Joseph Kony

At the time of this writing, the video on Kony has been viewed 56 million times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

Invisible Children has been far more successful than they could have anticipated but the videos success has created controversy.



I am not an expert on child soldiers, or on international human rights, but I understand both some of the critics and some of those angered by them so here are my takes on some of the criticisms:



#1. Invisible Children are not in the Better Business Bureau and have a bad rating from Charity Navigator, also they only spend 1/3 of their money on helping people.



This is an invalid criticism that is laughably wrong. Invisible Children has extremely transparent financial records. They are posted online. They do not have the highest Charity Navigator score because they do not have enough independent BOD members, something they said they are working on. There are lots of crooks who do fundraising, but none of them post all their financials online. By the way, if you see others who work in this area, most would do well to get to where Invisible Children is in terms of transparency and accountability.

They do not spent all their money doing relief or development because they are primarily an advocacy organization. That is what they are focused on, and they are doing a great job with that.



#2. The video takes something very complex and makes it too simple.



Part of this I agree with and part I disagree with. When you say "No one knows who Joseph Kony is" it is is mildly irritating to people like me who wrote about him and the LRA back when they were active, but it is incredibly frustrating to people who wrote about him, sought to bring him to justice, rehabbed children he abducted etc. Now when they show the ICC indictment list in the video, most people do not realize that before Invisible Children existed, the indictment had come down which caused Sudan to cut off the official support that Kony relied upon.



Kony has been working his evil since I was 6 (I am 31) but he has also been cut off and posing very little threat for more than 5 years. In 2003 when Invisible Children founders first went to Uganda they encountered a very real threat around Gulu. By 2006 when they founded their 501c3, he was not nearly as much of a threat. Explaining that he has been a criminal on the run living in jungles and no longer attacking anyone in Uganda is not the impression you get by watching the movie.


Joseph Kony is not the worst. Omar Al Bashir, also indicted for war crimes by the ICC (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-07-13/rest-of-world/28310190_1_genocide-icc-action-bashir) has been responsible for magnitudes greater crimes than Kony and was one of the backers providing the weapons that enabled him. He also is the reason you may have heard of a region called Darfur. After the Southern Sudanese were sufficiently armed to reduce the effectiveness of his genocidal campaigns of slavery, rape and torture there, he moved on to Darfur.

When you have a chance to cast a spotlight on one thing, if your issue is child soldiers, those who work in Africa on that issue will be frustrated if you fundraise to fight someone who is almost completely impotent. They are particularly frustrated while many more children than Kony ever attacked are currently enslaved in Somalia (30k compared to 200k).


Here is the problem for the critics. I wish people would read multiple books and understand the Acholi people and some of their grievances with the government of Uganda and how that continues to cause conflict and lead to the poverty and instability that enabled Kony to work. They will not. Invisible children made things simple because people want things to be simple.


Elliot Ross wrote a condemnation of the audience as an aid worker in Africa that was spot on:

To ask people to climb down from the soaring heights of “Kony 2012” (remember how we fall down into Uganda from the heavenly realms of Jason Russell’s Facebook page?) a place where they get to feel both sanctified and superior, and truly descend into the mire of history and confusion is simply too big an ask. It would be boring and difficult and it would not be about Facebook or Angelina Jolie or coloured wristbands or me. When the euphoria evaporates and the Twittersphere has dried its tears (probably by the end of this week), all that remains will be yet another powerful myth of African degradation.


Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/03/08/why-you-should-feel-awkward-about-the-kony2012-video/#ixzz1oeo9m0TO


Joseph Kony is evil. Getting people involved in helping children overseas is a great thing. Getting people passionate about justice is a great thing. Leaving people confused when they learn that what they thought was clear was not the whole picture is a danger when we make something too simple.

#3
They support military intervention! They should be all about peace!


This is one of the critiques that absolutely flummoxes me. I support exporting the concept of the 2nd Amendment.

