IF DEVELOPMENT WERE SOCCER...Rakesh Rajani, USAID

A fascinating piece from USAID as I watch the amazing soccer in EURO 2012...

If there were a prize for global organizations most tainted with corruption, FIFA, the
International Federation of Football (Soccer) Associations, would be a strong contender.
For years, its board members are said to have demanded, received, and dished out bribes for
purposes such as vote buying and selling rights to host the World Cup. The “crony culture” inside
FIFA has reportedly caused huge losses—about $100 million in one instance alone when an
exclusive deal with a marketing company went belly-up. These acts have spawned investigations, books, and blogs seeking to expose the organization, but FIFA appears to have warded
off serious reform. Its current boss has been in charge for 14 years and part of FIFA for 38. He
ran unopposed in the last election, in part because his two rivals were disqualified for foul play. His predecessor had been at the helm for 24 years. In several respects, FIFA’s inside dealing and
lack of transparency, as well as the longevity of its aging leadership, is reminiscent of the poor governance of many developing countries. This state of affairs is associated with malaise and dysfunction, misuse of public resources, poor public service delivery, and entrenched inequities.

But the state of soccer, far from being a basket case, is vibrant and thriving. Precise numbers are difficult to establish, but soccer has well over a billion supporters worldwide. Many of these tune in every week on radio, TV, and, increasingly, the Internet. More than 700 million are estimated to have watched the final games of the World Cup in 2006 and 2010, across all six continents. It is easily the world’s biggest sport. While growing up in Mwanza, Tanzania, listening to commentary of English league games on a crackly BBC shortwave transmission was the highlight of my week. Today, walk through East Africa’s bustling neighborhoods or rural communities on weekends, and you will likely see animated men and (increasingly) women listening to a duel between national rivals or watching Chelsea play Arsenal or Barcelona take on Real Madrid. You will see much of the same across large parts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. In many cases, these are communities that have no electricity and low incomes, but some entrepreneur will have rigged up a generator and an improvised satellite dish, and be turning a tidy profit charging entrance fees. It’s not only about relaxing in front of the TV. Soccer is among the most common topics on social media, radio call-in shows, and street corners. Crotchety pundits, hip pre-teens, and nerdy economists alike pore over team statistics to discern patterns, debate choices, and predict outcomes. It is public engagement interspersed with politics, business, and local drama, but soccer remains at the core. And soccer evokes great emotion. When there is a crucial goal or save, observe the poetry of celebration rituals or the slowmotion implosions of defeat among both players and fans. It’s quite an experience.

Why does soccer work? Why, unlike so many badly governed public agencies, NGOs, and projects, is soccer so powerful, lively, and engaging? Could it be that soccer has got something so right, that it doesn’t much matter that its state of supra governance is somewhat shambolic? And if that is indeed the case, might it provide useful insights for how we think about development in countries where the intractable problems of supra governance will not be sorted out soon? Soccer and development, while very different, have several features in common. I’ll highlight four. Both have purposes or goals to score. Both have rules and conventions of how things are to be done. Both have someone deciding whether conduct is right, imposing sanctions for foul behavior, and judging the final outcome. And both have actors who need to be motivated and focused to deliver. But each handles these features very differently.

In Soccer, Success Is Clear and Simple
Soccer isn’t called the “beautiful game” for nothing. Players display enormous skill when dribbling, passing, and making daring dives and gravity-defying turns. Fans love these moves, and TV screens replay some of the best ones over and over, so that viewers can study the skill and savor the moment. Papers speak of the teams that play the most entertaining football. But all this skill is aligned toward a very simple and very clear purpose: to score more goals than the other team. Sure, a lot of other statistics are collected, such as the number of passes, number of fouls, percentage of possession, ages of the players, and so forth. The artistry is fun and appreciated, but what matters is how it contributes toward the purpose. What counts is the final score. The incentives are well aligned too, in the short and long term. You win the game, you celebrate, your team gets three points. Everyone involved—the players, the managers, the owners, the spectators—understand this. In the long term, those points and goals add up, and you move up the league table or on to the next round of the competition, until you win the cup. The better you perform, the more likely you are to earn a better salary.

