But an untrained person copying a lion tamer’s exact physical movements and sounds would get their head bitten off …. [An activity like lion taming or conducting an orchestra] depends on a person’s interpersonal connection and influence, which cannot be faked. The conductor has to know the music cold in the same way the lion tamer can’t feel fear, because the lion knows …. Just as important as the leader’s talent is the relationship built with the performers through hours of practice and repetition. A genius maestro can’t step in five minutes before a performance and conduct and orchestra they’ve never met, just like the world’s best lion tamer can’t step into the limelight with an uncaged lion they’ve never worked with.
— Angie Kim, Happiness Falls
The “interpersonal connection and influence” described in Angie Kim’s novel are the same qualities essential to an effective agent of community transformation. But too often, outsiders fail to recognize the “hours of practice and repetition” required to build that trust, feeling instead that their expertise or good intentions should be enough to demand it. This is particularly ironic for those whose faith motivates their interest in the poor, since it is the opposite of the humility and servant leadership Jesus demonstrated.
Even the wealthiest individuals recognize their limitations in other domains. The most-generous patrons of performing-arts centers do not feel entitled to strut up on stage and conduct the orchestra they fund. Yet this is exactly the folly of outsiders who come into a low-income community with the presumption that they are going to be the ones to lead positive change there. They may feel that bringing money, “expertise,” physical goods, or simply a can-do spirit qualifies them to be the one holding the baton or the whip, but they almost always end up being as effective as an untrained conductor or lion tamer.
One of the most-frustrating challenges indigenous community leaders face is interference (and often competition for funding) from outsiders who “just want to make a difference.” This includes outsiders whose sincere faith motivates their interference. It is good that more Christian leaders are becoming aware of the moral hazards of creating or incentivizing dependency through charity. But entering another community with that understanding does not solve the knowledge problem inherent in trying to “fix” a community that is not your own. Calling an inner-city program “development” does not make it so, any more than it did for Jeffrey Sachs in Africa.
For 44 years, the Woodson Center has identified and resourced indigenous leaders like Kimi Gray, Carl Hardrick, Leon Watkins, Bertha Gilke, and countless others. These people catalyzed community renewal from the inside, with a tiny fraction of the resources (and none of the professional credentialing) of outside charities or government programs. Yet outsiders with a heart to help a distressed community typically will dismiss the possibility that such leaders exist within the neighborhoods they are “targeting.” And if they do recognize such residents, they most likely value them as cultural translators, not as the leaders of the change themselves.
My own education in these matters began in my mid-twenties. I was pregnant with our second child, and my late husband and I agreed to take in a homeless woman, “Sharon,” for a few months with the intention of helping her get back on her feet. We did not have much experience helping people in her circumstances, but we set her up in our extra bedroom and went about doing our best. We had some preconceived ideas of what she might need (help with a résumé? rides to job interviews?), but we treated her like any other guest. She led the way and made all her own decisions.
We soon realized that helping Sharon make meaningful, durable improvements in her situation was going to be far more complicated and time-consuming than the few months we had before our new baby came and our house was filled with visiting family members.
So as our agreed-upon time together ended, we helped Sharon get settled in another situation of her choosing. This was not the easiest parting, but it was overall a positive experience for her and us, and it taught my husband and me how little we understood about the challenges she faced.
Since then, I’ve read about countless Kimis and Carls and gotten to meet many of their contemporary counterparts—like my friend Racquel, who has helped more than 1,200 women just like Sharon form their own businesses and enter the middle class. Witnessing inwardly directed change at the individual and community levels helped me understand more fully why my husband and I weren’t able to help Sharon as much as we’d hoped to do. She needed leadership from someone who had experienced what she was experiencing and had overcome it; someone who both “knew the music cold” and could coax out the performance that we sensed was inside her. How much more important is that kind of leadership when the goal is to transform an entire community?
Yet the model of so many charities—including many faith-driven ministries—continues to be to send themselves into low-income areas and try to demand the social trust and moral authority required to stimulate transformation, instead of supporting the Kimis and the Carls who are already there. It is understandable, and in some ways even admirable, that many Christians feel a responsibility to directly care for the poor. But the Biblical mandate to care for the poor should not be taken as a mandate to be in charge.
This is not to say that outsiders have no role to play in the uplift of struggling communities other than funding. But that service should be done under the direction and in deference to the leaders who live in the community in question. The assertion that such leaders don’t exist in a particular area (which we at the Woodson Center hear so often it has become a running joke) only reveals the degree to which outsiders do not know the community they are trying to help. Beyond funding existing indigenous efforts, the best way to help is to take cues from the conductors the community already trusts, not to grab the baton yourself.
