By Gordon Houser
Special to the Kansan
If you removed all the verses in the Bible that mention God’s concern for the poor, Allison DeHart said Monday evening, it would be a pretty limp book.
About 70 people gathered at Grace Community Church on Monday to hear DeHart, who is executive director of Partners of Hope in Troy, Ohio, talk about “How Circles Fits with the Gospel: God’s Heart for the Poor.”
She told the audience “more than 400 verses in the Bible talk about God’s heart for the poor,” and she gave many examples.
She read Jeremiah 22:16: “He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? Says the Lord.” And Jesus, she said, saw as part of his own call “to bring good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18).
Most of those gathered to hear DeHart have some connection to the Circles Initiative of Harvey County, which has just changed its name to Circles of Hope. While Circles is a national organization, the mission of the local movement is “working to end poverty in Kansas one family at a time.”
DeHart told the audience how she moved from working as an accountant for six years before feeling called by God to help others in a more direct way.
Eventually, she became a social worker for Partners of Hope, which was started by the Troy Council of Churches.
“People in need often come to churches for help,” she said, and the churches in Troy decided to coordinate their efforts and hire someone to focus on this service. The churches realized “they were helping people, but they weren’t really empowering them to help themselves,” DeHart said. They wanted people to “experience the possibilities of transformation.”
To learn more about how to do this work, DeHart visited Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., where she learned the importance of being with the poor. This church emphasized “mutually liberating relationships.” In other words, we are to develop relationships with people in poverty that are not top-down but mutual, benefiting both parties.
A biblical example of this, DeHart said, is Jesus’ visit with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), in which Jesus and the woman serve each other.
Later, DeHart studied books by Ruby Payne and came across the Circles™ Initiative, which “seeks to build relationships across class lines.”
She described the Circles™ model, which has in the center a circle leader. This is a person in poverty who has gone through a training course called Getting Ahead. Joining this person are two to four allies who have been trained in a course called Bridges Out of Poverty. They serve in this circle of support as friends with the circle leader.
Other groups in the model, such as a Guiding Coalition, look at larger issues in the local community that affect the lives of people in poverty.
DeHart then drew attention to various passages in the Bible that support these different elements of the Circles™ model. She read from Ecclesiastes 4:12; 1 John 3:17-18; Proverbs 22:2; Proverbs 31:9; Philippians 2:4 and Proverbs 15:22.
She showed a clip from a video called “Compassion by Command,” a seven-week Bible study on building relationships with people in poverty. This clip described “reciprocal blessing,” how the poor tend to know how to live by faith and are more generous than other groups. The video made the point that we can’t learn from each other unless we get together.
DeHart said that churches show a lot of generosity but are often reluctant to develop relationships with people in need. She acknowledged that working with the poor can be challenging and present difficulties, but she finds great encouragement in Isaiah 58:10: “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”
Myrna Krehbiel, director of Peace Connections and a leader in Circles™ of Hope, introduced a video clip of a conversation between Jerica Hinshaw, a circle leader, and Clarence Rempel, one of her allies. Hinshaw described how she set goals for herself, and Rempel described how allies and circle leaders help and encourage one another.
Wanda Pumphery, Circles™ Coach, held a conversation in front of the audience with Brenda Learned, another of Hinshaw’s allies, about her role as an ally and what she has learned. She described the progress Hinshaw has already made in working toward her goals. In fact, Hinshaw could not attend the meeting because she was beginning another semester at Huchinson Community College that evening.
Pumphrey said that Circles™ of Hope recognizes that, according to one study, it is four times as hard to develop relationships across class and economic lines. However, this is happening here in Newton, she said.
Steve Richards, who has helped in the development of the local Circles™ initiative, told the audience that Circles™ not only helps individuals and families but it makes our communities more sustainable.
DeHart might have added that it is also in tune with the heart of God.
