Moving upstream to tackle root causes
Jon Kuhrt, Chief Executive of Hope into Action spoke in summer 2024 about the future of Christian social action. He observed that the last two decades has seen a huge growth in initiatives such as street pastors, debt centres, food banks, community fridges, night shelters, warm hubs, etc. This expansion might be evidence of a growing Christian social conscience, but the growth of such initiatives poses important questions:
-
Has enthusiasm for social action led the church to become a handmaid of the state, propping up an unjust system, filling in the gaps caused by its negligence?
-
Have these projects been effective at reducing poverty in sustainable ways?
-
Have they been an effective way of witnessing to the Christian faith or has social action secularised the church?
We need to be both confident about the importance of Christian social action and be self-critical about the consequences of what we are involved in.
Read the article here.
Homing in on the reduction in poverty, we can see that despite all the millions of pounds spent and millions of volunteer hours given, the overall numbers of people living in poverty has not reduced. Obviously, many have been helped but then many other people who need help appear. This indicates that we are not addressing root causes i.e. we are ministering downstream after people have hit problems, rather than trying to eliminate the causes of the problems in the first place. We need to go upstream.
Perhaps this also indicates a weakness in the 'franchises' that Christians can get involved in in their communities e.g. foodbanks. As Jon Kurht urges:
-
Christian social action must be accompanied by a Christian model of justice. The Church is not an NGO. We need to speak truth to power.
-
Our social action must be empowering and build mutuality. We also need to speak truth to those who are without power.
-
Social action should deepen its Christian distinctiveness. Faith is not a private matter.
-
Beware of superficiality and pay attention to messy realities. Anchor our concept of justice in real life and experience: in the broken, sinful reality of the world’s systems and people – and in our messy attempts to make the world better.
Churches have adopted social action in vast numbers over the past 15 years. Let’s call this phase 1. We have learnt a lot. Now let’s move to phase 2; knowing what we have seen and the needs we have helped with, let’s now start to focus on root causes.
Not that existing initiatives are wrong or should be immediately dropped, but let’s move to prevention rather than just helping reduce the pain people are experiencing. We honour the past and present but do we need to move to new ways?
There is an exercise that can determine root causes. A simple technique used in quality management called Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and there are a number of tools.
At its simplest, ask the question ‘why’ at least 5 times e.g. Homelessness:
-
Why are you homeless? I got thrown out of my home.
-
Why did you get thrown out? I was disruptive.
-
Why were you disruptive? I was drinking too much.
-
Why were you drinking too much? I am addicted to alcohol.
-
Why were you addicted? Dulling the pain - traumatic childhood.
-
Why traumatic? My parents were… [Parenting issue and/or relationship breakdown – root causes]
There will be several pathways leading to homelessness (complex issue), including the one above.
Many will be because of trauma caused by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs); seeing domestic violence, parental abandonment through separation or divorce, a parent with a mental health condition, being the victim of abuse (physical, sexual and/or emotional), being the victim of neglect (physical and emotional), a member of the household being in prison, growing up in a household in which there are adults experiencing alcohol and drug use problems.
Other causes could be a loss of local jobs/industry and lack of mobility, leading to dependency and lack of ambition or poor financial knowledge increasing debt, etc.
So some root causes would be poor parenting, poor relationships, lack of suitable employment opportunities, inadequate education. As you can see the root causes are much harder to crack than say run a lunch club. Underneath these root causes are damaged individuals, sin, uncompassionate capitalism and/or poor moral compasses.
But isn't this exactly what Jesus came to transform through “change or renewal from a life that no longer conforms to the ways of the world to one that pleases God” (Romans 12:2). This is accomplished by the renewing of minds, an inward spiritual transformation that will manifest itself in outward actions. Transformation involves those who were once far from God being “drawn near” to Him through the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:13).
Let’s move to phase 2 of our social action efforts; knowing what we have seen and the needs we have helped with, let’s now start to focus on root causes along with Christian distinctiveness e.g. prayer, use of spiritual gifts, etc.
Retweet about this article:
Geoff Knott, 27/01/2026