Unlike many ministries, the Salvation Army realizes that charity is evangelism.
Why do I plug the Salvation Army and not any of the other wonderful Christian charities out there?
It’s a fair question; one I got from someone recently because my school is donating to Convoy of Hope, an Assemblies of God charity that does much the same that the Salvation Army does. So why not contribute to Convoy of Hope?
Well, I never said don’t contribute to Convoy of Hope. They’re a good group; donate to them if you like. I tend to push the bigger charities because—and I said this before, after the 2004 tsunami—they’re more effective than the little ones, and you want to go with the ones that can help the most people the most effectively.
And they actually help people, instead of trying to disguise evangelism as a charity. This is a major peeve of mine: Some Christian charities forget that the purpose of a charity is to help people. Instead, they start evangelizing. Now, before you misunderstand me, the last thing I want to say is that there’s something wrong with evangelization. Christians are required to tell other people about Jesus. But Christian organizations are in the terrible habit of disguising their evangelization groups as charitable groups. As a result, they do neither well. They suck at charity, and they suck at evangelism.
Fr’instance.
Some years back I helped out a charity that was going to spend a Saturday in San Francisco feeding the poor. At least, that’s the hook they used to get me to come help out at the event. This particular organization makes a big deal about feeding the poor. They get all these corporations to donate food, and they have great big trucks that show happy minorities receiving groceries. So they got me (and several others) to volunteer to help; and then they announced to the poor in the Tenderloin district that they were going to be giving away free groceries.
But here’s the catch (and you knew there was one). First, the people had to get in line. This line grew to stretch several blocks through the district. Then, the people had to watch a 30-minute show; some kids were doing a little dance. (I saw it. It wasn’t very good. It was typical Christian entertainment—sucky, but their hearts were in the right place, so that’s supposed to make up for the shoddy production values and the lack of talent. But that’s another rant.) This little dance was followed by a little singing—more typical Christian entertainment; see above—and then a sermon. This was followed by an invitation to confess Jesus as Lord, and then they could get the free groceries. Well… the first hundred could. The next hundred—they “weren’t close enough” to the stage to see the show, so they were gonna have to stand through the show again. Just to make sure everybody saw it.
My job, which is probably the suckiest job in the world, was to guard the food from the very people that I expected to be giving it to. I wasn’t allowed to let anyone near it unless they had seen the show. They might be in a hurry, or want something now, or (usually) be too stoned out of their minds to even understand the show. Add to this the fact that it was raining and cold; this was San Francisco in October. But my job was to tell them to get in line, and my only excuse for this reprehensible behavior of driving hungry or needy people away from food was that I was “only doing my job.” I felt like a Nazi. (Well, a Nazi with a conscience.)
So, for this reason, I no longer have anything to do with that charity.
I don’t think help should ever be conditional. I know it’s important to share the gospel, but the gospel is shared by actions, not words. As for the free groceries, they’re not free when you have to earn them by putting up with a crappy 30-minute show. So whatever charity there was in this event, it’s gone; and any love that might have been displayed in this event is pretty much invisible. By persisting in making the gospel message so central, we just lost whatever message of love we could have passed on.
Sad, isn’t it?
Now, I know: Organizers will point out how many people came forward to confess Jesus as a result of their outreach. I won’t get into how many of them actually stuck with their confessions. Statistics, which have been confirmed over and over, say it’s only about 10 percent of them. If 100 people came forward, that means only 10 are still in a church. The other 90 will be confessing Jesus at the next event.
The funny thing is, whenever I point this out, the immediate response is: “Well, it’s not about numbers.” Right after they were going to use numbers as evidence that their sorry program works. After all, they’re so quick to post the numbers of “conversions” in order to show off their “effectiveness” and get donations. It’s always about numbers… until someone actually brings God into it.
Well, if I’m gonna give to Christians, and I usually do, my money’s going to the Salvation Army. They don’t confuse the charity with evangelism. They help people, and let that be their witness. I think that says a lot more about their faith in Jesus than any song and dance they could perform (and remember, the Salvation Army is famous for its bands). Talk is cheap, remember? To quote St. James, “Fellow children: What good is it to say you have faith, but you have nothing to show for it? Does that ‘faith’ save you? When a brother or sister has no clothes, or no food, yet one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; be warm and full!’ without doing anything for their bodies, what’s the point? Just like this, faith, with no action, is in reality
...And bear in mind that the Red Cross has a lot of Christians in it too, and they likewise help a lot of people, so give to them too.