Dreams, Hopes, Concerns, Fears: Working Together to Shape the New Millennium: AERDO

by Evvy Campbell

The following response is from Evvy Cambell of AERDO: Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations.

Every three years for more than three decades an important mission gathering has taken place. The theme for the upcoming EFMA/IFMA Triennial Conference is "Working Together to Shape the New Millenium." As a preparation for this event, EMQ has invited the CEOs or their designees of the five currently cosponsoring bodies to share something of their dreams, hopes, fears and concerns regarding this great challenge.

The following response is from Evvy Cambell of AERDO: Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations.

Urgent and compelling human needs daily hurry relief and development workers along in their tasks. Crucial intravenous solutions are unloaded on sun-baked tar-macs where lorries wait to transport them. Seeds, small garden tools, grain, and cooking oil are distributed to people struggling under the burden of ethnic conflict. For Christians in relief and development work, the compelling of the gospel continually presses them toward an integrated holistic ministry.

In March, 1996, I sat in a tiny Pentecostal church in Pristina, Kosovo, where some 20 people had gathered for an Easter showing of the "Jesus" film in Albanian. Part way through, a smallgirl came and snuggled next to me. As the others attentively watched the film, she whispered, "Have you asked Jesus into your heart?" "Yes," I said quietly, adding after a pause, "Have you?" Pointing two rows ahead and to the side, she continued softly, "Yes. Right there. Lance* told me how." Sitting in the dark, I reflected on the development worker whose friendship with a Muslim family had resulted in them all being in church that night. He understood that amidst a day filled with the complicated logistics of obtaining supplies, answering e-mails, and moving commodities to feed the hungry, introducing people to Christ and the church was a priority.

INITIAL MINISTRY
Born out of the urgent needs following World War II, Christian relief agencies moved surplus commodities and donated goods with government funds. Over the next two decades the organizations increasingly added development components to their programs. In 1978 the larger evangelical agencies, including World Vision, Compassion, and MAP International, incorporated as the Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations. For almost 15 years membership remained at around 20 organizations. The AERDO Principles of Practice (1990) dealt with issues of donor relations, financial accountability, program management, host governments, and priorities for relief projects. Compliance with the principles was voluntary. An elected executive committee, together with a part-time executive secretary housed in the Washington, D.C., office of World Relief, knit the organization together between the provocative annual conferences that continually nudged the association forward.

Leadership initiatives in the 1990s led to a doubling of membership. The 1994 Interagency Gifts-in-Kind Standards, which included such key elements as gift valuation at fair market rather than retail value, resulted in favorable national recognition of AERDO. The IRS, the American Red Cross, and InterAction-which represented 154 organizations-all welcomed the increased accountability the standards provided.

A PARADIGM SHIFT TOWARD ENABLING THE CHURCH
A paradigm shift occurred in 1993, with the development of an organizational mission statement articulating that its major thrust was "to enable its membership to effectively support the Church in serving the poor and needy." Similarly, a vision was developed that urged working "to reengage the Church in holistic ministry among the poor and needy." The change was subtle, in that the bylaws had always contained a solidly evangelical statement of faith as part of the membership criteria, and members clearly perceived themselves as being engaged in kingdom building. Further, the existing AERDO Principles of Practice had encouraged engaging "the local Christian church as a program partner." The mission and vision statements, however, forced the association to consider, perhaps for the first time, its ecclesiology of development. How are relief and development agencies and their work really related to the church? Does the local church prosper in association with them? The AERDO Occasional Paper that captured the significant discussions at that time was "Furthering the Kingdom Through Relief and Development: Where and How Is it Happening?" by Food for the Hungry president Tetsunao Yamamori. A joint forum in 1997 with the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies brought into sharp focus what the participants already recognized from their often dual membership in the two associations. A significant overlap existed in a primary goal of the two organizations. It fell to missionary statesman Roger Greenway, however, to rekindle the thinking among relief and development executives as well as church-planting missionaries that indeed evangelism and social action need to be reunited in mission. His forum presentations and subsequent book, Together Again: Kinship of Word and Deed, crystallized the awareness that integrated, holistic mission is God's plan, and organizational cooperation is fundamental in bringing it to fulfillment.