In development, there are also goals and purposes. While some are clearer than others, too many development initiatives suffer from three kinds of problems. First, they try to do too many things at one time. Indeed, many things contribute to whether humans can flourish. They cannot be encompassed in a single, narrow goal. When an initiative tries to do all the important things—to be comprehensive—it tends to get distracted, pulled in many directions, and energy and focus dissipate. Ultimately, this means that it fails to reach any of the important goals in any meaningful sense, and over time falls under the weight of its own elaborate design or is difficult to sustain at scale. I have seen this in the education sector in Tanzania, for example, where programs have tried to initiate reforms with teachers and books and infrastructure and curriculum and pedagogy and examinations and finances and governance and gender and HIV/AIDS and environment, all at the same time. Doing it all would be difficult even where there is great institutional depth. To try to do so where this is not the case can be downright hubris.

Second, because the achievement of goals can take time and require several steps, there is a tendency to develop many interim markers of progress. Hence, it is common to find a plethora of input, process, and output targets, as well as corresponding indicators. These are lined up in a linear sequence, implying that A will lead to B, which shall lead to C. But the proliferation and labor of keeping track of these, meant to be signposts toward achieving the ultimate goals, can become so consuming that one ends up spending an inordinate amount of time on them, losing sight of the goals, or worse still, conflating the interim markers with the measures of success, even where they do not effectively contribute to the achievement of the goals that matter. This would be the equivalent, in soccer, of players focusing so much on the number of passes, height of their headers, speed of their runs and the like, that no one remembers the score.

Third, even where development initiatives manage to keep a clear-eyed focus on the goals that matter, the incentives are not aligned to reward success. Put differently, there are no consequences. One gets funded for the cost of the inputs of the project, not the outcomes. Staffs are paid salaries for undertaking activities, writing proposals and reports, and moving money rather than achieving results. So while, in theory, the achievement of goals should matter, in practice, they do not. The metric for rewarding performance is often poorly related to attainment of goals and rarely determinative of what you actually receive. The health worker who toils nine hours a day delivering quality care is likely to be paid the same as a colleague who is absent and discourteous. And whether a project gets renewed, or a ministry receives more budget, or a country receives more aid is determined largely by factors other than its track record of attaining goals. In soccer, one also faces some of these challenges, particularly in the short term. But the yardstick of winning games and progressing up the league table is never far away; it quickly concentrates the minds of wayward souls.

Soccer Has Clear Rules
Over the years, soccer has developed an extensive set of rules and conventions. For a newcomer, these can be quite bewildering. What exactly is an offside? Why is it a handball when the ball touches an arm in some instances and not in others? Which offenses deserve yellow or red cards? But for those who have grown up with soccer or engage actively with it, these rules make sense, for they have evolved organically, with relatively few changes at a time. Importantly, while people argue over the interpretation of rules, and human error is not uncommon, the rules themselves are known to everyone and not renegotiated while playing the game. Players and managers are expected to follow the rules, and that’s largely that. In development, particularly in developing countries, the relationship between the game and its rules is tenuous at best. In recent years, often in response to donor pressure, several countries have undergone reform. These have produced a raft of new laws, regulations, and institutions. Many of these, such as anticorruption laws and agencies, ethics commissions, and public expenditure management systems, are meant to strengthen governance. In Uganda, for example, so many laws and agencies were created, with overlapping mandates, that no one could quite keep track, and a new body had to be created to coordinate the other new bodies. The problem is that all this impressive rule-making bears little connection to how people go about their daily business. It’s not that people lack respect for the rule of law. But how a rule comes about, and the manner in which it can be and is enforced, makes all the difference. Ironically, in many cases, the zeal for reform appears to have led to “too much too fast,” preventing change from taking root.

When poorly established, rules fail to fulfill their key function, which is to provide credible and predictable guidelines with which to conduct affairs and adjudicate differences. Observe, for instance, a negotiation between government and donor representatives on the Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) for General Budget Support (GBS). There is constant haggling over the small details: whether a report gets published, which civil society should be around the table, what constitutes adequate accountability, and so forth. Not only do the goalposts keep changing, but also many of the basic rules. If soccer were development aid, before the whistle blows, there would be drawn-out negotiations on the definition of a penalty, a task force established to appoint the referee, and a manual drafted on how to procure the whistle. That this is frustrating, wastes time, and generates ill will is bad enough. Worse still, it disrupts the flow of achieving development, draining it of creativity, motivation, and a clear-headed strategy.

Soccer Has Independent Referees
Like most professional sports, soccer has independent referees. The principals are the teams, but it is the referees who are fully in charge on the field, responsible for making the game flow, upholding the rules, and serving as impartial judges of conduct. Referees are not immune from undue influence and corruption, but on the whole, they need to play their roles ably—because they have little wiggle room to do otherwise. The value of independent referees in soccer is taken as a self-evident truth; no one would even think about proposing that a professional game be played with refereeing by a player from one or both the teams.