The particular evil of Kony could not exist in the United States because of the 2nd Amendment. The evil of Bashir could not exist either. If Muslims on horses come to the villages where they used to take slaves in protected parts of Southern Sudan, they will be shot to death before they can pull the trigger on the AK 47. If a murderous genocidal madman tried to take over our government, we would have another revolution.


#4
This is all very colonial. They are racist paternalists to think their help is needed in Africa.


This criticism is garbage. What this should show us is that they are people who believe that we have an obligation to help the helpless wherever they are found.

Leaving Africa to the Africans is not an enlightened approach, it is instead helping apathetic and xenophobic people avoid caring for their neighbor who through globalization we now see in need despite the distance.


Conclusion:


Kony 2012 is an incredibly well done piece of advocacy. It will continue to provoke jealousy. It will also provoke some warranted criticism (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/uganda/9131469/Joseph-Kony-2012-growing-outrage-in-Uganda-over-film.html#.T1jZY8PT8n4.facebook).

Jason Russell is not a guy who got an LLM from Georgetown and worked with International Justice Mission and the International Criminal Court to bring the weight of the law against a brutal warlord. He is a documentary filmmaker and advocate. When he advocates in a way that is successful and that gets people to care, we should all be excited. When people ask more questions and learn more and feel that there are some issues not addressed in the film, we should be understanding.

It is my hope that God uses the video Kony 2012 to stir compassion in the hearts of his people so that more get involved. I hope they care enough to learn more. I hope they care enough to help. I hope that their enthusiasm draws them into relationships that make a difference and not towards the purchase of a trinket that they wear while its cool and then discard like the WWJD and Livestrong bracelets.

A lesson for me from parenting

Friends,

Many trip updates to post and pictures to put on here, but what has brought me back to blogging tonight is an experience I had while watching my daughter. I was not "babysitting" my daughter, as I have made the mistake of using that term before and was reminded by several friends that I am "coparenting" and you cannot babysit your own child. Whatever the term for it, I would like to pretend that I am just as involved in feeding, bathing and clothing my daughter as my wife, but I cannot. I have done all of the listed items and feel pretty competent but tonight was a memorable night for me as a dad.

Maggie is now almost 15 months and she is very active walking and exploring and playing. She has her own very definite agenda. My beautiful and wonderful wife is a part of a Bible study and it should be pretty easy for me to keep our daughter nurtured well while her mom is getting a small break from the 14 hour parenting days she puts in. As soon as her mom joined her friend outside Maggie said "bye bye" and then she began to cry. Using my awesome parenting skills I distracted her with her toy piano and she stopped crying. As the night went on, Maggie tried to be helpful by bringing me a glass of water which she threw all over me just as she was reaching me. I should probably realize that 14 months is not the right time to learn to be a helper for daddy, but Maggie is exceptional and I was proud of her for trying.

She goes to bed at 8 pm and we approached that time with repeated readings of books (I need to get some money for putting a duck, a dog, a horse and a kitty in a book myself) and plenty of hugs and sweet kisses. As bedtime approached I got her milk from the refrigerator and we had quiet time together and prayer time. Then I put her down to change her diaper before I took her upstairs.

Maggie did something tonight that to my knowledge she has never done before. She tried to help with her diaper change. She did not smell badly and so I was preparing to change a wet diaper but I thought I should go ahead and grab the talc also to be an extra great parent so she could sleep clean and dry. I was completely unprepared for what she did next.

Maggie reached down and pulled her diaper after it was unfastened as I leaned over to grab something else and she pulled it straight off and it went on her face and then on her arm. To my horror I discovered it was a diaper full of macaroni and apple sauce and crackers after they had gone through her bowels. She managed to tag herself over her eyes, on her nose, on her upper lip, cheeks, arm and leg. I did not laugh, I did not cry, I did almost do both at the same time but I just scooped her up and carried her upstairs to the bathtub. As Maggie got her bath she was crying, she knew that what she had on her was gross and she knew that daddy was not holding her closely as he usually does. I began to clean her. I then saw that while she was not physically hurt in any way, her feelings were hurt. She had just been snuggling in my lap and now she was being held out and cleaned and there were bad smells. During the time she was dirty, my love for her did not diminish, but she felt like I was distant. After I got her clean I reassured her, dried her off, put on her lotion and held her. She gave me kisses and was so happy to see that I loved her and was holding her close. I just sang her to sleep and put her in her crib.