STUMBLING BLOCKS
Bilateral and multilateral cooperative efforts have frequently arisen out of the soil of shared AERDO membership. The annual forums have fostered flourishing professional and personal relationships. Cooperation "with government and other agencies operating in the project area" and seeking "to complement, rather than duplicate, project assistance by other agencies" had been articulated as goals in the AERDO Principles of Practice. Nevertheless, mature mechanisms for sustained interagency cooperation and coordination have never emerged within AERDO or between AERDO and other associations. In 1993, executive-level leadership from seven relief and development agencies, six of them AERDO members, met in Seattle. CEOs and senior representatives of the agencies signed the following statement:

The needs of this world transcend our organizations' abilities to respond alone.We see cooperation and collaboration between our organizations as a moral imperative if we are to have a lasting impact. Our commitment is to identify specific targets of opportunity where collaborative effort is appropriate. Our work will be characterized by open dialogue and well-developed plans. Leadership in any instance will be by mutual consent governed by a spirit of inclusiveness and teamwork.¹

Although the AERDO Executive Committee later gave written support to the initiative, no long-term coordination resulted from the Seattle Group meeting. In his insightful paper, "Cooperation and Coordination Among Evangelical Relief and Development Agencies in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies," Andrew Natsios-former vice president of World Vision-suggests why cooperation and coordination are problematic. He starts by discussing five types of coordination: (a) information sharing, (b) geographic overlap closure, (c) resolution of non-contradictory strategies, (d) pursuit of unified strategies, and (e) advocacy and policy agreement. He goes on to say that while information sharing and joint advocacy are relatively easy to achieve, the others are more difficult because organizations protect their autonomy, find them time-consuming, and have too many stakeholders to reach agreement. Natsios calls for "modest incremental progress" rather than opting for "illusory reform," urging organizations to worship together as Christian NGOs at the field level during emergencies, to have weekly coordination meetings to share information, and to work jointly on policy issues.

John De Haan, former director of Christian Reformed World Relief Committee and current AERDO executive director, is a strong advocate for synergistic collaboration both within the AERDO membership and external to it, including increased North/South collaboration. He suggests it be enhanced through increasing the intensity of communication by e-mail, conference calls, and face-to-face brainstorming. De Haan urges harvesting member agencies' insights and showcasing their successes at collaboration. He recommends nourishing all stakeholder groups: the poor as individuals, in families, and in community; both large and small donors; the managers of staff of both Northern and Southern NGOs; and the mission agencies, individuals, and churches that are spiritual partners.²

HOPES, DREAMS AND CONCERNS
When our agencies meet at Forum '99, we need to both assess future trends, such as the changing demographics of Christianity and the implications of technology, and give consideration to lessons learned. Involving all stakeholders, we need to maintain an ongoing pattern of intermittent joint conferences where worship, careful scholarship, and thoughtful discussion can flourish. We need to publish and freely disseminate key conference presentations. We must identify reasonable steps of incremental progress and hold ourselves accountable in community for commitments made. And, finally, as we respond to the compelling human need around us, we must focus on enabling the church. The young children snuggled against us for those brief moments need the stability of alocal church to bring them to full maturity in Christ.

*The name has been changed.

Endnotes
1. The Seattle Group. "Our Commitment." An unpublished AERDO document. March 5,1993.
2. De Haan, John. (1998). AERDO's Gideon/Collaborative Strategy. Unpublished AERDO correspondence.

Bibliography
AERDO Principles of Practice: Guidelines for the Development of Agency Standards. Washington, D.C.: AERDO. Unpublished.

Gay, Arthur Evans, Jr. (1995). "Theological Reductionism and Evangelical Relief and Development" in AERDO Occasional Papers No. 2. Washington, D.C.: AERDO.

Greenway, Roger. (1998). Together Again: Kinship of Word and Deed. Monrovia, Calif.: MARC.

Natsios, Andrew. (1995). "Cooperation and Coordination Among Evangelical Relief and Development Agencies in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies" in AERDO Occasional Papers No. 3. Washington, D.C.: AERDO.

"Our Commitment." (1993). The Seattle Group. March 5. Unpublished AERDO document. March 5.

Williams, Grant. (1994). "Charities Ask for Regulators' Help in Accounting for Donated Goods" in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. April 6. 31.

Yamamori, Tetsunao. (1996). "Furthering the Kingdom Through Relief and Development: Where and How Is It Happening?" in AERDO Occasional Papers No. 5. Washington, D.C.: AERDO.

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Evvy Campbell served five years on the executive committee of the AERDO Board of Directors and is editor of the AERDO Occasional Paper Series. She is an associate professor in the Missions and Intercultural Studies Department of the Wheaton College Graduate School.

EMQ, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 306-320. Copyright © 1999 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.
 

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