In The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty (2013), Nina Munk offers a sympathetic yet critical review of the Millenium Villages Project. For six years, Munk followed Jeffrey Sachs as he launched his project. Sachs used his experience and success as a global economist to engage with development work.
He envisioned an integrated approach to international development with the ambitious goal of eradicating poverty. His approach to rural development in the majority world promised to offer a comprehensive approach for impoverished communities. Several organizations and sponsors donated millions to the project. Yet, as Munk relates, the project didn’t prove as successful as Sachs intended. In fact, she suggests that the local initiatives left the communities worse off.
It is hard to identify all the issues that may have led to this failure, but one central concern was Sachs’s deep-seated self-confidence (read: ego): his assumption that he saw what needed to change better than anyone else, including those he sought to help. Munk notes several instances when Sachs would ignore the opinions and insights of people who disagreed with him, particularly when they had significant experience in development. The scope of his self-confidence was breathtaking; he would engage in communities where other organizations had been working for years, but instead of consulting with them or trying to learn from their experience, he believed that he would accomplish what they had not. The sober reality was that he repeated the same mistake by assuming that an outsider can identify and fix people’s problems for them.
After reading Munk’s book, Bill Gates encouraged people in his foundation to read it, noting that it offered a valuable and at times heartbreaking cautionary tale. I encourage Christians to read the book — not just those in development work but every Christian who aspires to leadership. We may not have the same self-confidence as Sachs, but Christian leaders can take ourselves, our understanding, and the effect of our efforts far too seriously.
In his book Culture Making, Andy Crouch tackles the conceit of setting out to make a difference in other people’s lives. He suggests that the idea that we can be “world- changers” seems to have caught both the secular and the Christian imagination, with an ever-increasing number of books published on this topic. Christian conferences, mission organizations, and even campus ministry groups speak of changing the world. The idea that we are called to hope for our world and to be engaged in it with a desire to effect change is biblical and essential. But, Crouch warns us, “Beware of world changers — they have not yet learned the true meaning of sin.”[1] Crouch’s comment flags the complexities of seeking to effect change, given the comprehensive nature of human sin, as well as the corresponding lack of humility among those who set about changing the world.
Where this may strike closer to home is with the tendency of Christian leaders to assume that God has delegated the task of making a difference in the world to us. Before we protest that our fundamental confidence is in God and what he is doing in the world, we might consider the many ways in which we act as though it is all about us and our efforts. This is clear in how we practice ministry, from taking on too much, to not relying on or developing other leaders, to burnout. Christian leaders across the theological spectrum too often take ourselves and our efforts too seriously.
For some it leads to burnout, when we operate as though local ministry efforts are dependent on us and our efforts. For others it means that we run, or oversee, the majority of ministry initiatives ourselves, instead of inviting others into leadership. What might occur less often, but is just as sobering, is when a church is flourishing and we quietly put our confidence in our abilities or leadership even as we redirect the praise of others toward God in a self-deprecating manner.
I don’t remember many convocation speeches, but I remember James Houston delivering the convocation speech at Regent College many years ago. “As you graduate and transition into ministry positions, many of you will be imagining what your ministry might look like,” he said. “But you don’t have a ministry unless God gives it to you. Ministry is always a gift.” I have never forgotten what he said, although it has taken many years of ministry for me to understand what he was saying.
In the 20th century, the language of Missio Dei became, among other things, a corrective to what many saw as the root cause of colonialism in mission and development efforts: the assumption that good leaders know how to “fix” the world. The affirmation that it is God’s mission, not ours, puts things in the right order, relieving us of the presumption that mission belongs to us or depends on us. Christopher J.H. Wright realigns the way we tend to think about mission: “it is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission — God’s mission.”[2] Missio Dei encourages humility by affirming that mission always belongs to God. Our calling is not so much to take on mission, but to be attentive and responsive to what God is already doing in our world.
The Idealist serves as a cautionary tale. It is a reminder of how quickly we begin to see mission or ministry as ours rather than God’s.
[1] Crouch, Andy. Culture Making; Recovering our Creative Calling. Grand Rapids, MI: IVP, 2008. p 200
[2] Christopher J.H. Wright, “Mission as Matrix for Hermeneutics and Biblical Theology,” in Out of Egypt: Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Healy Bartholomew and Perry Moller (Zondervan, 2004), p. 133.