Yet, in development, where the stakes are arguably higher than most games of professional soccer, that is precisely what happens much of the time. In many countries, the executive branch of government is to be held in check by the parliament, but its ministers themselves are members of parliament. In Tanzania, for instance, about a fifth of parliament is in the cabinet, and at least another third have key appointments in the boards of government agencies. Elsewhere too it is not uncommon for heads of state to confer plum assignments to members of parliament—the very ones who cook in the kitchen then assess the quality of the food. One possible exception is the role of supreme audit institutions, whose independence is often constitutionally enshrined. But here, too, their powers are limited to stating findings and giving advice to the very cadre they investigate. Among NGOs and donor agencies, the independent auditors and evaluators still need to be appointed by the ones that they will assess, and that fact is usually not lost on those who are hired.

In soccer, it’s simpler. Teams do not get to hire their referees. One of the most palpable illustrations of this sort of conflict of interest is in the structure of the aid relationship. Donor agencies and recipient governments play multiple roles. They determine the basis of the partnership, the content of the program, the rules of the game, the assessment of progress, and the consequences of performance. The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness calls this “partnership” and “mutual respect.” Fair, except that, having been involved in planning the menu, shopping for ingredients, cooking the meal, and establishing the standards for review, both parties have a clear self-interest in having the dinner look good. Assessments, therefore, while noting an obligatory set of gaps and areas for improvement, tend to be done through rose-tinted lenses with little rigor about actual impact.

Even where reviews are fair and balanced, the consequences are limited. Governments and NGOs want cash to spend. Donors need to exercise the imperative to disburse because moving money is a large part of the measure of success. Third parties, such as watchdog groups and journalists, try at times to offer independent viewpoints, but with difficulty because they have only limited access to information. In these circumstances, unlike in soccer, the real outcomes get fudged. And the real losers end up being the very ones who development was meant to have served.

Soccer Is Radically Transparent
Assessments of outcomes don’t get fudged in soccer, in part due to the clarity of goals and rules and the independence of the referees—and also because the game is radically transparent. It’s hard to play soccer in secret. Soccer is played on streets and open fields. Everyone can watch and bear witness. For the big games, that involves not only the 60,000 people at the stadium, but also millions more watching on TV. Cameras capture every move, so that disputed calls can be replayed from different angles, in slowmotion, to establish the truth not only for the experts but for everyone. This means that everyone can have an informed opinion about the game— the manager’s strategy, the players’ performance, the referees’ calls, the fans’ behavior—and the increasing opportunity to voice it through social and traditional media. Because the players and managers know this, they know they need to do well and to play it right. Players who seek individual glory but do not help the team win are quickly exposed. Managers cannot continue to field favorite players or their cousins who fail to perform, for the wrath of the fans will be upon them. Referee decisions are constantly scrutinized, and every error or seemingly partial call faces the harsh light of day. How well teams do, the final score, and the league table are open and updated in real time; they cannot have errors for long because the “crowd” will quickly point them out. Importantly, transparency in soccer constitutes public or shared (rather than private) knowledge, allowing collective responses and pressure. This sort of deep public transparency fosters accountability like nothing else.

The field of development is also moving toward greater transparency, aided by the proliferation of technologies that make it easier to collect, store, analyze, visualize, and share data; and by pressure of citizens from India to Kenya to Brazil, demanding their right to know. The Open Government Partnership, a unique multilateral effort involving 50-plus countries, launched by Presidents Obama and Rousseff in 2011, is a reflection of this turn. But there is still a long way to go before governments achieve the transparency of a game of soccer.

Public service is a misnomer in most developing country contexts because it has little public orientation and even less service. Several recent studies, for example, show that absenteeism of
public servants is widespread in health and education. Despite establishing client service charters and much capacity building, there is little responsiveness toward clients in both central and local governments. This can go on because, unlike soccer, there is no public witness, and the officials know that they can get away with it. Performance is not directly observed or replayed on video,
whether it is malpractice by a tax official or the quiet dedication of a head teacher. Assessments are discussed behind closed doors, at best with a few stakeholders, and tend to meander into process and protocol where nothing is quite straightforward.

