Darrow Miller is co-founder of the Disciple Nations Alliance along with being a featured author and world-renowned teacher. For 26 years, Darrow served with the Christian non-profit organization Food for the Hungry International, 13 years of which he acted as Vice President. Since then, Darrow has written several publications including the books Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Culture, Nurturing the Nations: Reclaiming the Dignity of Women for Building Healthy Cultures, and Lifework: A Biblical Theology for What You Do Every Day.

This week, Darrow helped our LTS students develop a more biblical worldview of the poor, which for many meant being pushed outside their comfort zone and having their previously-held ideas and perceptions of poverty shattered.

I sat down with Darrow while he was here to ask him some questions about God and His view of the poor.

What are you you focusing on in your teachings this week in the Leadership Training School?

“The area in which my life has come together is around worldview and poverty. So I’m teaching about having a biblical worldview and how that changes the way you interact with the poor. See, most people think that poverty exists because people don’t have the resources they need. But that is a materialistic assumption, and most Christians who have a heart for the poor think that way too. The thought is, if that is the cause, then the solution is to move resources from one place to another. So you have organizations and well-meaning church groups going into countries and giving money and resources, feeling good that they have helped the poor, but not necessarily leaving much impact.

One of the things I keep telling these students is a take on the old Chinese proverb: ‘Give a man a fish, he has food for a day, teach a man to fish and he has food for a lifetime.’ But I would argue that this proverb doesn’t go far enough. We need to teach people to think about fishing and that brings about transformation. Through our materialistic approach to helping the poor, we have taught people that transformation only happens from outsiders and their money.

For there to be any transformation there needs to be a breaking down of the strongholds in both the minds of those facilitating the change and the people who are poor. Without that mental transformation, we continue to run the risk of helping the poor in ways that are ineffective or even harmful. Ultimately, we need to change the way we look at and interact with the poor in this world and that is what I hope to communicate to the students this week.”

The LTS is designed to equip and empower the next generation of leaders. Why do you think it’s so important to develop young, Christian leaders?

“The world is going to follow some leader, so better is one who has virtue and a kingdom vision. These students are strong believers and I want to offer something that will help them understanding that God can use them to advance His Kingdom. For me, this is a heck of a lot of fun!”

What do you think is the task ahead for these young, Christian leaders as they complete the LTS and enter into ministry in Africa, Brazil, the United States, and elsewhere?

“My job is to shift paradigms. The question will be if they go back with the mind they came here with. If that happens, not much is going to change. If they go back with the strongholds of their mind destroyed and their worldview expanded, then I’ve been successful and they will find themselves walking in paths they never would have walked before.”

You worked for the Christian, non-profit organization Food for the Hungry for many years. What would you say is a Christian’s role in responding to poverty in our world?

“Christians need to be storytellers. They need to tell the story of God. But they have to think about how they are telling stories and that they view the poor through a biblical perspective, so they aren’t creating more poverty. Like I said, we need to change the way people look at fishing. It is much harder to teach people how to think about fishing than it is teaching them to fish or simply giving them fish, but that is what needs to be done and we need to be participating in that.”

What would you say is something young, enthusiastic Christians should bear in mind when wanting to serve the poor?

“One is to remain a lifelong learner. You are going to learn things through different experiences, but just because you have experience or a degree, doesn’t mean the process of learning is over. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s just the beginning. Two, you need to have a long-term time frame for your life. Unfortunately, most people do not have long-term time frames. That is partly our cultures to blame since it has taught us to think mostly in the present. We don’t learn from the past nor do we spend much time reflecting on it. In the same way, we don’t spend much time thinking about the future, we remain in the present, but to truly transform people and nations, you need time.”

What do you hope the students will take way from your time here this week?

“I hope that the students’ paradigm and their understanding of the poor will be shifted, which will allow them to view the world differently. Because the world is a lot bigger, and what it means to be a Christian is a lot bigger, and what it means to be a human being is a lot bigger, and what it takes to develop poor communities and nations is a lot different than what they originally may have thought.”

Thank you Darrow for your invaluable teachings this week and for expanding the way our students view God, His world, and His people throughout the nations!