Sustainable Solutions: Our Undivided Attention

SATtalks is a conference of like-minded people focused distinctly on church missions and even more particularly on the issue of sustainable solutions through church missions.  There are many conferences, workshops and movements within the church to address Christianity and culture, discipleship, missional movements, worship, millennials, church planting, leadership, etc.  It’s not that we think those issues are unimportant but rather that we think sustainable solutions through church missions needs a kind of “undivided attention” if the church hopes to make a respectable contribution in this type of work among the poor.

So what do we mean by sustainability and sustainable solutions?  Philanthropy in general and many forward thinking churches are asking how we can do the good we want to do and help the people and causes that matter the most to us in ways that maintain people’s dignity and, sooner than later, lead people to a place where they can do that good themselves and no longer need our charitable resources. That, to put a fine point on it, is what we mean by sustainable solutions.

We believe that by giving our undivided attention to sustainability through church missions we can accelerate the learning curve for the church and help her become a leading voice and exemplar in this kind of helping.  In his book, “Christianity and Progress,” Harry Emmerson Fosdick wrote, “The Church is primarily an instrument in God’s hands to bring personal and social righteousness upon the earth. When her massed influence overcomes a public evil or establishes a public good, men find the justification of her existence and a first-rate weapon of apologetic argument in her behalf.”

We believe the Church through her missions’ work can discover and champion sustainable solutions for the people and communities they seek to serve.  To love our neighbor as ourselves would be reason enough to do so.  But I also believe a watching world will see in this a “justification of (the Church’s) existence and a first-rate weapon of apologetic argument on her behalf.”