In contrast to soccer, the data collected in development are also not as revealing. First, the quality, especially of administrative (as compared to survey) data, is unreliable. Officials compiling data have little incentive to get it right, and the data do not go through the quality assurance and crowdsourcing checks that soccer enjoys. Second, data are often locked up in a few cupboards or on hard disks, with access restricted to a few, and a nightmare to obtain for others. Where data are made public, they tend to be in non-machinereadable formats that are harder to mash, map, and analyze. Third, the data rarely give a clear indication of the aspects that matter, such as learning outcomes or quality of care or levels of satisfaction. Fourth, it is usually not easy to compare one entity with another. Say that I find out that 1 out of 12 women dies in childbirth in my community. How do I make sense of it unless I know the rates in the neighboring communities and other countries? Like in soccer, meaning is rarely absolute; it comes from the ability to compare.

Soccer Is Open and Responsive
Soccer’s regulatory apparatus and data are impressive, but what excites most people is how the game is played. How does a player know what to do, how to play, how to help her team score goals, and prevent the other team from doing the same? No doubt, managers do a lot of strategizing, studying of opponents, planning of tactics, and practicing of “set-pieces,” such as corners and penalty kicks. But unlike development, there is no fixed plan with steps charted out in the form of a log frame. No manager tells a player to follow a script line by line because she understands that a game is fluid, dynamic, and unpredictable.

In soccer, the point is not to devise a plan that anticipates every possible move of the other team in great detail, but to coach players on how to read the signs and respond skillfully and quickly. Surprise and unpredictability are constants as each team tries to catch the other off guard and do something different. It takes an open architecture way of doing things—a constant risk-taking, experimentation, and adaptation that requires an intelligent reading of constraints and opportunities as well as the ability to respond with agility. What works, what connects, what moves the ball forward is quickly recognized, not least of all from the cheers of the fans. This sort of feedback is crucial to testing players and ideas. In the soccer marketplace, who and what works quickly will rise; what and who doesn’t will be expediently set aside. Save a few feigned dives and injuries (that are punished, should the referee catch them), the energy is focused on playing ball and winning the game. There is no time to offer explanations and excuses, or to passively wait for someone else to do their part. Everyone chips in, takes responsibility, takes initiative, and works to score goals. Everyone searches for opportunities to make things happen rather than reasons to explain why they did not.

In development, the inability to continually interpret feedback and adapt is a great limitation. Instead of developing sensitive antenna and intelligent response capabilities to deal with uncertainty, developers try to figure things out at the outset (for example, by undertaking situation analyses) and then devise plans with as many fixed markers as possible. It is almost as if the response to the dynamism of context is to establish absolute certainty, to say that “we will establish every aspect so carefully and in such great detail, that whatever else happens doesn’t matter.” If soccer were development, the manager would tell Player A, at the outset, things like “ignore all else that is happening; at minute 37, from the left back position, pass the ball on to Player B on the far right side, who will then head it on to Player C,” and so forth. In trying to play it like that, whether that particular move makes sense or a better opportunity is missed is not even a consideration.

The other problem with fixed pathways is that experimentation and improvisation are discouraged. Tinkering, trying things out, making unorthodox connections, falling and failing, and trying again and again until it works are not traits rewarded by development managers or funders. Yet this sort of approach is common not only in soccer but also in a great many innovation hubs in Silicon Valley, theaters in Mumbai, and among makers of articulate toy cars using twigs and discarded flip-flops in Sumbawanga. In soccer, a manager understands that success comes from an intelligent and creative unleashing of human agency. In development, success is too often misconstrued to require a straitjacketing of agency.

The good news is that this is changing; there is a growing appreciation of the role of experimentation and the value of failure among writers of development. But the bureaucracies and incentive structures of governments, NGOs, and aid agencies have a lot of catching up to do.

Conclusion
I have argued that the vitality of soccer derives from the clarity of its regulatory framework; a clear alignment of goals, success, and incentives; and the open-architecture nature of its play, in
particular the space it fosters for an improvising human agency. Soccer as a metaphor for international development may come across as frivolous, except that the features that make soccer work may be essential to motivating and realizing success in development. These same features seem to drive innovation and growth in industry and business, and increasingly in some of the most interesting parts of academia. Perhaps when it comes to solving complex challenges in any sphere, play may be just the verb we need.

This viewpoint also suggests that, as with soccer, getting a few key things right about the core aspects of development may matter more than sorting out the intransigence of its supra governance. For a great game of soccer, and possibly for development, everyday governance and incentives writ small matter more than the election of officials who hand out the trophies. Observe the young people who play soccer every day, how they think, how they make their moves, how they make the game flow. Observe the intensity and delight in their play. You will know that they’ve got something deeply right.

Rakesh Rajani is the founder and head of Twaweza and a civil society leader in Tanzania.

