Perspectives- Michele Rickett

Michele Rickett founded Sisters in Service (http://www.sistersinservice.org/) to lift women and children out of poverty in the least-reached places in the world. They do this by building relationships with Christian leaders and empowering them to change their communities through education, spiritual development, and creation of economic opportunities. Michele addressed the topic of Christian Community Development, providing a glimpse of the needs throughout the world and some of the efforts to help. It's impossible to capture the emotion and stories she shared in writing, but here are a few bullet points of the information she passed on:

• In the US we see relative poverty (people without homes struggle to get by), but in the developing world we see absolute poverty (people are unable to meet basic needs).
• The world is filled with conflict, poverty, oppression, thirst, hunger, disease, and illiteracy. How should we respond? By entering into the suffering and doing what we can to help. We can also remember that one day, when the gospel is provided to all, this will all end.
• Hope integrates us and motivates us. Look at Jesus' compassion, commission, and example for hope.
• God's kingdom of righteousness and goodness will come. He will build His church, and He wants us to be a part of it.
• There are four main approaches to human need: economic development (macroeconomically focused, criticized as ineffective), political liberation (good, but not the hope we need), relief (important, but not long-term), and transformational development (long-term focus on empowering people).
• God is evident in transformational development as people and initiatives are empowered, divine intervention is apparent, and transformational genuine love is shared.
• Poverty is often caused by broken relationships, misused power, and fear.
• Four things need to be restored to empower people to escape poverty: hope for a better life, dignity to break oppression, authority to step out of a situation, and identity as a child of God.
• Six integral mission factors were discussed: becoming agents of change, gaining a vision of change (imagining what God can do), assessing available resources, using proclamation and deeds (tell why you do what you do), prayer (different weapons are needed for this battle), and time (it takes 5 minutes to save a life and may take 5 years to transform it).

As a transformational development practitioner, Michele had many first-hand examples of how God is working miracles to break through traps of poverty. To learn more, she recommended Tim Chester's book, "Justice, Mercy, and Humility." The most important point of this lesson was that we need to think holistically in our service efforts. Poverty can take many forms, and we have tremendous resources to share. The choice of whether to share is ours.