It strikes me as I browse among these pages and look at the different organizations represented here, that the truly holistic charity is harder to find. There are a number of purely secular relief and development agencies listed, but comparatively few also emphasize a missional or ministerial approach. We know from experience that scores of organizations are involved in mission work alone, and some of us may even be pursuing this career because we sensed that the Gospel by itself is not enough. What is it that has made religious work and social work so difficult to combine in the professional and organizational context?

Some of it, apparently, would be ideology. The western world has for a long time (with changes now, thank goodness) been the hotbed of mission sending agencies and organizations dedicated to spreading Christianity as a religion around the globe. At the same time, societies that emphasized a free market economy, personal freedom, prosperity, and a health and wealth gospel, have been reluctant to turn their eyes towards issues that might ruffle their feathers…make them uncomfortable…ask them to give something up. Poverty and pain, in these societies, is so much easier to ignore. It then stands, due to historical economic and social trends, that these two societies happen to be one and the same – hence we have had mission work, without relief and development.

As far as believers go, it also seems that the people nearest the pain – who do bear the gospel and do carry compassionate spirits – have been those who were least in the position to start agencies and organizations. Surely countless numbers of believers who live within the context of the developing world have managed to combine the life of ministry with the life of social justice. Yet these efforts seem more to be grassroots; the Christ-believing farmer who gives a beggar some corn…the house-church pastor who takes in some frightened migrant neighbors. This work would not afford itself to becoming an international organization; it is the way of life led between one man and the next. (Another topic would be whether this, in fact, is where true holistic community development occurs.)

Continuing to explore the relative shortage of international agencies that have set out to perform holistic community transformation, we must consider relief and development – without mission. A number of organizations are government based and government funded, and are thus limited in the amount of religious work that they can do. Another noteworthy point is the subculture of non-religious, well-intentioned individuals who seek to make the world a better place by living radically and eradicating global poverty – in a sense seeking harmony among all peoples in order to summon utopia. (I am doing a counter-culture gross injustice by not describing it more). This subculture also seems to have produced a number of development agencies and action initiatives, yet with no desire and sometimes even a certain hostility to “Christian” values. Hence we have development – without mission.

And so organizations have been established on both sides of the line by people who believe rather strongly that they ought to be either one or the other. After my experiences this summer, however, I have begun to wonder if there is another camp: those who are forced to choose either development or mission because of simple capacity. I was based in Red Lake, MN this summer – on a Native American reservation that is beset by rampant violence, drug and alcohol addictions, and an unemployment rate of over 80 percent. My official job title while I was in this place was to “do ministry” – to bring people together in conversation over the gospel and the call of the gospel on our lives. Given my own bent towards the needs of a community and the tangible problems that had entered into our friends’ homes, I found myself constantly torn. It was easy for me to spend more time investing in the needs of the people than in “ministry”; or rather – I found myself trying to live mission on top of development work…and found myself, likewise, worn out. While last summer I had found myself working with a development agency that wanted to limit my evangelical outreach, this summer I was explicitly told by others (in well-meaning conversation) that we were “here for ministry, not for the community”.

Is this manner of taking two approaches, in fact, the better way? Does it allow us to focus – on one thing or the other – to refrain from getting “worn out,” and to keep us from getting spread too thin? Is it possible for ONE organization to be present both for ministry and for the community? Is the reason that so few agencies have managed to do this simply a matter of logistics – that one must be very focused and very well organized and very very well supported in order to succeed? Are so few people comfortable with being in both roles, that there are just fewer individuals to hire, and fewer initiatives to create?

Some might argue that this is just what it means to be a part of the body of Christ – let one hand build houses with bricks and mortar, while the other opens up the Word of God. It’s easier that way. It takes less coordination. The left hand can think about the left hand, and the right hand can think about the right. But if we look at the life of Jesus himself, he seemed very concerned with bringing both thoughts together, and bringing them together in one place, in the body of one person, in one life: His own. If we as Christians are truly determined to live a life that He has modeled for us, we cannot be afraid of the left hand or the right. To live out social justice as we have been called to do, as believers, it takes mission. And most likely, given the logistics of modern society, it will take a holistic community development organization in order to accomplish that.