Writing about our Zambia Trip for the ONE CAMPAIGN Blog

Through Alex’s story, a lesson learned on malaria

This is a guest post from Chip Huber, author of The Zambia Project: The Story of Two World Turned Upside Down. In this piece, he writes about a recent trip to Zambia with a group of students, where he encountered the story of Alex.

On my recent trip to Zambia with students and staff from Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Mich., we traveled to a rural community outside the capital city of Lusaka with staff members from World Vision Zambia. We drove on dirt roads and paths to a village where we first met some remarkable people who serve as volunteer caregivers for children and families in need in this community where life is challenging and access to education and health care and income is so, so limited…

Chip and a few of the children from the village

We asked them specifically in a group of a dozen or so who has personally or had an immediate family member struggle with malaria. They just laughed at my question as each of them put their hand up immediately. Malaria is the No. 1 taker of life in sub-Saharan Africa and obviously a huge concern for those who live in this part of the world.

We then visited some families in their small homes who had unfortunately been touched deeply by malaria. One father and mother told us their story of how their 15-month-old boy, Alex, suddenly spiked a fever, and because they are a 10-mile walk from the nearest health clinic, it was a huge undertaking to get their child to receive medical care. The family was delayed because of a flooded river in their path, making it too late to get the medications available to save their child.

Alex’s family

We found ourselves speechless over a mother and father’s sorrow as we sat outside their hut, listening to how their son died from a mosquito bite. Finally one of our team members softly whispered how sorry we were and I asked if we could pray for them, a prayer for comfort only our God can somehow provide…

I then asked if the rest of the their six children had bed nets to sleep under, as treated bed nets can protect people from contracting malaria. While conversing with this family we saw first-hand why the prevention of malaria is so important. We believe a vision has been laid on our hearts and now we see an opportunity to partner with our friends at World Vision to change the lives of families through the power of the game of soccer we love just like our Zambian friends. We believe even more deeply after this trip and these moments with Alex’s family that we will and must do far more than we have done before to provide nets for families like the one we met in Africa.

Marking this trip as my sixth visit to Zambia, this nation of beautiful people has become my second home. I am always overwhelmed by the stories of need and I have learned that education, health care, and water can and do change the lives of people and communities in remarkable ways. I have watched a village be transformed through the creative work and commitment of a community of high school students who fell in love with the children of Africa.

Chip with college students and children from the village.

This is why I have no doubt that the college students I traveled with will help do their part to end the devastating impact of malaria in the family we met and thousands of other families as we seek to provide 5,000 new bed nets in 2012. We can literally change one life through a soccer game admission and after what we saw in Zambia we truly have no other choice but to respond and invite others to do the same; it’s the least we can do as we think about Alex…

Photo credit: Alyssa Bowerman

Chip Huber is Dean of Student Engagement at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Mich. His new book, THE ZAMBIA PROJECT: The Story of Two Worlds Turned Upside Down tells the story of an eight year global project and friendship that developed between Wheaton Academy in West Chicago, IL and Kakolo Village, Zambia in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic where students raised almost three-quarters of a million dollars to help bring sustainable change. You can find out more information and order a copy at the book’s website at:www.zambiaprojectbook.com.

THE #1 ROLE

There are some roles I play almost every day that are really important in my life and the lives of others...they are ones I love to embrace and give me great energy and passion in my life...here are 10 of them that stand out:

Coach

Teacher

Writer

Mentor

Leader

Player

Boss

Vision Caster

Student

Discipler

But not one of them is more important to me and more important to what God has called me to do in this lifetime than this one:

DAD

The big challenge for me is to live and give my time, my prayers, the best of me to this role above the previous 10...that's the challenge being a DAD in 2012 for me...one I just have to choose to meet!

MOVING FROM ADVOCACY-DRIVEN RELIGION TO FOLLOW ME FAITH by Jonathan Merritt

I love these thoughts on the power of personal presence and engagement...so profound for those of us who tend to keep our distance as followers of Jesus...

The Kolkata sun was just peaking over the horizon when I awoke. I'd been in India for a little more than four days but my body was resisting the time change. Rolling onto my back, I stared into the barely visible ceiling of my room at the YMCA.

Paint peeling.

Muggy.

Mosquitoes.

Circling my head, one pest finally landed on my cheek and pricked my skin; my reticence to move almost convinced me to let him finish his breakfast. I begrudgingly swatted into the air, and as my insect wake-up call flew away, I rose to begin my day.

