Stuffing shoe boxes for the world’s poor? Maybe you should reconsider

Though this is an older article, Baptist News Global (BNG) never seems to tire in criticizing Samaritan’s Purse and Christmas Shoeboxes.

Much of it boils down to -

BNG is led and influenced by moderate to liberal Christians; Samaritan’s Purse by conservative, Bible-believing Christians.

Samaritan’s Purse is committed to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, the plan of salvation; BNG not so much.

When shoeboxes are given, gospel literature is also given in the language of the people. It is followed up with Bible classes.

Samaritan’s Purse also does much more mission work in addition to the Christmas Shoeboxes. It is one of the most worthy of Christian mission organizations.

https://www.samaritanspurse.org/

David R. Brumbelow

” The best news, she adds, is that the church has diverse ways of participating in authentic economic development in poor communities, including direct giving.

My take on her complaint: It’s hard to cover your 70% overhead when people give “stuff” instead of cash.

….to get Joel Schaffer’s take on this. I haven’t been to a developing country since Malaysia in 2003, but having spent a fair amount of time trying to reach out to the poor in my life, I’m amenable to the notion that what we’re doing could be improved. And for that matter, I’m working hard to get rid of the “piles o junk” that all too often substitute for real motivators for my own children from places like AWANA. Sorry, adding a tract to a pile o junk from “Le Mart du Wal” doesn’t redeem it.

It is interesting to see this type article which overstates things. As David mentioned above Samaritans’ Purse does much bigger things then this and from my perspective OCC is almost a marketing tool which gives visibility. My wife and I have served at the large center outside Baltimore where the boxes arrive and are reviewed and consolidated which has been a blessing for us to rub shoulders with Christians from a very varied background then us. You also seen/heard stories of how the boxes have been a blessing which we’ve seen firsthand.

For our church this is a very small portion of missions and is not calculated into total giving for mission. We do celebrate the number of boxes but beyond this we have giving both financial, service and stuff for many local nonprofits to make a difference in our local community.

As churches and communities of means we do need to be wise in the use of our resources to maximize the sustainability of the dollars we give.

It you look at World Vision and Compassion you can see how those organizations are taking a holistic approach to the needs in the communities they serve and work to connect churches/communities with means to those with needs to make a difference. One of the communities we’ve been working with in Kenya for the past 15 years has gone from critical to self-sustaining. That is how you want to work, keeping in mind the all of this must cascade from sharing the good news of the gospel and if you aren’t leaving the area churches in a better place you are not done yet.

If you haven’t read “When Helping Hurts” or “Toxic Charity” you probably need to stop and read one or both of those before you do anything.