Ep. 155: Barry Slauenwhite – Money, Mission & Compassion

Kourtney Cromwell:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to indoubt. This week on the show, Ryan welcomes Barry Slauenwhite, and they discuss the need for more than just compassion in the fight against poverty.

Barry Slauenwhite:
They think the answer to poverty is more money. If that is true, we’d have solved this problem decades ago, because I can tell you, hundreds of millions into the billions of dollars have been thrown at poverty. If money was the answer, we can wipe our hands because we’ve done our job.

Ryan McCurdy:
Hello, and welcome to this episode of indoubt. My name is Ryan and today we talk with Barry Slauenwhite, who’s the President and CEO of Compassion Canada, and we asked the question, how can we give with strategy? How can we implement compassion and give to others who are in need strategically, knowing where the money is going and knowing how it’s gonna make a real difference in the world. So, we asked these questions with Barry and he provides some incredible insight. Make sure you take a listen.
Today I have with me Barry Slauenwhite. He began his ministry as a pastor and now is the President and CEO of Compassion Canada, which Barry will be able to explain to you exactly what that looks like. So Barry, thanks for being here.

Barry Slauenwhite:
Good to be here with you, Ryan. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. So Barry, would you be able to tell us a little bit about you, a little bit about your story? How did you get where you got? What was that process like?

Barry Slauenwhite:
Well, people get nervous when I get asked that question and I start to answer, because I’m going to start way back, but I’m gonna fast-forward. So, don’t freak out. I accepted Christ as my Saviour at the age of 5, a young boy in a tiny little country church. And it was at that early tender age that I began my relationship with God, and I actually, in growing up in those early years, became quite close, from my perspective, to God. He was not this far away deity. God and I were friends, we talked throughout the day, we talked regularly. And that’s an important piece, because fast-forward to today. I won’t tell you how many years I’m gonna fast-forward. My whole life, my entire life the last 35 years has been devoted to children that age. Those early years when like me in my situation, when I accepted Jesus as my Saviour, most of the adults thought, “Oh, isn’t that cute?” They had no concept of what God would do with that young little boy’s life. I had no concept of that.
So, fast-forward to today. I mean, in my role at Compassion, I’m traveling the globe. I’ve ministered in 61 countries. I have preached the Gospel to hundreds of thousands of people. I have seen with my own eyes hundreds of thousands of children and their families come to Christ. When I look back at age 5, I’m going, “How many more children that age are being dismissed as, ‘Isn’t that cute?'” Maybe not even strategically being presented with the Gospel, because we as adults think, “What’s the point? They’re not old enough to understand.” So, that was a key moment in my life that really framed the journey that God took me on.
When I meet children around the world, especially in the younger ages, under 10 for example, when I meet these children, I can’t help but visualize, “That’s me.” Right? And kind of excited, like, “What is God gonna do with them?” I mean, look what he did with me. What’s he gonna do with them? Whereas, most of the time our tendency is to pat them on the shoulder.

Ryan McCurdy:
Right, where Jesus says, “Hey, don’t get in the way of the little ones coming to me.”

Barry Slauenwhite:
Yeah. And all the research, all the very exhaustive research tells us that 85% of all Christian adults in the world today came to know Christ as a child. 85%. So, I fit into that 85 percentile category. Only 15% of all Christians in the world came to the Lord as adults. Yet, where do we put our energy as the church, as mission organizations? We put almost all of our energy into the 15%.

Ryan McCurdy:
So, would you be able to tell us, for those who are listening, who maybe are unfamiliar with Compassion, would you be able to give us a bird’s eye view? What is Compassion?