I am blogging because I thought of God's love as I interacted with my daughter tonight. So often when I try to "help" God and do things in my own strength without His power I make a big mess. In the same way that Maggie could not get the poop off of her and make herself clean, I am powerless in the process of sanctification until I am yielded to God and the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the one who cleanses me. His love was reflected tonight in some small way as I cleaned Maggie, and yet I thought of the prodigal son and how much stronger and deeper God's love is than my own. Unlike my reaction of holding my daughter at arms length, the father of the prodigal ran to his son who had been eating out of a pig trough, covered in dirt and filth. The father embraced his son and loved him and delighted in his return.

Do not let Satan make you feel like you need to clean yourself up in order to delight in the presence and love of God. He is the one who cleans you, and He does not wait until you are clean to love you and hold you. He brings us into new life, and even though we spread filth on ourselves, when we return to Him in repentance, He forgives us and lavishes grace and mercy upon us. Praise God for His unfailing love!

1 John 3:1-3 ESV (the whole chapter is amazing!)
1See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears[a] we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

The Road To Hell is Paved With Good Intentions

"The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions"

I have been thinking of this quote (which can be attributed to Samuel Johnson in Boswell's biography without "the road to" preface) often recently. George Bernard Shaw added to the quote saying "all men mean well." As Christians we know that is an utter lie, but we also see many examples of good intentions and hellish results. Sincerity and zeal to help those who are hurting makes the fact that many people hurt those they are trying to help all the more tragic. As I see the hellish images from Haiti I think not only of the disaster, but also of the disastrous 30 years that preceded the earthquake and the good intentions of many who sought to be involved in helping the people there during that time.

The World Trade Center was doing quite well structurally on September 10, 2001. Haiti was not doing well at all the day before the earthquake struck. Do you ever think people with good intentions had something to do with that?

The purpose of this post is not to analyze the reasons that the U.N. has struggled to create a working government. For this discussion, eliminate from your mind the swindlers and the thieves. This is not the place to address the officials who rob their country. Nor is it time to give more thought to the child traffickers who seek to destroy the lives of precious ones who God loves. We can take some comfort in the final judgment and their fate which God promises is worse than if they had mill stones hung around their necks and were cast into the sea. We can also support those seeking to bring about justice on this earth, but I want to speak now about those whose intentions are good.

I am uncertain whether the whole missionary group from Idaho that was arrested and charged with child trafficking had good intentions. I am sure many of them did. I am also certain that in moments of self reflection, many of us would see too much of ourselves in the way we have rushed in without the right plan, without the proper execution and we have brought even further destruction to a place that is hurting.

I am concerned that Haiti relief will be similar to the outpouring of interest in cancer screening, prevention and research Lance Armstrong caused. I think Tim Tebow may have a Live Strong bracelet amongst the many bracelets he wears, but most of the wearers lasted in their support about as long as the Beanie Baby craze. I am hoping that for many in the church, the profile of Haiti serves to wake them up to the Biblical mandates regarding care for orphans and widows (James 1:27). You will also see in the Word the story of the Good Samaritan and great precedent for healing and helping and pointing to the Great Physician. This is not a call for a season of helping, but rather for a life in which we seek to obey God’s command to care for widows and orphans in their distress.

How many of you who are not doctors would sign up for a medical trip and just go down and wing it? You have good intentions, right? You want to help! You did not get all of the "training" but you do watch plenty of Scrubs and you used to like E.R. I do not know anyone who would do that. We understand the danger inherent in seeking to help someone medically without the proper plan and the proper implementation. I think that far too often we do not realize that we do something similar when it comes to "helping" in lots of ways around the world.

