Beeson Podcast, Episode #739 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Fletcher: Welcome to the Beeson podcast. I'm Jonathan Fletcher, program assistant at the Global Center, and I'm joined today by Brian Fikkert, author of When Helping Hurts and Becoming Whole. The introduction continues, professor of economics and community development and the founder of the Chalmers Center at Covenant College. Dr. Fikkert is this year's Go Global Week guest lecturer, and we're grateful to host him this week. Thank you for joining us. >>Fikkert: It's been so great to be here and to get to see the faculty and the students and what's going on here. It's an amazing place and just so encouraging to see what God is doing here. >>Fletcher: Yeah. Well, I would love to start by just asking how did the Lord save you and how did He call you to ministry? >>Fikkert: Yeah, so I was raised in a Christian household. My father was a Presbyterian minister. I know one of the strengths of Beeson is this desire to have folks from different sorts of denominational theological backgrounds. And so, in my own upbringing, we believe that people can actually be born into God's covenant family. And so, I certainly have asked the Lord into my heart many, many times, quite frankly, because I'm a little neurotic. The truth of the matter is, I think from the time I was a little boy, I think just I've always known who God is. I've always believed in Him. I've always believed in Jesus Christ and my need to trust in Him only for my salvation. So, I don't think there's ever been a day where I was outside of the household of faith. >>Fletcher: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. And called to ministry. >>Fikkert: Yeah. So, at a very young age, I felt called to work amongst people who are poor. And quite frankly, I don't really know where that came from. I just had a vision. I don't know for, I don't mean spiritual vision, but I had some kind of vision for working amongst the poor. Perhaps I'd seen some pictures. I don't know what caught me, but it's been a lifelong passion. And there's different ways that one can pursue that. I'm an economist. I have a PhD in economics. I thought I was going to be doing global policy work, and we were going to run around the world and help governments to adopt better policies to help the economy grow and help people who are poor. When I finished graduate school, Covenant College contacted me and said, would you be interested in being a faculty member here? And I said, actually, I don't want to teach at a small Christian college. I kind of had bigger dreams, to be honest with you, and wanted to be involved in global policy work. Well, I took a job at the University of Maryland as an assistant professor there and was very happy there in many ways, just outside of Washington, D.C., so I could do consulting work with the World Bank and so on. But the Lord was working on me, right? He's always working on us. And there are kind of three things that kind of happened. The first is, I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with how economists think about what a human being is, and that's shaped a lot of the lectures we've had here this week. Economists think of human being as fundamentally a material being. There's no spiritual dimension, right? And so, I was studying poverty in India at the time. I thought, my word, the idea that there's nothing spiritual going on here is just crazy. And so, I wasn't really buying kind of the anthropology, if you will, of my discipline. The second thing happened. I was very involved with my church. I was an elder in my church. And I watched in our church how we cared for people who were poor. And it seemed like the message was basically, you are poor because you're sinful. And if you would accept Christ as your Savior, you wouldn't be poor anymore. Well, you know, certainly that was part of the story for some folks, but there's more to it than that, right? And so, there's a sense in which my church was reducing people to the spiritual. And so, I'm kind of caught between my profession and my church and not really believing kind of in the anthropology, if you will, of either one of them. Then a third thing happened. I was asked to teach a Sunday school class, and you know, the Lord knows what he's doing. I just, quite frankly, grabbed a book off the shelf at a Christian bookstore and said, I think I'll teach this. And it was a book called The Glorious Body of Christ written by R.B. Kuyper, one of the founding professors at Westminster Seminary. And it was a book about the doctrine of the local church. And in the process of teaching Sunday school, I fell in love with the local church. It's the embodiment of Jesus Christ who ministers the good news of his kingdom in words and in deeds to all people, right? And so, that was all going on. And one afternoon, I wrote a letter to Covenant College and said, you know, somebody should, I basically said to them in the letter what I just said to you, I said, somebody should start an undergraduate program that would think about poverty in a more holistic biblical framework, and somebody should start a center that would equip churches to be what the scripture calls them to be amongst the poor. And so, the college said, how about you? How about now? And I was like, not me, not now. One thing led to another, and I tried running, but God sent this great big fish. So, I followed God's call, and it's been 29 years now. And so, it's been a difficult journey, quite frankly, but also so enriching, and I've grown, I've learned from the Covenant College community and from, quite frankly, God's people all across the country