Barry Slauenwhite:
Our ministry is very specific, very focused and strategic. We minister to children in poverty, in extreme poverty. So, our target audience are children and their families who live on less than $1.90 US a day. We target the poorest of the poor, and we strategically create programs in and with local churches. So, in the 25 countries where we work around the world, we partner with over 7,000 local indigenous churches. And each of those churches create a Compassion after-school program. We call it a Child Development Center. And we have over two million children that come to these centers after school, on the weekends, and there we have a curriculum that we train the church to take them through. And that curriculum is built around the four quadrants of human development, taken from Luke 2, where Jesus grew in wisdom, in stature, favour with God, favour with man. So wisdom is the cognitive piece of our development, stature is the physical, favour with God is the spiritual, favour with man is the socio-economical.
So, all of our curriculum, all of the training that we do is built around those four quadrants, because we want children to grow and be developed holistically. We do that with our own kids at home. We don’t just feed our children, right? We teach them how to ride bicycles, we teach them how to tie their shoes. We take a holistic approach to raising our children. We as Christians, we actually also make sure we teach them about the things of God. We teach them how to interact socially. That’s the package. And we bring children who are the outcasts of society, the poorest of the poor. We bring them into this church environment, where they are loved, known, and protected, and cared for. And we connect them with a caring sponsor here in Canada, who says, “I want to be part of this equation.”
So the sponsor in Canada provides finances each month, provides the prayer support, provides the love and mentoring through writing letters and sending cards and they become part and parcel of that child’s holistic development process.

Ryan McCurdy:
The way you say that, I love it. The holistic approach, right? Maybe you’ve heard this conversation had in church circles or whatnot, but regarding short-term missions trips to areas of extreme poverty. Now myself, I’ve been to a number of countries that have extreme poverty and one of the things that I was always struck by was that going away on a trip was very impactful for me. And there were times where I would share the Gospel, and I would try to do good but get home an realize, “Well, I preached to people, but what’s the long-term holistic good that’s coming from this?” And I think God uses missions trips for those that we go to serve, but also for our own personal growth.
And so, where I’m going with this and the question that I have for you is, you’ve mentioned the work holistic a number of times.

Barry Slauenwhite:
That’s deliberate.

Ryan McCurdy:
And that’s deliberate. And I wanna get underneath what’s the strategy behind that? I know you have a book called Strategic Compassion. What’s the strategy behind this holistic approach, compared to maybe what you’ve seen in other places?

Barry Slauenwhite:
Sure. So, the typical approach to helping the poor is very compartmentalized. So, if you study most of the efforts of organizations, churches, parachurches, mission organizations, in working with the poor, you find you have specialist groups. So, you have some, they specialize in feeding the hungry. You have others, they specialize in education. You have others, they specialize in healthcare. All of those are good. They are excellent. But as I alluded to earlier, what parent raises their child in that specialized environment?
So, if we are specializing in only one, then we are not holistically helping to develop children. We have to make rounded Christians. We don’t wanna just fill an empty belly. We want to fill an empty soul.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, that’s wonderful. And so, you have this book out, Strategic Compassion. One of the questions I would have is, a lot of this work is done in places of extreme poverty. Now, is the request and is the invitation for those in the West, so specifically Canada? What are you seeing as a response from Canadians? Are they eager to get in? Or what are you seeing here?

Barry Slauenwhite:
Yes. So, by and large, Canadians are generous, especially Canadian Christians are generous. We all feel either an obligation or a need or a passion to help those in need, the poor. Here’s the problem though: Most Canadian Christians’ world view is formed in them by media, by advertising, by marketing. And if you look closely at the media messages about poverty, you’re not going to hear a holistic message. You’re gonna hear an urgent appeal message. And so, over time we have been conditioned to respond with money. You’ve watched the commercials, right?

Ryan McCurdy:
Oh, yeah.

