DAVID ADAMS talks to Compassion Australia chief executive Paul O’Rourke about a new book celebrating lessons the poor can teach us…
Singer Steve Grace writes of a trip he made to Solomon Islands where God taught him about what it means to worship in the midst of great hardship. Rebecca St James writes about how time she spent in Rwanda opened her eyes to what it really means to forgive. Angela Saleh, one of the owners of the Gloria Jeans Coffee franchise, speaks of the time she was filled with joy when visiting some of her sponsor children in Brazil.
Their stories about how God used an encounter with the poor to transform their lives are just some of 48 accounts contained in a new book, Blessings of the Poor: 48 Stories of Faith, Hope and Joy, produced by Christian child development organisation Compassion Australia.
“(The poor) know more about faith – because it’s been tested under fire – than we do. And I know that’s a generalisation but I sincerely believe that. I’ve learnt more about love and hope and faith and what it means to be content…from the poor than I have from the rich.”
– Compassion Australia chief executive Paul O’Rourke
Featuring contributions from Compassion workers including international chief executive Wess Stafford as well as high profile Christians such as singer UK-based singer- songwriter Graham Kendrick, evangelist J. John and US musician Phil Keaggy as well as Hillsong identities Darlene Zschech and Bobbie Houston, the book is organised into categories with stories grouped according to what the incident related teaches about helping the poor – from love and faith through to worship, hope and forgiveness.
Paul O’Rourke, chief executive officer at Compassion Australia, decided to put the book together after realising that he had gathered numerous stories from his own work with Compassion which he hadn’t found a vehicle through which to share them.
“These were just individual stories of people that I’d met and found that they had a lot to teach me and the wider Christian public about what poverty and is and what it’s not,” says the 45-year-old. “And then I found that many others, starting with my own colleagues, had similar sorts of stories.”
Mr O’Rourke says all of those who had contributed to the book, including his wife Janine, had seen first-hand the work of Compassion around the world.
Mr O’Rourke, who has three adult children and two grandchildren with another on the way, was a newspaper editor prior to joining Compassion nine years ago – initially working as a communications manager, then chief financial officer and since July 2001, as chief executive officer. During that time, he says, he’s visited dozens of countries and met tens of thousands of kids in hundreds of different projects.
Despite that, he says it was relatively easy for him to isolate the stories that he wanted to include in the book.
“They just stood out,” he says. Organising the book into different categories – such as faith, love and – helped by encouraging him to think along those lines.
Mr O’Rourke says the purpose of the book is to educate people that the poor have something to give and aren’t just the passive recipients of aid.
“That we can learn from them,” he says. “That they know more about faith – because it’s been tested under fire – than we do. And I know that’s a generalisation but I sincerely believe that. I’ve learnt more about love and hope and faith and what it means to be content…from the poor than I have from the rich.”
He says the book is also about “changing mindsets” towards wealth and value.
“The poor have learned to be comfortable in who they are and not what they do. We’re all tied up in what we do and what we have.”
The stories include some experiences which weren’t quite what people expected. Regina Hopewell, who works for Compassion International in the US, for example, writes of how when she meet her sponsor child Natasha in Haiti in 1998, she had felt hurt when Natasha had been far more interested in her watch than the Creole-language Bible she had brought for her.
“God showed me that loving others is messy, and that loving the poor can be very messy,” she writes. “He showed me that we must not love the poor because we want to be loved back or shown gratitude. We must not love the least of these because we think it will make us feel good.”
Mr O’Rourke agrees it’s a powerful lesson to learn.
“You know what, we all go – we don’t say it – but somewhere deep inside this this attitude of ‘Well, Look what I’ve done for you. Shouldn’t you be really happy with what we’ve done?’ and we give our $30 bucks worth of coloring in pencils and Tshirts and stuff.
“It’s nice but then to go into a child’s home where they have nothing, and they give you a bottle of Fanta or put on in this lavish spread by calling in favours and borrowing stuff, it just puts what you do in perspective – that most of the time it’s quite minor and it’s quite comfortable and there’s not a lot of sacrifice in it.”
People can take a similar stance when it comes to knowledge – thinking they have all the answers – and unfortunately, says Mr O’Rourke, such attitudes can be reinforced by the fuss made of Westerners when they visit the poor.
INSPIRING STORIES: Blessings of the Poor contains 48 stories based around themes such as love, faith and hope.
“You feel like a rock star. In all of the Compassion projects I’ve been to they really are genuinely happy that you’re there to see them. It’s a big deal and they know how far you’ve travelled and so…you become bigger in your own mind than you really are.”
Along those lines, Mr O’Rourke says that while there has been considerable change in the way aid agencies approach the poor in more recent years, they too still have “some way to go”.
He says that one of the ways in which Compassion is helping to foster a sense of partnership among people in developed and developing nations is through allowing churches in Western nations like Australia to sponsor children in a particular country and form relationships with “field” churches they are working with.
“Part of the reason for doing that is an exchange,” he says. “So, we’ll go over to Indonesia and visit the kids but work with the local churches there in church planting or evangelism or building or kids work. What I hear is that Australian Christians don’t want to see – they actually want to participate and do. We educate them before and during and after the trip that it’s a two-way thing. You go to give but you’ll able learning along the way.”
While Compassion has relationships with hundreds of churches across Australia, around 100 have so far formed a partnership with churches in a particular nation where the organisation works. This year around a dozen churches intend sending teams on a Compassion trip.
Mr O’Rourke, who has only recently returned from a trip to Indonesia with his own church – Victory Christian Centre in Newcastle and, at the time of the interview, was about to leave for West Africa, says that despite he finds poverty confronting every time he comes face to face with it in the developing world.
“What changes is you didn’t have as big a culture shock so you kind of know what to expect in Africa, Asia and South America…but with the people, I’ve got a saying – ‘just when you think you’ve seen it all, then something else happens and you go ‘Wow’. I have actually thought that nothing else can shock me, surprise me or delight me but every trip you come back thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen that before’. It never gets mundane.”
Blessings of the Poor: 48 Stories of Faith, Hope and Joy can be ordered via www.compassion.com.au. Priced at $14.95. All royalties are being donated to the work of Compassion Australia.