How can I make a claim that some people who have been trying to help Haiti have actually been causing harm prior to the earthquake? Ask yourself hard questions. Why, on the island of Hispaniola, is the Dominican Republic doing so much better than Haiti? Part of the reason is spiritual poverty.

Pat Robertson has done more to help the poor in terms of relief efforts than many of the critics I read attacking him, and I think very few took the time to listen to what he said in context. I wish he had phrased what he said differently, but I think everyone who knows Christ and of the problems in Haiti should be praying desperately for spiritual revival in a time of tremendous pain. I know that I desire that God will set free those who practice voodoo and that there will be repentance and people will be drawn to Him. I am in no way suggesting that the widespread practice of voodoo caused the earthquake, but I am saying that it creates a spiritual poverty that leaves people in need of a God who loves them and who hates witchcraft. What is the solution? Should I run down there and preach "Jonathan Edwards-style" to repent? God may use this tragedy to call individuals to evangelism as Americans in Haiti and I would encourage us all to listen to God's voice. Yet, just as in the American experience where God used some foreign evangelists, the bulk of the work that needs to happen is revival and conversion through the indigenous church. How can we build up the church? In part by helping them reach a point where they are providing for the needs of their flock without our largesse.

A pastor from Africa who took some time to meet with me and answer questions I had as I started my new job with World Orphans said, "Never make the mistake of assuming that money is neutral. It has great power to do good, and great power to do evil." He said, "Often people send money overseas and then think that at worst it was just wasted if the project did not go as planned. What they do not realize is that it may have done great harm, depending on how it was wasted." It was a statement that convicted me. How often in the past with my conscience pricked would I just give some money to whatever group had the image of the hurting person that stirred my emotion. Care enough to learn how people are helping and what they are called to do.

Given that an earthquake occurred, it is entirely appropriate that we should send food and blankets and relief type aid to the people of Haiti. The problem I want us to look at carefully, is why there were large shipping containers of relief aid in Haiti prior to the earthquake. Why have billions of dollars been sent in aid to a relatively small country that has gotten poorer as aid has increased?

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" is a short hand about development that I like. The tragedy in Haiti is more like "Give people fish for 30 years and then bemoan the lack of fishermen in the community." Even more tragic than the powerful disincentive of ongoing aid that is given without requirements of rehabilitation and development is the fact that many parents are now abandoning their children because they believe that the children will be better served through the help of a "rich person's" orphanage.

What a depressing blog post! Friends, we need to show wisdom and be good stewards to truly help those we are seeking to help. There are tremendous people working in Haiti in an ongoing way who know a great deal more than I do about the culture, the needs and the people. That said, I am certain that long term, the best way we can help the people of Haiti is by equipping and supporting the indigenous church and by providing strong accountability for funds dispersed. How do you avoid parents sending their kids to orphanages? Work with the local pastor who can provide food and medicine to the children while providing the father with job training. What if the father refuses to work? The New Testament has plenty of verses about that, and the person who I pray is seeking to lead that father to Christ and who can explain those verses to him is the local pastor.

How do you care for those who are orphans? Well I hope that it is something I will be able to share with you as I continue to write this blog. There are tremendous opportunities that exist now in Haiti to provide for orphans through the indigenous church in a way that gives the former a home and gives the latter the benefits that God designed for the church as we obey His command to care for orphans.

World Orphans has formed a Haiti Orphans Response Team that is working with excellent organizations like Focus on the Family's Orphan Care Ministry, Together for Adoption, Christian Alliance for Orphans etc. to equip indigenous churches to care for orphans in their community. You can read more about HORT by going to http://www.haitiorphanrelief.org

The best resources I have read that are very instructive into the heart of why we often fail to do what we set out to do despite our best intentions are the following two books.

"Dead Aid" by Dambisa Moyo, was written by an economist from Africa. While it is somewhat academic in tone and is speaking about aid in Africa specifically, it holds excellent lessons for worldwide relief.