Barry Slauenwhite:
What are they asking for? Call this number, give us your credit card. And I’m not slamming the organizations that do that. What I’m appealing to is for Christians to say that’s not good enough. So, why did I write this book? I wrote this book simply because over these many years of conversing with Canadian Christians, my heart’s been heavy to understand that they think the answer to poverty is more money. If that is true, we’d have solved this problem decades ago. Because I can tell you, hundreds of millions into the billions of dollars have been thrown at poverty. If money was the answer, we can wipe our hands, we’ve done our job.
Why today then are we in just as bad of shape as we were 20, 30 years ago? It’s because money is not the answer. Money is one piece of the answer. But poverty isn’t created by a lack of money. And in the book, I’m basically taking you through, the reader through, a theology of poverty. And I take them right back to Genesis 1 where we see the origin of poverty. And I built the case that poverty is a spiritual condition first before it is an economic condition. So, if our application to poverty is only economic, then we are missing a huge component of what alleviates poverty.

Ryan McCurdy:
And the logo of your book, I think it’s brilliant. It’s a half heart, half brain, but it’s in the form of a heart. And so, it’s really an appeal to combine our head and our heart, which is a holistic approach.

Barry Slauenwhite:
And that’s why the title is Strategic Compassion. What I’m calling for is stop and think before you invest your money. Be strategic. So the call of the book is, “Let’s do compassionate things, let’s give, let’s help and serve the poor, but let’s have a plan. Let’s be strategic in how we do it, both as individuals and corporately as churches.”

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, I recall there was a large earthquake in Haiti a number of years ago. And-

Barry Slauenwhite:
I was there. I was down there.

Ryan McCurdy:
You were there?

Barry Slauenwhite:
I was right in the middle of that earthquake.

Ryan McCurdy:
Oh, my goodness.

Barry Slauenwhite:
I thought I was going to die, so I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Ryan McCurdy:
You were there during the earthquake?

Barry Slauenwhite:
I was there. I lost some of my colleagues. They were killed in the earthquake.

Ryan McCurdy:
Wow. And that was such a time of crisis, right?

Barry Slauenwhite:
Exactly.

Ryan McCurdy:
Such an opportunity for the world to respond. And when I hear you talk about Strategic Compassion, I’m reminded of an example where the story goes that the government was given tons and tons and tons of rice, and this rice was what people got for free. And so they took the rice and they would feed themselves, feed their families. And then soon after a little bit of time, the rice farmers in Haiti were farming their rice and then they’d collect it all and go to sell it, but why would somebody buy from the local guy when they could get the free bag of rice somewhere else? And so then the farmers say, “Well, okay, I’m not gonna do any farming anymore because nobody’s buying my rice and I need to provide for my family.”
And so they stopped making rice, and then the rice support stops coming from wherever, the US or international suppliers, and then now Haiti is at a point where a few years later, there’s no more support and the rice farmers are done. And they’re even in another different level of poverty because of that type of, I would say, lack of strategic compassion. What do you think?

Barry Slauenwhite:
Oh, my. You’ve opened up a can of worms. I hope we’ve got a couple more hours to talk, because you have just unleashed a torrent of emotion in my heart. I’ve worked in Haiti for the last 35 years. It’s the one country where I have spent most time in, of all the countries where we work. I have seen firsthand that scenario. In Haiti, they call it the Miami Rice. Not so much that it’s from Miami, but it’s a pseudonym name for it comes from the ships from The States, right? And it did literally put many, if not most, rice farmers out of business.
Like all international aid, emergencies like the earthquake in Haiti, the Philippines disasters, the hurricanes and the tsunamis and all of that, we are conditioned to think in terms of money. And I can tell you, and you’ve given a bit of insight already in that illustration, that poverty is very complex. The root of poverty is very complex. The expression of poverty is very complex, and any attempt to serve or to cure or to fix needs to be very complex.
So, case and point, the country of Haiti, there were more millionaires created by the Haiti earthquake than by all of Haitian history, because of all the money that flowed into that country. We need to stop this. And this is my call in the book. We need to stop just throwing our money. We need to be strategic.
So, you look at the Haiti earthquake. The unsung heroes in Haiti were the churches. Why? Because the churches have proximity. They’re there. They were there an hour before the earthquake, they were there an hour after. While all the international media went out and people started raising money and everybody and their donkey jumped on the bandwagon to raise money for Haiti and money was coming in left, right, and center, I’m telling you, Ryan, I saw it with my own eyes. Money coming in with no accountability and organizations just looking for a place to spend it. While there’s the church, in the community where the earthquake happened, the church building being used for a triage center for the injured, the church building being used as a food distribution center, the church members serving to be makeshift nurses or counselors or fill-in parents, guardians for the children. I mean, the church did an incredible job in Haiti with no fanfare, and very little resources.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, and I think it gets to almost something else, a different type of poverty. And a different type of poverty in … There’s a reference that you use called the Saviour Complex. And there’s a pastor in Uganda that my church here is connected with. And I won’t forget this. A few years ago he came and he said, “You guys think that in Uganda we’re so poor, because we don’t have money.” And then he says this, “You’re so poor, all you have is money.” And so, what is this Western Saviour Complex that you’re referencing, and how does that … How do we recognize that in our lives and maybe more so in our culture as Westerners? Where do you see that playing out?