and around the world, and they've shaped me. And so that's kind of the story of how I got into this. Yeah. >>Fletcher: Yeah. You've gotten to share a lot of that with our students, with our staff and faculty. You've preached at Beeson Chapel. You've spoken to our mission certificate students. You've taught a lunch lecture, among other things. So, share with us, what have you been sharing with our students this week? >>Fikkert: Yeah, so many different things. But fundamentally, I've been asking the question, really, what is human flourishing? What does it look like? And it's not really what economists say it is, right? I believe the Bible teaches that human beings are highly integrated body-soul relational creatures. And because that's who we are, because we're body-soul relational creatures, human flourishing isn't just about getting more stuff the way economists think it is. It's not, and it's also not just, you know, a lot of Christians, I think, are essentially living a baptized American dream where we kind of say, I'm going to trust Jesus to get my soul to heaven, and then I'm going to kind of live my best life now, pursue the American dream, work hard, earn money, buy more stuff, right? I've been trying to communicate that I think that because we are body-soul relational creatures, the human flourishing, the good life, so to speak, is to enjoy our relationships with God, with self, with others, and with creation in the way that God designed those relationships to work. And that understanding of what a human being is and what human flourishing is reshapes everything we do as we work amongst people who are poor. The goal isn't just more stuff. The goal is a relational goal and that reshapes how we actually work with people who are poor. It redefines what success looks like, and it redefines how you measure success, and it changes the ways that you actually go about trying to help people. It's a different approach. >>Fletcher: Right, right. Awesome. Yeah, we've certainly enjoyed having you here, and it's been a benefit to all of us. So, how have you used your position as a professor and then with the Chalmers Center? How have you used those avenues to shape others' views of missions, especially toward the poor, both here in the United States and abroad? >>Fikkert: Yeah. So, I'm so grateful for all that God has done. You know, the Chalmers Center and the Department of Economics and Community Development at Covenant College were both started at the same time with the same cast of characters. And so, we were kind of developing the content for our undergraduate students at the same time that we were developing the training materials and strategies of the Chalmers Center. And so, there's been a really, we got a lot of problems, a lot of warts everywhere. But one thing we're really good at is just kind of coherency. We are working from, I think, a pretty deeply rooted theological framework about what human beings are designed for. And we've been able to, by God's grace, a team of people, iron sharpening, iron fighting all over, we've been able to create various kinds of interventions to help people who are poor, both in the U.S. and around the world that are deeply informed by God's redeeming story. And so, yeah, the ideas were being developed both for the classroom and for the Chalmers Center. And in the process of long, lots of arguing, lots of dialogue and debate, lots of trying different things, lots of mistakes. I think that we've grown, and we've learned a lot of things that have helped us to both prepare students in the classroom as undergraduates, but then also to train churches, missions agencies, Christian relief and development organizations, nonprofits in the U.S., why God has done more than we ever could have imagined, and to really change the paradigms of those ministering to people who are poor, about what success looks like, how do you achieve that success, and then seeing them change what they're doing, change their approaches. All across the majority world of Africa, Asia, Latin America, all across the U. S., ministry is changing what they're doing, changing how they're doing it in order to live in ways that are more consistent with God's redeeming story. And it's had a huge impact. We're just so grateful. Brother, I had no idea what I was doing on the front end. No idea. Big on vision, short on details. But God has just continued to bring people into my life who've shown me, who've directed me, who've mentored me and trained me. And so quite frankly, you know, I get a lot of credit, but the reality of it is all I'm doing is just synthesizing what other people have taught me and putting it out there again. >>Fletcher: Yeah. >>Fikkert: That's what I do. >>Fletcher: Yeah. >>Fikkert: Praise God. >>Fletcher: Yeah. Yeah. I've really seen your biblical narrative and your story of change that has been, it's developed a lot from when helping others to becoming whole. >>Fikkert: Yeah. It keeps to continue to grow. Yeah. You know, it's so interesting that, you know, one of the benefits of being at Covenant College is that we have a really strong Department of Biblical and Theological Studies. And, you know, I know that that's true for Beeson, right? You've got all these great theologians. And so, what I do is I just take advantage. I pick their brains. I think there's been an underappreciation for what solid, biblical teaching and theological reflection, I think there's a real underappreciation of what that can do. And so, I hang out with biblical scholars and theologians. I ask them a lot of questions, and they mentor me, quite frankly. And they say, Brian, you know, here's what a human