Communication
He leads me …
Ernesto Sirolli’s[1] first project was working for an Italian NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) in Zambia. He was with a group of Italians who decided to teach the Zambian people how to grow Italian tomatoes, zucchini and other crops. Unfortunately the locals were not interested, so the Italian paid them. Even then there was not much of a response.
The Italians could not understand why with such fertile land, no one was growing any crops. It seemed so obvious. Ernesto’s team’s reaction was, "Thank God we're here. We are just in the nick of time to save the Zambian people from starvation."
The team went ahead and planted crops and they grew beautifully. The team then said to the Zambians, "Look how easy agriculture is." Then one night when the tomatoes were nice and ripe and red, about 200 hippos came out from the river and they ate everything.
The team were horrified that their crops had all gone..
The Zambians responded, "That's why we have no agriculture here."
The team then asked, "Why didn't you tell us?" The response was, "You never asked."
Ernesto thought that it was just the Italians making mistakes in Africa, but he then saw what the Americans, English and the French were doing similar things. He then realised that Western donor countries had given the African continent two trillion American dollars ($2,000,000,000,000) in aid during the previous 50 years. And sadly, it caused a lot of damage.
Ernesto realised that the aid organisations had the wrong attitude. They were patronizing rather than paternalistic. A paternalistic attitude is where anybody from a different culture is treated as if they were our dear children. A patronizing attitude is where everybody from another culture is treated as if they were our servants. This is why the white people in Africa are called "bwana," meaning boss.[2]
Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown[3] has learned some of his most important life lessons from drug dealers, gang members and prostitutes. It happened when he got involved in a public crime reduction strategy that saw a 79 percent reduction in violent crime over eight years in Boston.
Jeffrey noticed that the homicide rate had started to rise sharply in the metro area (city and surrounding suburbs). For instance, there were young people who were killing each other for trivial reasons, like someone with the wrong colour shirt on, on the wrong street corner at the wrong time was killed. Jeffrey realised that something needed to be done.
He preached about the issue and introduced programs to try and get people involved. He hoped that maybe some of his fellow ministers might do the same and that the combined effort would make a difference. But the violence continued to get out of control.
And so as Jeffrey thought about this he realized that if he really wanted everyone to come together across all the metro area, it meant reaching out and embracing those who were committing the acts of violence, the gang members and the drug dealers.
Jeffrey asked himself why he had to reach out. After all this is the job of the police, right? As soon as the question, "Why me?" came, the answer came just as quickly: Why me? Because I am the one who cannot sleep at night thinking about it. Because I am the one looking around saying somebody needs to do something about this, and I am starting to realize that that someone is me.
Jeffrey started to walk in the community, and soon realized that the people that he needed to reach were not out during the day. So he and some other local ministers started to walk the streets late at night. They went into the most dangerous neighbourhoods in the city on a Friday night and on a Saturday night at 10 p.m., and would walk until 2 or 3 in the morning. They decided to listen and not preach.
The result was amazing. The ministers said to the people in the unsafe neighbourhoods, "We do not know our own communities between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., but you do. So please talk to us. Teach us. Help us to see what we are not seeing. Help us to understand what we are not understanding." The people opened up and the ministers learnt what life on the streets was all about, and it was very different than what they saw on the news.[4]
The common theme of these two stories is the importance of communication. We are familiar with the words of Jesus in Matthew 22:37- 40, where Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. ’This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (NLT)
What do we mean when we say that we should love our neighbour? In Matthew 7:12 Jesus says, “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.”(NLT) So then, when we help someone, do we do it our way or do we work in with them? We work in with them in exactly the same way as the two stories indicate we should.
In the New Testament we read that in the church there are spiritual gifts for connecting with, and edifying everyone in the church (Romans 12:6-8; Ephesians 4:11-16; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; 1 Peter 4:10-11). Not everyone has the same gifts, but everyone is to use their gifts for the benefit of everyone in the church. This is how the Christian community – the church – operates, and this model of building up others is what the Lord wants everyone to do in the wider community beyond the church too.
This way we all support each other, everyone wins and God is glorified.
[1] Dr. Ernesto Sirolli is a community iron man. He received a Laurea di Dottore in Political Sciences from Rome University in 1974 , a Ph.D in Sustainable Development for Local Enterprise Facilitation from Murdoch University in 2004, Dr. Sirolli is the author of two books so far : "Ripples from the Zambezi" and: "How to start a business and ignite your life". In 2012 Dr. Sirolli gave a TEDX talk;: "Shut up and Listen" a message that has been translated into 35 languages and downloaded +3 million times.
[2] https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen; https://sirolli.com/who-we-are; https://www.facebook.com/sirolliinc/
3] Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown is a nationally recognized leader and expert in gang, youth and urban violence reduction and coalition building. He is the founder of RECAP (Rebuilding Every City Around Peace), an international initiative organized to assist cities build better partnerships between the faith-based community, government and law enforcement agencies in an effort to reduce gang violence. Brown is also one of the architects of the “Boston Miracle”, a process where the city experienced a 29 month period of zero juvenile homicides in the 90s, and spawned countless urban collaborative efforts in subsequent years that followed the Boston Ceasefire and faith-based model.
[4] https://www.ted.com/talks/jeffrey_brown_how_we_cut_youth_violence_in_boston_by_79_percent
