By Dave Richards

Dave is cofounder and a board member of Off The Map. Dave is a Christian and high-tech business leader. He's been a worship leader, small group leader, led multiple youth groups and assisted in planting a church in the 90s. On the business side, Dave has led many high-performance software teams and marketing efforts. Dave and his wife Sharon are the proud parents of three children and live in Seattle.

Bangladesh, one of the world’s most populous (140 million people) nations, is the international poster child for poverty and natural disasters.  In fact many leaders have given up hope that Bangladesh will ever amount to anything more than a black hole for foreign aid.

Mohammed Yunus was born in what is now Bangladesh.  He came to the US on a scholarship, earned a Ph.D. in Economics and then returned to the newly formed country of Bangladesh to head up a university economics department.  While there, Yunus became increasingly disillusioned with the rampant poverty and quickly realized that the economics theories he was espousing were functionally irrelevant.

Do Something

Yunus chose to do something.  He visited local villages and discovered that the poorest people were paying local moneylenders 10% interest per month (or even per week!) for working capital to purchase raw materials and small equipment for their self-employment livelihoods.  This practice of abusive usury consumed their potential profits and trapped them in an unrelenting cycle of poverty.

Yunus decided to do what he could do.  He began offering tiny (micro) loans to the poorest people with amazing results. Out of this emerged the Grameen Bank.

Grameen Bank’s primary focus is providing very small loans (as little as $25-50) to the poorest of the poor to be used as working capital in their own micro businesses.  Today the Grameen Bank is the largest bank in Bangladesh and still focuses exclusively on making loans to the poorest of the poor. 

Challenging The WHBS (Widely Held Belief Systems)

As is the case with all significant change, there have been innumerable critics and naysayers.  Yunus doesn’t fit nicely into either the conservative or progressive philosophical camps and he’s had to challenge and overcome many objections and widely held [mis]beliefs about poor people.  Here are a few of them:

Widely Held Belief	Grameen Bank Experience/Results
Poor people could not find remunerative occupations	Millions of poor borrowers are successfully self-employed without any training
Poor people would not be able to repay loans	Repayment rates have reached 97%
Poor rural women were not bankable	96% of borrows are women
Poor people cannot save	Micro-savings have proven as successful as micro-lending
Rural power structures would make sure that the bank failed	As of July 2004, there are 3.7 million borrowers with 1,267 branches in 46,000 villages, covering more than 68% of the villages in Bangladesh.

The fundamental reason Yunus has succeeded is that he believes in the built-in entrepreneurial survival capabilities of poor people and their commitment to keeping their word.  As a result, Grameen Bank has never required any collateral from borrowers. 

Widely Held (mis) Beliefs about Ordinary Christians

In a similar way many pastors have Widely Held (mis)Beliefs about Ordinary Christians.  The problem looks something like this: fewer and fewer people in their communities are excited about evangelism activities/programs and participating in evangelism on a regular basis.  When they (pastors) put more energy, attention and money on big events to re-invigorate people to care more and do more about evangelism, the resulting returns are weak.  In many ways this is similar to the frustrating situation the various governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) found themselves in Bangladesh.  It took a new approach with fundamentally different assumptions to begin the gradual process of creating an effective, working, sustainable approach.

Perceptions of Ordinary Christians

Here are some (unhelpful) perceptions I’ve held at times about Ordinary Christians.  See if you can relate.

• Ordinary Christians don’t tithe without constant “encouragement”

• Ordinary Christians are looking for religious entertainment experiences [and complimentary childcare], not the sacrificial service of true servants

• Ordinary Christians can’t remember the correct full and life-giving Christian doctrine, so we have to keep reminding them

• Ordinary Christians have kind of messy [sinful] lifestyles/habits which makes it very difficult for them to be “used by God” as “witnesses”

• Ordinary Christians are too busy focusing on their jobs, kids, work, leisure time, non-Christian social groups than being good servants in their local church

Embracing The Ordinary

My biggest Widely Held (mis)Belief, when it came to understanding Ordinary Christians, was thinking that all of these “issues” needed to be overcome rather than embraced.  I also began to understand why Jesus was so angry with the religious leaders he encountered.  It was simply because they were not making the journey of faith doable for the ordinary folks around them.

Yunus believes that “religion … should take into account the reality of people’s lives; moreover, religious leaders should strive harder to improve people’s lives here on earth.” [1]   He believes that if financial resources can be made available to the poor people on terms and conditions that are appropriate and reasonable, "these millions of small people with their millions of small pursuits can add up to create the biggest development wonder." [2]   I am particularly struck by his term “appropriate and reasonable”. When it comes to providing Ordinary Christians appropriate and reasonable approaches to evangelism we have much to learn from Yunus and the Grameen Bank.

Inappropriate Evangelism

The problem with most evangelism programs (like bad lending approaches) is that they are “inappropriate and unreasonable” and therefore are not sustainable or scalable.  They require people to stop doing what they normally do and do something different.  We ask people to put their normal lives on “pause”, do something “unnormal” and then work double-time to catch up on the things in their lives which have been queuing up.  All of which (to the Ordinary Christian) feels like the abusive usury I mentioned earlier in this article.  It may even be fun to “act” bold for a while but eventually we head back to our ordinary lives.  It seems like we leaders are addicted to the dramatic and allergic to the ordinary.

What about an evangelism approach designed for ordinary, busy, distracted people?  One that didn't require people to remember much, present/pitch anything, didn't cost money, and something they could do everyday even on their worst days?  Could this be the key to unlocking the hidden potential in each ordinary Christian?

If you’re interested in some ideas of what this might look like, check out Ordinary Attempts.  If you like these ideas, you might be interested in investigating an upcoming Evangelism For The Rest of Us event.

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Interested in learning more about microfinance?  Read:  Banker To The Poor or check out this book list on microfinance.  A recent study reports that there are now estimated to be some 10,000 organizations involved in some form of microfinance yet together these organizations are only supplying about 1% of the estimated $300 billion need for micro-loans.  Two (of the many) Christian organizations that are leaders in microfinance are Opportunity International (a “pure play” in microfinance) and WorldVision/VisionFund (offering microfinance integrated with other development services.)

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