"When Helping Hurts" by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert is an excellent book that describes the need for development and many of the pitfalls we encounter as Western church members who are trying to help our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. They have a free webinar available that I became aware of after I wrote this blog initially. The webinar focuses on Haiti.

http://chalmers.org/when-helping-hurts/webinar/haiti-02-2010.php.

The appropriate response to the earthquake in Haiti is relief. There are near term needs that have to be met. Yet if we are to ever see Haiti as a place that moves beyond being a desperate and impoverished portion of an island that is doing incredibly better on the other side, we must eventually move from relief to development. Our brothers and sisters in Haiti will be delighted when they can support themselves without our financial assistance and we will be able to focus on helping the next victims of a natural disaster. Development is difficult and time consuming but incredibly satisfying, and I am so blessed to be a part of an organization that is called to serve in that way.

Holistic Care

In seeking to provide holistic care to the orphans, we break down the care needed into quadrants. Holistic as a term may bring to mind some herbs from the health food store, but it is simply referring to treating the whole person.

The first quadrant is Spiritual. The spiritual nurture of the orphans is the primary responsibility of the indigenous church, but it is our privilege to serve along side them.

If the children do not know Jesus in a personal way, everything else we do to provide comfort and support would not matter 150 years from now, and they would be far worse off than if salvation had come and their life on Earth was painful and short.

World Orphans assists indigenous churches in providing outreach and evangelism. We use a variety of outreach methods including a games based approach called HisKidsSports that the children love. Once the children have become Christians, we provide materials and training to help with spiritual development. It is our desire that each of the children learn to read and understand the Bible. We know that God uses His Word to transform minds. The picture of the children praying is from a World Orphans project in Moldova.

The second quadrant is physical. The orphans receive ongoing care that is designed to prevent future problems and treat current ones. Some of the orphans need medicines regularly to treat incurable diseases they have contracted. Many orphans need assessment and nutrition plans that recognize what is available locally and help them avoid any deficiences.

As we equip and train the care providers to help the children physically it is a blessing to point them to the great Physician. While all the projects are designed to move towards self suffiency, there are many opportunities for outreach and evangelism in conjunction with medical provision in the communities where projects take place.

Aside from the basic hygiene that is taught to the orphans that helps prevent the spread of disease, the children learn through therapeutic recreation. This is a fun way for the kids to experience growth and learning in an area where measurable progress can be acheived relatively easily. It is also a way for western teams and indigenous care givers to provide support and encouragment to the children.
The above picture of a medical assessment is from a World Orphans project in Uganda.

The third quadrant is emotional. The orphans experience different traumas before they are cared for. We know that there can be long lasting negative impacts from neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse etc and that those impacts can be much worse if no counseling is offered.

In some shame based cultures it is considered best to not speak past traumas, that it is better to compartmentalize and pretend that nothing happened. What we seek to provide is training in Biblical methods of providing healing to areas of emotional damage.

Caregivers for the orphans also experience tremendous stress and it can be very helpful for them to be given counsel and a safe space to discuss the challenges they face.

This little girl in India where World Orphans is working needs the same type of love and support and assistance that we would want our own children to have.

The fourth quadrant is mental which deals with the intellectual/academic. This quadrant requires focus on radically different areas depending on the culture, the resources available and the specific child.

Even in the United States we have experienced difficulty as children are pushed towards college for the sake of college and end up with debt and a job in a field where their academic experience has little bearing.

In some cultures it may be helpful for some of the children to learn Latin and dissect frogs. One child may benefit most from graduating to becoming the apprentice to the successful Christian man in town who does small engine repair. Whether it is vocational training or traditional academics, we seek to recognize the gifts God has given each child and to help them use their talents and abilities for God's glory. What a blessing it is to know that Proverbs 22:29 is true when it says "Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men." (NIV) As these children grow up and learn to work diligently for the glory of God, we know that they will enter a workforce full of fallen and sinful people who are lazy and who give much less than their best. Whether they become chemists, doctors, missionaries, pastors, service workers, fishermen or farmers the important thing is that they are prepared to give their all for the glory of God. Many of them will be equipped to not only care for themselves but to help many more who God calls them to care for.

