Archive: Farewell to Welfare?
By Virgil E. Maybray, Executive Secretary of the Good News-related Evangelical Missions Council since 1976.
“Federal budget cuts provide an opportunity and challenge for the Church of Jesus Christ to fulfill her mission,” claims Virgil E. Maybray, Executive Secretary of the Evangelical Missions Council of Good News.
Proposed cutbacks in government spending for welfare programs have caused some alarm. Church benevolent organizations that have been the beneficiaries of federal funds are also concerned.
Anguish is heard in the land: “The needy will be neglected! The poor will be ignored!”
That should not be. Indeed, must not be. It need not be if the church will once again become the church. Our government got into the welfare business primarily because the church had abdicated her responsibility. The church failed; so the government stepped in.
As the church became more and more institutionalized and turned its attention inward, as we became more and more concerned with buildings and the preservation of the ecclesiastical organization, we became less and less concerned with individuals. We began to spend an ever-increasing percentage of our financial resources on ourselves. Because buildings and programs seemed to represent growth, progress, and success, they became a primrose path down which the devil easily led the church. Unfortunately, some of the most evangelical denominations are traveling the same road that United Methodism has been traveling the past 50 years.
Perhaps we should welcome every effort at alleviating suffering from whatever source it comes. Help from other sources, however, should never be an excuse for the church to withdraw from these ministries. Our Lord never commissioned the federal government or the United Nations to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or care for the fatherless and widows, but He did commission the church to do these things. It will be the church, not the government, that will stand in judgment for failure.
We must also recognize that when the government enters into welfare ministries there are many drawbacks. First, there is the simple matter of cost. When the government gets into any activity it always costs more than when the church does it. It is estimated that from 9 to 18 billion dollars for welfare programs is to be slashed from the federal budget. These same ministries could be performed by the church for much less. The church has always been able to do more with a dollar than government or secular agencies.
Second, when the government engages in social welfare programs they become very impersonal. Governments deal in statistics. The church deals with individuals. The more impersonal a program becomes the more it encourages waste and corruption and these, in turn, increase the cost of administering a program.
Third, and certainly most importantly for the church, when we withdraw from the social welfare scene we lose a glorious opportunity to witness for our Lord. We also lose an opportunity to witness to our Lord for He said, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it unto me.” Witnessing to the love of God, and our love for God, should always be our motivation.
Even when the church and government do some things jointly the church is robbed of an opportunity to witness. By its very nature, the government cannot be religious or sectarian. When the church seeks, and accepts, government help in her benevolent programs strict regulations are placed upon her, preventing the church from being the effective witness it might otherwise be.
When we accept government assistance for our benevolent programs we must also abide by government guidelines for employment practices. I was informed recently that there was a Jew and a Muslim on the staff of a certain church and community center. They were dedicated to human betterment, but they were not dedicated to Jesus Christ and making Him known and loved. In their ministry to human needs they could not speak to man’s deepest need. They could not speak a word for Jesus. The church could not say that their work was being done in the Name of Christ. We cannot honestly say that it was being done in the name of the United Methodist Church for only about one tenth of the total budget was church funded.
When we accept government aid for our benevolent programs we also subject the church to ridicule and scorn. The head of a United Methodist Community Center told me that the non-Christians on her staff never miss an opportunity to needle her because of the church’s failure to support its own benevolent programs.
One of the staff executives of our Board of Global Ministries privately lamented to me about having a Hindu and Buddhist working as part of the office staff. If we are not very effective in winning the world to Christ, it may be that we are trying to do it with persons who don’t know the One for whom we are laboring. As one district superintendent said, “Our trouble is we are trying to build the Kingdom with people who don’t love the King.”
The present reduction in government welfare spending may be a providential opportunity for the church once more to become the Church. We have an opportunity to fill the gap the government’s withdrawal will leave. The Rev. Woodie White, General Secretary of the Commission on Religion and Race, is quoted in the May, 1981 issue of Interpreter, as saying, “The church will have to come to the aid of the poor, the dispossessed, the needy, as perhaps never before.”
Thank God, some have already moved boldly in this direction. The April 10th issue of Texas Methodist/United Methodist Reporter carried an encouraging article about the efforts of a cluster of churches in Atlanta who minister to the people of their area. It is a story that can be repeated many times over – and should be by the media: first, to let the world know that the church is doing something good, and second, to encourage other churches to become so involved.
If “charity begins at home” and if, as Paul writes to Timothy (I Timothy 5:8) “… anyone does not take care of his relatives, especially the members of his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (TEV), then the first step to solving the problem of government welfare spending is for every Christian to take more seriously his responsibility for the members of his family. Before we overindulge, gratifying our personal desires, let us ask ourselves, “What are the needs of my family that I can meet?” Perhaps we need to broaden our sense of family so that it is greater than “me and my wife, my son and his wife, us four, no more, Amen.”
The next step, logically, would be to have greater concern and greater responsibility for the Family of God. Juan Carlos Ortiz, Pentecostal pastor in Argentina wrote in his book, Call to Discipleship:
We sought to put an end to poverty in our congregation. If we could not bring social justice to our own congregation, with people who had Bibles under their arms, we could never bring it to others. Social justice had to start within our congregation – the household of faith. This means it was unthinkable for one brother to have two TV sets while another brother didn’t even have a bed to sleep in. It was unthinkable for one person to have three cars while another person had to walk twenty blocks to catch a bus. We knew that only when we became living examples could we go with authority and tell them about social justice. (page 104)
Certainly it ought not to stop there! We ought not to turn our attention to the needy of the world only after we have adequately cared for our own. As with home and foreign missions, the two should be carried on simultaneously. Our care for our immediate family, our care for the Family of God, and our care for all God’s children everywhere should be but parts of the total ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Asking the church to take up the slack caused by cutbacks in government welfare spending may seem like an overwhelming and nearly impossible task. Jesus, when confronted by a hungry multitude, (Matthew tells us, “five thousand men, besides women and children”) says simply to His disciples, “You feed them.” The disciples would have sent them away into the surrounding villages to seek bread as we too, in the past, have sent them away to government agencies.
As we have said, the figures for federal cutback in welfare spending vary from 9 to 18 billion dollars. Even if we use the outside figure, that still is not an impossible task for the church. It is reported in the 1980 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches that there are 128 million Americans aligned with some branch of the Christian church. This means that it would cost each professing Christian about $140 per year—even if it cost us as much to do the job as it does the government! No great sacrifice that! Many of us are spending more than that on personal pleasures. Unfortunately, at this point the Christian has allowed the world to press him into its own mold (Romans 12:1,2, Phillips). We have convinced ourselves that we, too, must live at an economic level far above what we could or should live. When a needy world cries out and our Lord says, “deny yourself,” we have indulged ourselves and justified it!
Let every church survey its own neighborhood and seek out those who are in need of ministry. Let every church examine its budget and ask some hard questions about its spending priorities. In light of the needs of the world and the opportunities for witness, let every disciple take a long hard look at his/her own personal spending and ask whether the God we love and serve would rather have the government or the church do it!
I know that it looks like an impossible task, but there is no doubt in my mind that God has provided His people with the resources to do whatever needs to be done for His world. God will again multiply the resources we have. If we don’t have the resources, He does! All we need to do is step out in faith and become involved in the needs of the world, allowing ourselves to be the channel for His blessing.
But if someone who is supposed to be a Christian has money enough to live well, and sees a brother in need and won’t help him – how can God’s love be within him? Little children, let us stop just saying we love people; let us really love them, and show it by our actions. (I John 3:17,18, Living Bible)
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