I had been traveling with my friend Chris Heuertz, executive director of Word Made Flesh (WMF). The mission of WMF is "Serving Jesus Among the Poorest of the Poor." From building orphanages for children with AIDS to rescuing women from the sex trade to ministering to people who are poor in South America's most destitute favellas, WMF pursues their mission in places that would make most American Christians cringe.

Our seventeen-day trek would land us in two Indian states as well as Kathmandu, Nepal and Bangkok, Thailand. This day, we were in Kolkata where Chris had arranged for me to serve in one of Mother Teresa's homes for the infirmed and dying.

On this particular day, I rose just after six to begin getting ready for my work. Due to water rationing, I was unable to take a shower-an inconvenience I came to realize was normative for many Indians. Luckily, I filled two buckets with water before going to bed the night before. Stripping off my clothes, I squatted on a concrete floor to pour the frigid water over my naked body. Alongside the water, my thoughts also washed over me, and I wondered what the ongoing work of the inevitable "Saint Teresa" would be like.

A WMF field director soon arrived, and we sped through the congested, polluted city of more than fifteen million. Arriving at the Missionaries of Charity convent around seven, I stopped by Mother Teresa's grave for a moment to pay my respects. Her simple white stone grave aligned her death with her life-no extravagance, no decoration. After a few moments of quiet, I left to meet Sister Mercy who registered me for service and sent me on my way.

A short bus ride later, I turned up at a massive facility in the middle of a dilapidated slum. The trash and begging poor created a gauntlet of obstacles in route to the entrance. A sign atop the building read, "Premdan," meaning "house of love."

As we entered, we were not greeted by anyone-no volunteer coordinator, no facility manager. No, there was too much important work to do. I froze, overwhelmed and unsure about where to begin. I walked over to the male ward where volunteers scurried between patients, bandaging their wounds, shaving their faces, and cutting their hair. This is what I think the Pool of Bethesda must have been like as I wandered through a hoard of males, most of them lying on the ground in the courtyard, quietly looking into the distance.

I couldn't imagine the shame these men must have felt; I coveted their thoughts.

My feet led me up the stairs of the men's housing unit, and the conditions surprisingly worsened. Beds were laid out on a grid throughout the expansive room. Emaciated bodies lay upon the sheets, and moans filled the air. I could only imagine that the aches of their illnesses worsened in the isolation of their pain. I stood motionless for several minutes. Contemplating. Processing.

"You sir," a man said clasping my shoulder. "Come assist me."

From his accent, it was clear that the man was German. The ripples on his sun-scorched cheeks led me to believe he was about eighty years old. Following him, I approached a patient lying next to the door whose foot was swollen to three or four times the normal size. The skin's green hue told me it was probably gangrenous.

"He hasn't bathed in more than ten years," the German informed me. "The skin around his wound is like the scales of a fish and must be scrubbed before we can treat him. It's going to be very painful, and I'll need to hold him down."

He reached into his pocket and handed me a wire brush like the one I clean my grill with.

"Scrub," he barked, grasping the man's shoulders and pressing him into the wall against which he was leaning.

"Scrub with all your strength!"

As soon as I began, the man started screaming. I pushed through his cries, continuing to scrub his foot. Dead skin accumulated on the tops of my sandal-strapped feet and made piles between my toes. His skin bled in places but the German continued to press me.

Despite my efforts to ignore them, the cries of the patient were impossible to block out.

"Please, Baba," the man begged me. "Please stop. Please."

"Baba" means father. The man thought I was a priest. Tears pooled in my eyes as I relentlessly scrubbed.

Finally, we finished and the German handed me a small jar of Vaseline and some toe nail clippers.

"Now make him love you again," he said.

I rubbed the salve into the fresh skin on his leg before clipping his gnarled toenails. His breathing patterns returned to normal.

"Thank you, Baba," he said.

I turned to depart, already looking for a place to slip away and have a good cry, but the German bellowed from across the room.

"We have more work to do."

I rushed to his side where he was attending to a skeleton lying on his back. From what I could tell, every strand of muscle tissue on this man's bones was gone. Skin hung off his appendages like bat wings. His protruding hipbones looked like ball bearings.

We rubbed down the stick figure of a man with coconut oil and cream, being careful to mind the bedsores. The man groaned.

"Make him comfortable," the German instructed as he rose to walk away. "He will be gone before morning."

I continued to gently massage this man's body, lifting his sides to access his back. I stooped to pray in his ear as tears fell from my face to his pillow, but I knew not whether he could hear me. His jaw hung open and he stared into the air; his eyes were empty.

