Church, Competencies, and Effectiveness of Service
This speech was delivered by the Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) Dr. Michel E. Abs, at the opening of the training course organized by the MECC Diakonia and Social Department, under the title “Disaster Risk Management and Churches Response”, between 6 and 9 June 2024, at Bethania, Harissa - Lebanon.
Dr. Michel E. Abs
The Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)
This training course presents two main issues. The first is the problem of competencies, the development of human capital, and sustainable training. The second is the role of the Church in providing relief to people, accompanying them in their suffering, and helping them overcome their tragedies.
These two issues are inseparable from the logic of efficiency and the optimization of available resources. The core of the approach lies in preventing the waste of energies and resources and applying the logic of business administration and managerial economics in humanitarian work. This was not available in the past when social work was left to non-specialists despite their good intentions.
In the era of modernity, and in a postmodern society, science and technology are developing at such a rapid pace that humankind may not be able to keep up if he does not receive proper training. This development may place him outside the context of history or on its margins.
The observer in the world of human resources management and organizational leadership finds that there is a periodic, sustainable creation of new techniques and methods of work in various fields. These range from marketing methods to financial management, to dealing with organizational culture, to development management and its derivatives. The training course today falls into this category.
Human creativity proposes, on a daily basis, new methods to circumvent the difficulties of life and overcome challenges. It enters a technological race with the obstacles that he faces on a daily or periodic basis. It resorts to science to find solutions to its problems, hence the expressions of technology, which means applied sciences, and solutions, which is overcoming challenges. We must mention that the word ‘technical’ originally meant art, and all sciences began as arts before they were institutionalized.
In other words, humanitarian assistance, which began spontaneously in history and which the Christian doctrine gave its divine and value base, gradually turns from a spontaneous emotional work that envisages some limited know-how, to an advanced technological work that has the highest standards of inspection, performance, evaluation, and getting conclusions from it. This is where the function of MEAL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning) comes in. It puts the humanitarian services provided in front of the challenge of effectiveness and achievement. Humanitarian, development, and other projects are subject to feasibility study like any project in the field of business. There is no denying that social work was subject in the past to respectable scientific standards, but it was limited, and for a long time, to graduates in the disciplines of social work, which did not turn to advanced technology until the last two decades, or shortly before.
At the beginning of the current century, we began to witness in our country a number of specializations such as entrepreneurship in social work, or the MBA in NGOs management, and similar certificates. Truth be told, according to Alexis de Tocqueville, the United States of America, a country of non-governmental organizations par excellence, was the first in this area and enacted, a long time ago, the Social Business Enterprise Act. This opened the door to the application of the business mentality and its leadership in the field of development and humanitarian, cultural, and artistic work.
This advancement in technology is therefore the result of the application of the mentality of economic efficiency dedicated to the business world, in the field of social or development work. The nature of funding has gradually evolved, from spontaneous voluntary funding, such as raising funds in parishes, during prayer or after it in a seminar dedicated to this, to systematic financing linked organically to business.
Companies that want to use their surplus profits for humanitarian work, to fund non-governmental bodies, both religious and non-religious, have found a suitable outlet. It is a win-win situation. Companies, for their part, lower their profit brackets, pay lower taxes, and enhance their reputation towards stakeholders, shareholders, partners, or customers. NGOs, for their part, find a source that ensures the sustainability of their funding.
But this trajectory is accompanied by an increase in management effectiveness, so the mindset of optimization in working has shifted from for-profit to non-profit enterprises.
Your course comes partly in this context: good study and reconnaissance of the field, good identification of needs and priorities, good writing of a feasibility study for a project that responds to these priorities makes that the proposal writing is becoming more complex and accurate day by day, given that the back donor has conditions that he wants to see applied and does not want to see the money he deducted from his profit go to waste, even if behind it is a tax cut. Thanks to these laws, founded by the United States of America, and the practices that resulted from these laws, the culture of corporate social responsibility has advanced, and its effects have come to cover a large part of socio-economic life.
At the beginning of my work in the field of development, and I was then coming from an economic background, avoiding waste in all its forms, and considering it a sin, and committed to good management and high effectiveness, and that was at the end of the seventies, I was surprised by the difference between the two mentalities, a firm mentality in the economic result accountable for every penny spent, and a tolerant mentality flexible in terms of effectiveness and “tolerates” waste. The first reaction was the following: If you have losses in business, you will be held accountable by your boss and may be fired from your job, and you may even go bankrupt if you are the owner of the enterprise. If the same happens to you in the field of humanitarian work, you benefit from some tolerance because there is no profit and loss account at the end of the economic process. This was wrong for some, because if you allow waste to creep into your humanitarian operations, the number of beneficiaries of your aid will decrease. Every penny wasted, deliberately because of corruption or mistaken for lack of know-how, means that an extra miserable person will go hungry, or an extra sick person will be denied treatment.
The significant progress made in this area, both in terms of effectiveness and transparency, has set the record straight and established a scientific partnership between for-profit and non-profit institutions.
This was the first issue.
The second issue concerns the role of the pledge of allegiance to the Master in healing the wounds of the weary and burdened. This great Incarnate, Who came to save us, is the same one Who roamed the land of Palestine, where He became incarnate, curing people of their diseases, as well as their afflictions and sins.
Life is both matter and spirit, and the Master’s statement that his kingdom is not of this world has been misunderstood or misinterpreted. Man is obliged to preserve himself, his family, his society, his homeland, and humans, wherever he finds a way.
The Son of Man gave Himself, to preserve humanity. So, is it possible that those who pledged him allegiance did not play a role in preserving his legacy, He who came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly?
The Church has been aware of this critical role since the Master built it on the rock and gave us His blood and body for the New Testament. So, she played this role and was historically behind the establishment of all forms of social assistance. This role developed until it became technical, modern, and advanced.
Everyone knows the lives of the saints who healed human beings, sheltered them, provided them with food, drink, and clothing, established free schools, orphanages, nursing homes, and centers for people with special needs. The list of what was created based on the Christian faith may go on. Every day, the Church proposes effective means to heal human beings and to heal their wounds, and in doing so, she follows in the footsteps of the Savior who did not leave a vulnerable group without commanding it.
Charity, the love on which our faith is built, cannot leave us indifferent to the calamities and disasters that are happening around us, individually, collectively, in war as well as in peace. So, we must be the most prepared and effective in responding to what can happen to human beings, the depositary of the Master on earth.
The biblical reflections included in the program must form the faith background for humanitarian work, and the techniques included complement and embody them. The Church, in its concern for the proper use of the “widow’s penny” (Charity Money), must be very careful and effective in this area. If poor performance is held accountable by dismissal from work in for-profit institutions, it is held accountable with a twinge of conscience and shame for standing in the presence of the Creator in church institutions. If the controls are administrative, organizational, outside the church, and they are necessary, we must add to them the deterrent of faith in humanitarian work within the church.
The basic guarantee to reach the desired goals in securing the best performance lies in two things: faith immunization and technical training. I do not mean at all that non-faith based organizations lack values, but their values are partly different and may contain a faith component to some extent, since Christianity has historically constituted a value reservoir that inspires and orients all humanity, especially these societies that have produced all the dedication to human service, effectiveness, and values that accompany these basic principles.
By what you are doing in this course, you are applying Arnold Toynbee’s saying, “making benevolence scientific”.
May God bless you as messengers of love and service, righteous to what the Lord has commanded us.