Editor's note: Three leaders of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), Charles Sandefur, president; Mario Ochoa, executive vice president; and Gideon Mutero, chief financial officer, met with the Ministry editors.
Nikolaus Satelmajer (NS): Please tell our readers what ADRA does.
Gideon Mutero (GM): ADRA ministers to the needs of the poor as the hands of Jesus to fulfill His mission to those who are in distress and those who are in poverty. Through ADRA, the Seventh-day Adventist Church expresses its ministry of compassion.
Charles Sandefur (CS): We believe that the arch of God's love is especially bent towards the poor and those who are vulnerable and marginalized. ADRA is the church's expression of that commitment. We're not the only expression of the church's mission, we're not the only expression of the church's ministry to the poor, but we are probably the clearest instrument of the church's commitment to acts of justice and poverty reduction and responding to human needs and human rights. So, ADRA does this in the name of Jesus and in the name of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The church couldn't be the church without ministries like ADRA.
NS: You just touched on my next question. How does the work of ADRA relate to Christ's commission to His church?
CS: I think a lot of times, people want ADRA to be the front person for the rest of the church, the other missions and ministries that the Adventist Church has. So, we're seeing this kind of icebreaker, or entering wedge, or the first steps, and that model just simply makes this mission instrumental to something else. It isn't a sign of God's unconditional love; it is a public relations technique where it's something that increases the image of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. We're always grateful when the image of the Adventist Church is enhanced by what we do, but some of the ministries we do for the poor and the oppressed aren't necessarily popular. They are nevertheless expressions of God's unconditional love. So we do this with no strings attached.
Mario Ochoa (MO): It's amazing for me how the person in need can see through our acts to see Jesus. It's simply amazing. I was in Honduras recently, visiting a very isolated mountain community. It was surprising to me the clarity that the people had about the mission of ADRA in relationship with Jesus. They said, "Thank You to the Lord because the Lord sent you to work with us." For me, that essentially summarizes what we should do.
NS: You do your work without conditions?
MO: That's exactly right.
CS: The three of us were in Rwanda a while ago. We were visiting a project, and a woman spoke to us and just kind of captured the entire theology of mission and ministry for ADRA. She was grateful for the difference our staff, and the work we had done with her, had made in her life. She was living with HIV/AIDS, had been ostracized, and we were doing counseling and supplemental feeding and Christian programs. She said this, "You did not know us, but you loved us."
Willie Hucks (WH): What are some of the challenges and rewards in this ministry?
GM: We are stewards of resources that come to us from public sources, from governments, and from private donations. Full accountability of these resources in difficult times and in difficult places with limited capacity is one of the challenges that we face. It is an area that we continually seek to improve so that we can become better stewards and be the preferred organization and agency for those who want to partner with ADRA to fulfill its mission. The rewards? We see lives changed and transformed and communities improved. God's love is being made manifest in others.
CS: I think one of our huge challenges is that the people that we work with, the poor and the oppressed, are so invisible to the other three-quarters of the world. They don't live in many of our communities; we don't see them on the news. So we minister in very invisible places. It is difficult sometimes for my church family to recognize the brutality and injustice that so many people in the world face. So, that means that one of our greatest challenges is not just the ministry that we do with the poor but to bring a vision of how the poor are part of our family, our human family, and to recognize a sense of obligation that really is duty.
NS: ADRA has gone through so many changes, name changes even, but before there was any structured organization, have we always had this idea of ministry, of mission?
MO: In the history of our church, the local congregations have been very active in the sense of reaching out to communities in need. As a church, we have a Dorcas or Community Services ministry. In the early stages of our church, the church organized the Seventh-day Adventist Welfare Service (SAWS), and then that was re-organized into the Seventh-day Adventist World Service. Twenty-five years ago, the church decided to put it all together into ADRA, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency. So, from that moment on, we have been interacting with different levels and units of the church to serve as an ignition point for the ministry to the poor and needy. In Latin America, for instance, there are some countries where ADRA is totally embedded into the fabric of the church, all the way to the pews. In some other countries, we're not. In other countries, we have a challenge in that respect; we have to reach out more to the pastors and other leaders to make them aware of the church's responsibility to the poor.