When I finished, I washed my hands and again joined the German, this time accepting my role as his assistant. No interview necessary-there was no time. For the next several hours we performed humiliating procedures and unspeakable tasks for the infirmed and dying.

Finally, a bell rang.

"It's time for tea," he said tossing his gloves into a rusty trashcan.

I took my time walking to the pavilion. Entering the open space, I took a plastic cup filled with black tea and milk and joined the German who was already resting under the shade of a tree. I felt like I needed to be alone, but this man had become my boss and my friend over the past several hours. The least I could do is engage him in some actual conversation.

His name was "Helmut," and he'd been coming to Premdan for ten years in six-month rotations. During this time, he had become something of a self-educated doctor, but in his pre-Kolkata days he'd been a Lutheran minister.

I was struggling to find something profound to ask this sage.

"Some great theologians have come from Germany over the years, huh?" I asked as a where-did-that-come-from look appeared across my face.

Helmut said he believed the best days of the German church were gone. Church leaders in Germany were struggling with an increasingly secular society. They started focusing energy on petitioning the government for institutional recognition. The church in Germany was so busy fighting with businesses and government trying to get everyone to recognize their existence and their preferences. But along the way, he said, they'd lost themselves and they've lost sight of their mission.

"I suppose the German church and the American church are not so different as one might think," Helmut said.

"I suppose not," I agreed.

He turned to me with a look that only an aged and experienced person can give. It was as if his eyes were prophesying, telling me to listen up because I was about to receive some great wisdom.

"Christians in America and Germany forget that it is not what you think or how much power you have or how you vote that changes the world. It's your hands that do the changing."

He wiggled his pruny digits.

"I held that man as you cleaned his feet. Did we change him? Perhaps. But he'll need to be cleaned again. I do know that he changed us," Helmut reflected. "In a small way, God worked through us and, as a result, this world moved just a touch closer to what he'd have it be.

"That's really why I'm here," he continued. "When I had my own congregation, I'd read Jesus' words in Matthew about being the salt of the earth, but I didn't fully understand it."

He turned to look out over the courtyard.

"Now I know."

I sat in silence, stunned by the way this man had summed up everything I'd been feeling. He'd seen the way the Church had been led astray from her mission, seduced by power and lured by partisanship. Reconciling the teachings of Jesus with the actions of his Church was difficult for him. He'd come to Mother Teresa's hospital confused and hungry, and there he found everything he'd been looking for-hope, inspiration, and answers.  

Helmut looked down again at the gnarled hands in his lap, and the bell rang for work to begin again.

The experience is as fresh on my heart today as it was when it happened. I keep seeing Helmut's hands in my mind, and I keep thinking about Jesus. I find myself weighing the old man's words against the stories of the Gospels-from healings to feedings, from Christ's life to his death and resurrection-and I think he's onto something.

Jesus didn't begin his ministry with an outlined agenda. Instead, he launched his public work with two simple words: "Follow me." And then he set out on a living lecture to illustrate to us what following him looked like. He healed the sick and fed the hungry, he worked miracles that still boggle modern minds. He preached the kingdom, promoted a new way of living, and then bore his cross to a hill called the place of the skull where he offered his life as a sacrifice for all.

When religion squelches our childlike faith, we're driven back to Jesus' first words. When we feel alone in our spiritual journeys-those moments when we find ourselves staring into the stars and begging the Creator to speak to us-Jesus' words echo into our lives. "Follow me," our Savior says. "Press your feet into my footprints. Look at my life and walk the path I've carved out for you."

Jesus was always touching people, playing with children, and rubbing his spit in someone's eyes. He was present with those who needed him, never content to let his disciples do the work for him. If following Jesus means living like Christ did, then it must cost something.

Time.

Resources.

Vocation.

Even our lives.

Jesus' life was actually the key to Jesus' effectiveness. When he opened his mouth, he was a great teacher and his words melted the crowds. But there were countless good teachers in his day. What set Jesus a notch above them? The scripture says that Christ left people slack-jawed "because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law." (Matthew 7:29 NIV)

What could Matthew possibly mean? Jesus may have been a rabbi, but he didn't have a synagogue. He was a teacher, but no school claimed him. The difference is that Jesus didn't just prophecy from on high, promoting a list of rules and claiming to care about "issues." Jesus embodied everything he taught.

As Jesus-followers we can't flip through the browning pages of the Bible, reading about Jesus' life and then go do something else-vote or mobilize or advocate. We can't rely on others to do the work for us. We must be present among those who need us, giving ourselves to them and for them. Jesus' life is in stark contrast to most culture warring Christians. He didn't just advocate. He lived and dwelled and touched and healed.

