Book Reflection – Costly Mission: Following Christ in the Slums

This book, written by Michael Duncan, is a story of the author and his family’s story of struggle and relationships while living in the slums of Manila, Philippines. Duncan additionally offers his reflection of ministry among the poor from his perspective. The book is full of successes and failures as they struggle with the complexities of ministry among the poor of Manila’s slums. I was caught by Duncan’s openness to share of real and deep struggles. Often when I read these books on working among the poor, I am left with an idealized picture that clearly is not realistic. I have spent enough time in this type of environment to know most of the time is less than glamorous.

I really appreciated the candidness of Duncan in one section on the failures he had experienced throughout his time living in the slums. He speaks of the need for a theology of failure (or a theological framework for working through failure). I found this interesting. Failure is something that every person experiences and everyone tries to minimize. When we experience failure, we often try to do everything we can to avoid that experience again. Duncan offers two different pictures of failure from the Bible. He notes that the Bible is full of stories of failures and by individuals and their faithfulness to continue following God. Duncan offers Paul as a man of many failures. Paul never united the Jews and Gentiles (Gal. 2:11-13), his friend and partner Barnabas split from him over an argument (Acts 15:36-41) and the church of Corinth, where Paul spent a significant portion of his time, had repeated moral failures and significant hardships.

Secondly, Duncan notes the failures of Joseph. As Joseph was in charge of the stockpiles of Pharaoh, he took the money, land, cattle and flocks from the people and gave them to Pharaoh (Gen. 47:14-21). This paved the path for his own people to be brought into slavery. These are both men who are regarded highly; and rightly so, because they continued to be faithful to the Lord and his calling. Duncan quotes Michael Riddell in how loss and failure affect the individual. He notes:

The dark days are just beginning. Before you emerge into the light again you will be stripped to the core. You will rage and scream at God. You will retreat into a cocoon of sorrow and breathe in slow motion. The colour will drain from the sky, the meaning from life. As a plough tears through hard earth, your heart will be broken up. You will make friends with pain, nursing it as the child of grief. Utter emptiness fills the earth, and the valley appears to contain nothing but the echo of your own cry. Surely God has left you. The road which seemed to be heading somewhere has become a dead end. A mocking maze with no exit.

Then, one morning in the distant future, you wake and hear a bird singing…

One other important section was in a chapter on the connection between community development, mercy and evangelism. As a person who would love to be involved in community development in the future and as one who follow Christ, I have struggled with balancing these things. Often development fringes on humanitarian activity, which can be very disconnected from spiritual elements. Often those who are involved in this type of work pour all their energy into it and have little left for sharing of how Christ has called them and met them throughout their lives. One the other hand, a large focus on evangelism leaves a gap between the Christian and the people who are struggling with deep issues and needs. Many of these things cannot be solved with mere words. The focus can be on making sure people have a better life after death, but not a better life before death.

Duncan suggests that our “mercy ministries must be developmental and our development must be merciful” (103). Duncan speaks of the difficulties of the creation of disempowered individuals through the actions of mercy ministries. Restraint, the lack of knee-jerk reactions and a focus of empowerment must guide the actions of these types of ministries. He states that we must learn “to give in a considered way so that people [can] move on from relief to a degree of self-sufficiency” (105). Duncan, in looking at their response to the need for evangelism, notes that social concern aids this process to get to evangelization. He states, “We believed that social concern takes us into the world of the non-Christian – into their issues, debates, networks, gathering places, felt needs and heart cries, and into their sin and dark corners” (110). In this place, they were able to see the things that were keeping the people from coming to Christ and worked to rectify those things. There is definite benefit for a balance to be found between these areas. My hope is that we are all able to work at seeking this balance in our lives.