Roman Okware, who was in charge of organizing everything did an excellent job.  He was thrilled with the leadership quality of the men and women who attended.  We had a good group from Burundi, and good groups from Rwanda and Tanzania, along with a bishop from Kenya.  So we were talking to the right people.

I spent the first day sharing vision and talking about the importance of coming together in unity as ministers and churches.  Unlike many independents in America, these Africans ministers did not seem to have an independent spirit and were very interested in building long-term relationships that would enable them to strengthen one another.  They all agreed that building a community of churches and ministers committed to working together would greatly facilitate reaching the unreached areas of Africa.  I explained that I was not returning to Africa to be the "Bwana Kubwa" (the big boss), but would make myself available to help and serve in any way that I could, and would try to network them with American churches and ministries who had a vision to do something in Africa.

In Luke chapter 4, Jesus went to the Temple on the Sabbath day, stood up and began to read from the scroll.  It was an announcement of His mission and began with the words, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor..."  

During the 1970's, the nation of Uganda, once known as the "Pearl of Africa", was ravaged under the cruel dictatorship of Idi Amin.  Those nightmare years were followed by regimes not much better whose soldiers openly pillaged and plundered the countryside.  This was the state of affairs when I arrived in 1983 with my young wife and six-week old son.  The economy, if you could even call it that, was in shambles with the vast majority of the population living in fear and extreme poverty.  Truly God's hand of grace and protection was upon us during those terrible years.  As hard as it was for us, it was even more difficult for the Ugandans who were in a fight for survival.  They not only had to contend with the volatile situation in the nation, but with the devastating effects of horrible poverty.