being looks like. Here's how human beings change. And then I try to write things, and then I give it back to them. They say, no, you got that part wrong. And so, there's kind of a, you know, a mentoring kind of thing, but it's really been enriching for me. And so, I just want to encourage our listeners today that the important role that places like Beeson play in discipling God's people, we need it so badly. So much of what we're struggling with, both in the US and around the world, is really out of bad theology and just a biblical ignorance. And so, I'm just so thankful for what's going on here. It's really important. >>Fletcher: Yeah. Well, you've certainly encouraged us this week, and I know that, yeah, this book that you wrote, and was it 2019 when Becoming Whole came out? >>Fikkert: I think that's right, yeah. >>Fletcher: So certainly, you've been thinking about things within the past five years. So, I'd love to ask, what are you working on these days? >>Fikkert: Yeah, thanks for asking that. So, Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty isn't the American Dream, tries to communicate, you know, social scientists would call it a theory of change. Philosophers and theologians would call it a metanarrative. I like to use the word story. But basically, a story of change answers two questions. What is the goal? And how can the goal be achieved? And so, what we try to do is articulate what are God's understandings of human flourishing, and what are the ways that God typically works to promote such flourishing? And so, it's a theological kind of work. But then what we do is there's an associated book called A Field Guide to Becoming Whole, and we articulate in there 20 ministry design principles, things that we think are the kinds of things that God typically uses to bring about the kind of flourishing that only He can bring. So, it's not a formula. Unless the Holy Spirit shows up, nothing happens. But we kind of think these are the kinds of things, themes in Scripture and from some applied work, that are the kinds of things that God tends to use to bring about the kinds of things He's trying to achieve in the world; restoration of us as image bearers, living in right relationship with God's self, others, and creation. So, all that work has been done. Well, I like to actually get something done. And so, what we're doing right now is, both at the Chalmers Center and at the college, is we're developing tools. We're essentially borrowing tools from a field called design thinking. It's basically tools for creativity and imagination. Because if we're going to live into God's story, if we're going to participate in his work of restoring all things, if we're going to seek first his kingdom, there's a sense in which we have to create a world we haven't seen before, because this world isn't doing that great, right? So, there's a sense in which we have to have great imaginations, lots of creativity to imagine what would it look like if Christ were to land in this block, in this city, or in this village? What would it look like if Christ were to come again? Well, you have to imagine it, right? You have to kind of improvise it. And so, what we're doing now is we're taking these tools from design thinking, tools from the field of innovation, tools of creativity and imagination, and we're infusing or integrating those tools with God's story, with creation, fall, redemption, consummation, with God's plan for restoring His creation into a new creation where we can once again flourish. We're taking that story, we're taking those 20 ministry design principles that we're kind of putting in a blender with tools from design thinking and creating training materials and resources to help churches and Christian ministries across the U.S. and around the world to imagine what it would look like if the kingdom came today, and to design either new ministries or to improve their existing ones in ways that we think are more consistent with God's story. And so, it's got legs on the ground. I like abstract things. I like theology for its own sake. I like economic theory for its own sake. But fundamentally, I want to help poor people. And even more than that, I want to help the church, the bride of Jesus Christ, to be what God has called the church to be. And so often we say at the Chalmers Center that our goal is that poor people never hear of the Chalmers Center. Rather, we want them to experience the local church as the embodiment of Jesus Christ. And so, we are training churches, ministries all over the world in, we call this, we're calling this, for lack of a better word, the product, if you will, innovate. And it's basically creativity for living into God's story more faithfully. And it's so fun because we're seeing churches and missionaries and ministries create all kinds of really unique things that fit their context, things that we would never imagine ourselves. And so, we're enjoying seeing the story lived out and applied in a wide range of super creative ways. And we're training, quite frankly, we're training very large megachurches, but we're also training grassroots churches in some of the poorest places in Africa, we're training very poor people in who they are as image bearers of God Almighty, as restored image bearers, as new creatures in Christ. We're saying to them, you know, you're called and recreated to improvise God's story in your community. What are you going to do with it? And so, we're seeing very poor churches, very poor people doing some outrageously creative things that show the love of Christ and it manifests his kingdom in really unique places. Let me tell you one story real quick. We