Barry Slauenwhite:
Well, there’s an old saying, “He who has the gold makes the rules.” So, in our Western mindset, we … And admittedly true, we Westerners, if you look at comparisons, we have more resources, financial resources than most of the Southern world. So, we think because we have the gold, we make the rules. So, we come in, and you referenced earlier mission trips. I’m totally in favor of mission trips, not for what they accomplish there, but what God accomplishes in us who go. Right? You’re not gonna change the world in two weeks, trust me, even though you might have spent thousands of dollars. But God could change your world in two weeks by exposing you to the real world and his real heart for the poor.
And we go in with our Saviour Complex because we have the resources. And the resources might not just be money, but it could be skills, it could be education. We go in and we basically say to the poor, “We’re here to save you. We’re here to teach you how to live. We’re here to tell you how it’s done. Step back, let us show you how life is lived.” If we would go in with the mindset, “We’re here to get to know you, we’re here to build relationships, we’re here to learn how to pray for you. We’re here to be your friend. And oh yeah, by the way, maybe we’ll get something done.” But the poor will always tell you, the one thing we Westerners don’t do well is, we don’t know how to build relationships and we don’t know how to love. Because we come in with our agenda, we’ve only got two weeks, we’ve only got 10 days. We’ve gotta get this done, we don’t have time for conversations. Right?

Ryan McCurdy:
Right. Yeah, there’s a passage, I’m sure you’re familiar with it, John 4. Jesus goes and he meets with this woman at the well. But in this story with this woman at the well, he says, “Hey, can I have a glass of water? Give me a drink.” And I remember reading that not too long ago and thinking, cross culturally, the impact of that, to go somewhere and say, “Hey, can I actually have something from you? And can you actually give something to me? Is there something maybe also I could learn from you?” Rather than just what it sounds like you’re saying, just download information or just download money. Have you seen that done well? And what was that like?

Barry Slauenwhite:
Oh, yeah. Well, I’ve sene it done well, not too often. But when it’s done well, it is powerful. It is powerful, because if you ask the poor, “What is it like to be poor?” They will almost never talk about money. They will always talk about psychological, sociological issues. They will talk in terms of, “I feel worthless, I feel useless, I have no hope, I’m invisible. Nobody sees me, nobody cares about me, nobody knows me.” When we think about mission work, we need to be thinking in terms of valuing people, of loving people. You look at Jesus. I mean, there is no better example in all the world. Jesus took time to get to know people. Jesus says himself that he came to bring the Good News of the Gospel, so Luke 4:18 in the Nazareth Synagogue. Jesus declares he’s come to bring Good News. That was incarnational agenda. That’s why Jesus came from Heaven, commissioned by his Father, God, to bring the Good News of the Gospel to God’s creation.
Jesus, however, didn’t only preach the Gospel. He had the largest feeding program in the known world. He was the most famous health professional in whole world. Not one medical doctor in all of history could raise people from the dead. He was an admired and sought after teacher, educator. People walked for days, sometimes in their bare feet, just to hear him give a lecture.
See, we look at those things and we say, “Ha, that’s what we need to be doing.” So, we gear up, we raise money, and we focus on those things that Jesus did, not realizing that was not his agenda. His agenda was to bring the Gospel, because none of those things matter in eternity. So you have to ask the question, “Why then did he do it? Why did he invest in people, feeding them, healing them, teaching them?” It’s simple. Because in his agenda to bring the Gospel, he fell in love with the people he was ministering to. And those people had needs, so he met those needs. That’s where we learn how to be holistic.

