Loving the Poor

Last night, a number of us gathered in the Church office to think through how to help poor people in other countries (What we learnt will probably apply here too in the not too distant future).

We were ably led by David Woolnough. We thought through a biblical response to the poor, God's heart for them and why our lives often don't live up to the radical nature of Jesus' commands.

Then given that Jesus said we would always have the poor with us, we thought about what the end goal of development is and what our motivation for helping is or what it could / should be.

David then also showed us examples of the good, the great, the bad and the ugly from across a range of big and small scale NGOs both to inspire and caution us as we think about how to personally get involved.

I realized over the course of the evening I had become unfairly cynical and graceless over recent years preferring to join in with media mud-slinging rather than getting stuck in and helping. I'm personally grateful for the attitude adjustment I got!

I leave you with a video that shows what David's wife Chris was getting up to locally when they were both out in Malawi, (David was working for DfID). Enjoy, despite the grainy quality.