The Apostle John was getting at this idea when he said, "This is how we know we are living in him. Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did." (1 John 2:5-6 NLT).

John speaks a word for us today here by saying, "If you claim to love who Jesus is, you should walk like Jesus did." Today, two billion people on planet earth claim to follow Jesus, and I wonder how many of their lives look like his. Does yours? Does mine?

The formula for following Jesus is simple: Follow. Jesus. Walk like he walked, live like he lived, give yourself to others, and share the good news that God has brought freedom to us all. Being faithful disciples of Christ in this century is no different than it was two millennia ago. If that's what we claim to be, we must make good on our professions of faith.

Is it enough to "advocate" for the hungry when we can satiate their hunger? Can we claim to follow Jesus if we do nothing ourselves for the poor he cared so much about? And what of the plight of orphans and the abandoned elderly? Does God let us off the hook when we ignore their problems except every fourth week in November?

A hospital is filled to overflowing with the sick and dying in Kolkata, India. And in Russia. And China. And Nigeria. They are waiting for the good news of Jesus to be declared and embodied. And I have a feeling more than a few here in America-the broken, the abused, the outcast, the poor-need the same.

Like Helmut, may we engage our hands for Jesus through service and sacrifice for others. May we scrub the wounds of those who need it, realizing that it's often as painful for us as it is for them. May we press our feet into the steps Christ once trod, following him away from an "advocacy only" religion to a "follow me" faith.

Jonathan Merritt is author of A Faith Of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars. This article is excerpted from his book. Copyright Faithwords, a division of Hachette Book Group. Reprinted by permission.

web address for this article: http://www.catalystspace.com/content/read/follow_me/

 

The Zambia Project: Two worlds flipped

Published: Jun 1, 2012

By James Addis

Photo courtesy of Chip Huber

"The Zambia Project" author Chip Huber with students in Zambia.

When a Wheaton Academy high schooler idly flipped to the back of the World Vision Gift Catalog, he set in motion a chain of events that would radically transform lives in Wheaton, Ill., and an AIDS-devastated community in Zambia.

The journey was so dramatic it’s now the subject of a new book, The Zambia Project: The Story of Two Worlds Flipped Upside Down, written by Wheaton’s former Dean of Spiritual Life, Chip Huber.

The Gift Catalog allows donors to choose practical items such as school supplies or livestock to assist those living in poor communities. The Wheaton student happened upon the most expensive thing in the catalog at the time — a schoolhouse costing $53,000.

Students began brainstorming fundraising ideas to find the cash for the school.

They were spurred on after learning that the school would serve a village called Kakolo in central Zambia.

Residents there had been praying for a school for two years. Children had to walk almost eight miles every day to get an education.

Wheaton students not only managed to raise money for the original two-room school building but, over the last eight years, have made regular trips to Kakolo.

They funded major expansions, so the school now has 16 rooms, a science lab, and a courtyard that proudly flies both the Zambian national flag and the Stars and Stripes.

Students also covered the cost for a community health clinic, which specializes in prevention of mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus.

Chip Huber, who guided what became known as “The Zambia Project,” says his mostly well-heeled students had never witnessed the level of poverty in Kakolo or experienced the level of hospitality offered to them by the villagers.

“They learned to fall in love with another part of the world and with another culture,” he says. “I believe this is what God designed us to do — to be transformed as we participate in transforming the lives of other people.”

In the book, Chip laments his own spiritual blindness prior to embarking on The Zambia Project, having grown up in a Christian culture that was strong on Bible reading and telling others about Jesus but had little to do with caring for the poor.

“It’s almost like I could only see in two dimensions. I could see part of what God intended for us to be in terms of participating in his kingdom work. But for whatever reason that other piece — that whole response of meeting the needs of the poor and entering into another’s suffering was not there,” he says.

“I missed it in the Scriptures somehow, and I missed it in life experiences somehow.”

Chip likens participating in The Zambia Project to putting on 3-D glasses and being able to see a whole new dimension to his faith. He says many of his students had a similar experience.

“A lot of students say to me that you have ruined our little lives, but we would never go back, because it’s just unbelievable in terms of the meaning and purpose that this has brought to us.”

Chip believes God has given young people special gifts and passion for the work.

“I was the big cheerleader. I cleared the decks and got out of the way. I gave them the freedom to respond,” he says.

Learn more about World Vision at: worldvision.org

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