Ryan McCurdy:
Maybe here this is a little bit more of a practical question. How can I, how can we, the listeners of this, what can we do? Because there’s this quote by Mother Theresa that came to mind, where she said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

Barry Slauenwhite:
Yeah.

Ryan McCurdy:
And so, maybe there’s somebody listening like, “I can’t dedicate my life to this or to that, I have a different calling. But what’s some small thing that I can do with great love that’ll make an impact in the world?”

Barry Slauenwhite:
First of all, let’s talk about here, Canada. One small thing people can do is recognize the value of a child, whether it’s at your church, at your school, in your community. Recognize the value of a child. Back to my story, right? Let’s invest in children. If we’re part of any church structure, let’s push that church structure toward children. Let’s turn the paradigm upside down.
Second small thing we can do is we can invest in the poorest of the poor children outside of our reach around the world. I think of no better way. There are good ways, there are other ways, but I think of no better way than sponsoring a child through Compassion. And I throw that caveat in through Compassion, because Compassion is the only child sponsorship program that I know of in the world, whose main business strategy, if you will, is discipleship. Most every sponsorship agency you can name, their main business strategy is community development or relief. But Compassion is very unique. Not better, not right or wrong, but very unique, in that our strategy is discipleship. And we walk alongside of individuals, children, young adults, their family members. We walk them toward Jesus.
You see, we think discipleship is something we do after someone makes a confession of faith. But true Biblical discipleship begins before conversion. It’s a partnering with, it’s walking with them. We are walking people to Jesus. It may take years for that to happen. And then after they encounter Jesus, we keep holding their hand and walk them through the process of learning how to communicate with Jesus, how to study the Bible, how to pray and all of that.
So, sponsoring a child with Compassion is becoming a discipleship maker from day one, from that earliest child, youngest child. And walking with them, mentoring them, praying for them, encouraging them in your letters and your cards. And being that one person that they will always look up to, to say, “I can’t believe somebody that far away, who doesn’t even know me, loves me.”

Ryan McCurdy:
That’s amazing. I think even chatting today, Barry, I recognize the passion that is driving you and moving you forward as you lead this organization. And so, I’m inspired by this conversation. So, thank you so much for being with us today.

Barry Slauenwhite:
Thank you.

Ryan McCurdy:
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your passions. I look forward to doing it again.

Barry Slauenwhite:
All right. Good to be with you, and bless you and your ministry.

Ryan McCurdy:
Thank you for joining us on this episode of indoubt with Barry Slauenwhite. You can follow Compassion Canada and the work they do at compassion.ca. Or you can follow Barry on Instagram @bslauen to find out more information about what he is up to as well.
indoubt exists to bring the good news of Jesus into everyday issues of life, faith, and culture. If indoubt has encouraged you and your passion to help others grow in the truth, we want to welcome you to partner with us. Your financial partnership, whether big or small, goes a long way in helping us achieve this goal. You can also find out more about indoubt at indoubt.ca if you’re in Canada, and indoubt.com if you’re in the United States.
Make sure you stay connected with us for next week’s episode as we talk with international speaker and author, Stephanie Gray about abortion. We’ll see you then.

Kourtney Cromwell:
indoubt ministries exists to bring a biblical perspective into the relevant issues of life, faith, and culture that young adults face everyday. For more information, check out indoubt.ca if you live in Canada and indoubt.com if you live in the US.