Can You Measure Spiritual Impact?

My wife and I often visit our friends in Breckenridge, Colorado. We love the beauty of the mountains and enjoy our friends immensely. Their 8-year old son, Nathan, is a terrific source of entertainment. During a recent dinner conversation, Nathan informed us about his Little League baseball season. He rattled off the scores of his team’s last few games. His parents quickly stopped him, interjecting that the league and coaches don’t actually keep track of scores.

Nathan retorted, “We all keep score anyway. We always keep score.”

I smiled, thinking back to my own youth baseball experience when I did the exact same thing. Sure there were no scoreboards, but every single kid on the diamond knew the score.  Why? Because we want to know how we’re doing. It’s more than just winning and losing. We want a tangible measure of our performance. Are we succeeding? Are we catching up? How bad is it? Keeping score answers those questions.

In working with the poor, many times it’s easy to justify not keeping score. After all, we’re trying to help people. Isn’t that enough? I’m not sure it is. I think we need to keep score. It’s not about knowing if we’re winning. Even if the score illuminates we are losing, at least we have a gauge of how we’re doing.

It is particularly challenging to measure spiritual impact. At HOPE, it is straightforward to track financial metrics. We measure repayment rates, savings balances, client retention and a slew of other data points. It is much more challenging to gauge whether our work impacts the spiritual climate of the communities and families we serve. It’s hard and it’s also controversial to suggest we can measure spiritual impact when we know that only God sees the heart.

This month, a conference with a bold title—Spiritual Metrics—is gathering to discuss these issues. I believe it is possible and critical that we measure our spiritual impact. While we can only “see in a mirror dimly,” dimly is better than not at all.

We aren’t perfect in our measurement, but at least we know how many clients have been given a copy of God’s word, how consistently our staff gathers for devotions, and how many churches we actively partner with. It takes creativity, but per the old management axiom, what gets measured gets done. We need to keep score to remain accountable to what we are uniquely positioned to do as Christian organizations. Just like Nathan’s baseball team, we need to keep score.

Help the Poor …and Promote Alcoholism

“Moonshine or the Kids?” Nicholas Kristof, writer for the New York Times, stimulated much uneasiness with this question in his recent column on global poverty. He said:

“There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous: It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.”

Kristof went on to cite some clear data to highlight this disturbing “ugly secret.” At the same time I read this article, I heard a radio report about the rising prices of vodka in Russia. In the report, they interviewed an unemployed man who was frustrated by the rising prices. He said, “I just so desperately need to find a job so I can afford to buy more vodka.” The comment stuck with me. We work in Russia and I wondered if this man had ever attempted to start a business through HOPE to “grow his family’s income.”

It’s easy to romanticize the decision-making of poor people. Of course they’ll choose to send their kids to school over sending for a prostitute. Of course they’ll choose to feed their kids breakfast before feeding their alcohol addiction. But what makes us think that? What makes us wrongly assume that they don’t deal with the same brokenness that we do? This article and radio report made me uncomfortable as I contemplated whether HOPE’s work had ever helped poor Russians buy more vodka.

I’m more convinced than ever that helping people materially is not enough. Helping is enabling. My friend, Dr. Rob Gailey, articulated it more clearly. He said that “economic development is about increasing people’s choices.” If we help an alcoholic poor person – and there is no heart change – we will simply enable him to buy higher qualities and quantities of alcohol. Without heart change, as the BBC reported, helping families in India might actually be enabling them to perform sex-selection abortions, a problem which “prosperity is actually aggravating.”

In a sense, we could be enabling the oppressed to become the oppressors if we do not speak to more than business decisions. True change happens when we promote biblical values, boldly communicating the truth of the Gospel. Income growth is important, but it is only when hearts and minds are transformed that we will we see true change happen. When I hear stories like that of Mama Flores (video below), a salon owner who has trained and employed over 15 orphans through her business success, I am energized that our approach answers the unsettling questions which Kristof asks.

Atheist Supports Evangelism

Matthew Parris, an award-winning columnist with a prominent British newspaper, wrote this in a recent column:

 Travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: One I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good. (emphasis mine)

What a powerful proposition Parris suggests. I agree with him strongly, as does my organization, HOPE International. We believe his comments are the reason Christ-centered organizations are so important in Africa. Still, it is confounding to read this from an atheist. Essentially, what Parris says compares to Mitt Romney making a comment like this in a primary debate: “You know, I believe I’m a great candidate, but I just think Rick Perry is better prepared and will be more effective than me at bringing about the type of change we need in America.”

It’s laughable to think about. Yet, this is what Parris says. Despite that he whole-heartedly believes there is no God, he supports and believes in the work of Christian organizations in Africa because of the transformation which only God can bring. We have seen this clearly demonstrated around the globe. The transformative message of Christ coupled with an effective and empowering method of helping is a dynamic combination.

As a decidedly Christian organization, we are actually able to add tremendous value to the lives of our clients because of our Christian-ness. And Parris, an atheist, seems to agree. In other words, HOPE is not just a Christianized knock-off version of bigger secular organizations. HOPE’s faith-based approach is much more than that – it’s ultimately the singularly most-important characteristic of our work.