were piloting this stuff with a church in Togo. Togo is one of the poorest countries in the world. If you Google Togo and look for sightseeing in Togo, nothing shows up actually. There's not a lot to do in Togo except for one thing. It's the fetish market. Togo is one of the centers for witchcraft and voodoo in the world. And so, you can go to a fetish market and buy chicken's feet and rabbit's feet and all kinds of potions to try to appease the spiritual forces that you believe are controlling your life, right? Well, we were training a church in rural Togo in God's great story, creation, fall, redemption, and the idea that as members of Christ's body, these churchgoers who are living on two dollars a day, but that they're new creatures in Christ restored to all that means to be an image bearer and to live into his redeeming story. And we were basically talking to this whole design thinking process. What resources do you have in your community? What problems do you have in your community? What could you do creatively to bring the good news of the gospel in its fullest sense to this community? So, these very, very, very poor women in this church went through this process and they said, you know what? We're going to go out and repair the roads. So, this village was about an hour drive off of a paved road. And the roads are made out of dirt and so on. When it rains, the roads wash out. There's huge potholes, lagoons form. Trucks can't get from the main road into the village to bring various kinds of products into the village, but they also can't get the products from the villagers who are farmers to the marketplace. So, the villagers’ livelihoods are cut off. So, this road is everything, right? So, they go out there and they start repairing the road. They got their shovels and all kinds of tools. They're out there repairing the road. And pretty soon the whole village comes out and says, what are you folks all doing? These are folks from the church. What are you people doing? And they said, well, we serve a king. who's the Lord of all, and he's Lord of our village, and he's Lord of this road, and he's placed us as stewards over his world. And so, we are out here fixing the roads to be who we're supposed to be. Well, all the villagers joined them. So now the whole village is out there. Believers and unbelievers are pairing the roads together. And there was a witch doctor from a neighboring village who was visiting, and he observed this. And he said to the women from this church, I will give you land in my village if you will plant a church in my village because I want this king, this God to reign in my village too. I love that. >>Fletcher: That's amazing. >>Fikkert: I love that. Now, as an outsider, it never would have occurred to me to go in and fix the roads. >>Fletcher: Yeah. >>Fikkert: But the local people, they know. They know what's needed. They know what's strategic. They know what they can do. And so, they're contextualizing the big story in their particular setting, and I believe living out the gospel in a way that is unique to them, that fits their culture, fits who they are, that advances the kingdom. >>Fletcher: That's awesome. >>Fikkert: I love that. >>Fletcher: Such a cool story. Thank you for including that, man. Well, yeah, last question. Beeson hopes to be a praying community. So, Brian Fikkert, how can we be praying for you? >>Fikkert: Oh, my word. Thank you for asking that. Yeah. So, I'm going through quite a few transitions right now. So, the Chalmers Center has a new leader, a new president, CEO. His name is Coy Buckley. He's doing a fantastic job. And so, I'm stepping back from that into more of a founder role. And it's exactly what should happen. It's great, but it's hard. It's the truth. It's hard. I tell people it's kind of like dropping your oldest child off at college. You're so excited because you believe this is the right thing for them, right? You've been praying and you think they've made a great choice and you're so excited and then you drop them off and you kind of cry the whole way home. And so, it's kind of like that, you know? Now, after a few weeks, you kind of decide, you know, it's kind of nice around here. It's a little quieter. But all that's kind of going on for me right now, just that transition. And then we're also going through quite a few transitions in our department at Covenant College. You know, my co-authors, Steve Corbett, my co-author on Helping Hurts, has retired, Russ Mask, who also co-authored a book with me called Depends to Dignity, about microfinance. These two guys really started the Chalmers Center with me, and they started the department with me. They both retired this year. I'm the last year of the baby boom generation. So, my whole generation's retiring and I'm still here with the kids. And so, it's just, there's a lot of transition stuff, both at Chalmers, at the college that's good. It's all good news. It's what should happen, but it's a little challenging. I would say it's a little emotionally difficult, but also exactly what is my role? And, you know, what would God say is the best way to use my gifts and abilities for the remainder of the time I have left here? Those are questions for me. So just wisdom and peace. >>Fletcher: Absolutely. >>Fikkert: Yeah. >>Fletcher: Well, we've been so encouraged by having you here, so thank you so much for joining us. Listeners, this has been Brian Fikkert. Thank you so much for joining us here. And thank you listeners for tuning in. Please pray for the Lord's work here at Beeson. We're praying for you, and we say goodbye for now. >>Mark Gignilliat: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.