Rwanda

These pictures are from Danielle's trip to Rwanda.

World Orphans has projects in Rwanda and I had a wonderful visit recently with the Rwandan pastor who is overseeing work at multiple project sites. He is a Hutu man who is married to a Tutsi woman and he told me heartbreaking stories about the genocide. He was able through the pain of losing his home and living in a refugee camp to preach the gospel. Many people were saved. Like all of the other indigenous pastors World Orphans works with, he was working with orphans before we came along. Now he is excited to be trained and to train others in providing for everything these orphans need to thrive.

Family Pictures

Your Support is Needed

Your Support is Needed!

It is difficult for me to ask for support because I am used to being self-reliant. I have had various jobs for more than half of my life and I have never been in a position where I have had to ask anyone for money except my parents. At World Orphans I am tasked with raising my own support. I always thought I would work in the business world and make millions of dollars and then use my money to help orphans around the world. God had other plans for me and called me out of the corporate world and into a ministry where I am only able to be in full-time service because of the generous support of others. I believe God is using my work for World Orphans to make a difference. I believe He called me into this ministry and I am confident He will provide for all of my needs. God has already been so generous in that I was able to begin my ministry with World Orphans with the support of a donor who made my transition less of a leap of faith.

While it is uncomfortable for me to ask you to consider supporting my ministry financially, it is easy to ask you for something I need even more, prayer support. Your support is needed desperately in terms of prayer. Satan has designs to continue to destroy these precious children who have been victims of all types of abuse and who have been abandoned by their families. God has a plan to rescue them using His church to bring them into His family where they can move from surviving to thriving. Spiritual warfare exists today and will become more intense as we move forward. Please pray for me to be a servant leader within my own family. Biblically, my obligation to my wife and daughter takes primacy over my own desires and I am already convicted as I seek to train others in creating strong and Godly families that I must be very careful to protect and nurture my own. Pray that I will be transparent. I want to be fully yielded to God and act in obedience to Him every day.

Your support financially may or may not be something God wants you to provide. If you do not feel called to support my ministry please take another look at some pictures of my beautiful baby daughter or of the orphans I am helping. No... I am just kidding. I sincerely do not want you to give unless you feel it is something God wants you to do.

This is a very tough time financially for many ministries. During the economic boom, people asked donors to reduce their tax liability by giving at year end to offset gains. Now many of those gains have evaporated and people are concerned about a gloomy outlook that could mean major macroeconomic problems. What a blessing it is during this time to read Matthew 6! God does not own a REIT or a hedge fund or a tech company and His ability to provide for His children has not been curtailed one bit by present economic circumstances. It was an enormous privilege to see my parents obey God in starting Wears Valley Ranch (wvr.org) in 1991. God gave them the land and they obeyed His voice and moved to Tennessee without a donor base or a clear 5 year plan or an endowment. Over the years I was able to witness firsthand God's provision for them again and again. Through God's provision and without debt nor government funding, Wears Valley Ranch has built four houses and provides school, therapeutic counseling and recreation. The children gain an intimate knowledge of what it means to be a part of a Godly family. Now, God has given me the awesome opportunity to take a culturally adapted model of Wears Valley Ranch overseas in the next year to projects in countries such as Moldova, Thailand, Nicaragua, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.

There are many ministries doing God’s work in your local area, in our nation and around the world. It is such an honor and privilege to be a part of one of them. World Orphans is a member of ECFA and I can endorse their work personally as being aboveboard and fiscally accountable. If you feel called to support me financially, please click on the Donate Now button on the right hand side of the blog and then click on staff support (or click here https://www.worldorphans.org/eComm/store/worldorphans_listItems.asp?idCategory=61) and in the pull down menu choose Clayton Wood.