CS: The Adventist Church has always had the privilege of having church members that have been loving, caring, kind, and compassionate. Embodying that in a structured ministry of the church has been more challenging. And at the start, we focused mostly on disasters. We were kind of catastrophe oriented. And then came the recognition that we were about the transformation of people, not just responding immediately to needs, but how do you keep those catastrophes and disasters from happening in the first place, and how do you respond to long-term growth and change in people's lives, rather than merely responding to headlines? I think ADRA came formally into existence with a recognition that we were a development agency, not just a relief agency. That we were about sustainable change, not just an emergency response. Hurricanes and tsunamis are just a small window to the kind of work we do, and even there we are engaged for years.
GM: And what Charles Sandefur just mentioned has been a trademark for us. We don't just go and touch them and then leave. We stay there to make a change that is sustainable.
CS: I actually think it's one of the unique things that ADRA offers because we rise out of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that's planted one hundred thousand churches, one thousand hospitals, and thousands of schools. Doing our work in local communities and doing local community development is something just kind of wired into our DNA, and that is what we're best at. We are best at working with local communities, and we work with thousands of them.
WH: Gideon, please address a little more the financial side of ADRA's operation.
GM: We have continued to get very favorable ratings with major credentialing agencies like Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau. They recognize our responsible management of our resources. Our documentation to donors normally has the charity seal that is granted to us by the Charity Navigator because of our four-star rating. We appreciate that our efforts are recognized by these agencies. They recognize that we render sound financial reports and get good audit reports. This is important for us because we need to demonstrate to the donor community, the church, and ADRA partners that we are a responsible agency that conducts its business by upholding the highest principles of integrity.
NS: So, any money you receive is appropriately accounted for, audited, and reports are open to the public?
GM: Yes.
WH: What can pastors and other church members do to further the ministry of ADRA?
GM: One of the ways would be in talking about the biblical concept of social responsibility, letting the members know that they have a responsibility to their neighbors, to their communities in which they live. This goes beyond trying to proselytize the communities, trying to make them Adventist, but even if they will not become Adventist, they need to see that they are the object of God's love through actions of our members-that ADRA is the arm of the church that extends to people in these ways. Another way for them to support this mission is by praying for ADRA, contributing resources, and volunteering services. All of these are needed for ADRA to be able to go even further in terms of accomplishing its mission.
CS: My vision would be for every church member to see that every ministry to the poor and oppressed is part of discipleship and Christianity. That's very different from saying, "Support ADRA." ADRA is just the public agency expression of that. But I would cheer if more church members saw themselves living with their eyes wide open to the needs and the injustices and the unfairness inside their communities. We're in nearly 125 countries, but no one person is everywhere. We're all just knitted together in this organization. So, pastors and church members can support what we do, they can support what they are doing and increase their vision of what it means to be socially responsible in their communities. That is why in our recent strategic plan, our first preferred future is to call the church to a deeper sense of biblical social responsibility.
I would also ask our church members to pray for our ADRA colleagues. They all work by definition in extremely difficult places: emotionally, spiritually, and physically difficult. Nineteen of my ADRA colleagues have died since I joined ADRA six years ago. Half of them violently, through acts of war, gunshots, or being killed.
NS: How has this ministry that you are involved in impacted your personal Christian experience and walk with God?
MO: I embraced this ministry of the church early in my Christian experience. I decided to give up my career as an attorney to become a worker for the church in ADRA. I became a country director for ADRA when I was twenty-four years old, so from then on, I have always understood the work of the church through ADRA as the work that Jesus would do if He were here on this planet. To see the change that people experience in their lives, to see how they become better people-that has impacted my personal experience with God.
GM: Just the realization that there is a lot of suffering in this world and that ADRA as a ministry plays a role in affecting these needs in making change to people's lives and communities-that is something that gives me a lot of personal satisfaction.
CS: I think a lot of us, who grew up in the church, grew up choosing to identify ourselves as very caring and compassionate people. None of us would ever want to say that we are not compassionate or caring. What I have experienced in my own life is a vulnerability to seeing people so oppressed and so hurting. When I was a pastor, I could somewhat regulate that vulnerability. But now I've let new victims come into my life to see them as part of my ministry.
