Help to the Poor - Brian Schneider’s Paper
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” - Galatians 6:9-10
Preface
I first received this paper in summer, 2020. I have gone back and forth about making it public for months, since the Leaving the Network site went up. I believe it’s relevant and proper to share it for the following reasons:
The Network leaders regularly cited it when questions came up.
My reading of the paper leads me to believe that it was in fact highly influential throughout the Network in terms of disengaging from the needs of the community.
If the Network is correct, and the logic of the paper is sound, it’s unclear to me why they would not want it public. Again, this paper was shared to me in summer 2020, almost eight years after it was written, with no disclaimer of “now don’t judge too harshly, there’s a later version of it that’s much better.” They seemed like they were still proud of it, all those years later.
Those who were in the Network may be interested in understanding Schneider’s view to determine how much they want to hold to the Network practices regarding helping others.
I also do not recall having ever agreed not to share it - I’ve found nothing in writing, nor do I recall any conversation where I agreed not to share it. I understand this is a murky area, but I simply believe transparency matters, and a paper this important to how The Network runs deserves to be shared with those in the church and who learned from it.
With that said, some disclaimers:
I am not a biblical scholar or theologian; therefore, my analysis will talk minimally about the bible, and instead center on the logic of the paper. I may follow-up with a post delving deeper, but I won’t publish that if I can’t be sure I’m doing it well.
The Network may respond that they have sharpened their thinking over the last nine or ten years. However, they have not shared that thinking. As recently as 2020, I was told by Luke Williams (Lead Pastor, Vista Church, San Luis Obispo, CA) and a former small group leader, “Well you know Schneider wrote that paper…” Also, no such disclaimer was given to me when I was sent this paper in 2020.
I encourage people to read the paper for themselves. My goal is simply to highlight some things I found interesting, combined with the contexts in which I heard the paper referenced and things I saw the network do.
I offer observations below, as well as sharing helpful context, nothing more. The paper is over 17,000 words, and I won’t be going through it line by line.
Background and History
I don’t recall when I first heard about Brian Schneider’s paper about Christians and the poor. It was sometime during our time at Blue Sky Church in Bellevue, WA (so before summer 2016). Schneider had been sent to seminary. At some point, Steve Morgan (at the time, Lead Pastor of Blue Sky; now Lead Pastor at Joshua Church; Leader of The Network) began to say that Schneider had written a paper that showed that the Bible called Christians to focus on Christians who needed help, not the poor at large. I heard this paper then cited by my small group leader and by Luke Williams over the years, but the paper was never made public. “Brian Schneider wrote a paper showing…” was the stock answer given when the topic of helping the community would arise.
Eventually, in summer 2020, I asked Williams if I could see the paper, and he agreed to ask Schneider for a copy (Williams did not have one). Schneider apparently had to look deeply for it and initially feared that it had been lost as he’d retired the computer it was authored on. Eventually he found it and Williams shared it with me. I’ve never heard of anyone else in the network seeing the paper, and Williams was and is a member of the Network Leadership Team and did not have a copy until he asked Schneider for it.
The paper is dated November 2012, at which time Schneider was in his first year of seminary (his attending seminary was announced after my wife and I began attending Blue Sky in January 2012). So, when reading this paper, understand you’re reading the work of a seminary student – not someone with a seminary degree. It’s unclear whether this paper was written for a course in seminary or just for the church. [Update: 9/20/2022: I found an old email from Luke Williams (to me) where he stated that this paper was written for seminary: “I sure hope he didn’t lose it, because he spent a very very long time working on that paper for seminary.”]
Brian Schneider’s Paper
At this point, I recommend reading the paper first and forming your own opinions. I look forward to hearing your thoughts - I’ve offered mine, but they’re just my thoughts, not authoritative. It’s how the paper struck me.
Word Document (Original)
PDF (Saved as PDF, from the Word Doc)
“What is the Mission of the Church”
I was also told that the book Schneider found most helpful in writing this paper was What is the Mission of the Church by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, published in August 2011. That book was written to respond to a particular breed of “missional” church that was perhaps prioritizing social justice over and above evangelism. DeYoung and Gilbert wanted to provide a corrective that would firmly establish the great commission as the primary mission of the church, while helping the poor could be a secondary consideration.
However, Schneider’s paper takes DeYoung and Gilbert’s argument to another level, advocating for minimal help to the poor. This is how it has been used in the Network since its writing.
Here is an excerpt of What is the Mission of the Church to show that Schneider did exactly the thing that the authors did not want to be done with their book (p. 22, emphasis mine):
Before we go any farther down the missional-corrective road, though, perhaps it would be helpful to make clear at the outset what we do and do not want to accomplish with this book. We do not want:
- Christians to be indifferent toward the suffering around them and around the world
- Christians to think evangelism is the only thing in life that really counts
- Christians who risk their lives and sacrifice for the poor and disadvantaged to think their work is in any way suspect or is praiseworthy only if it results in conversions
- Christians to retreat into holy huddles or be blissfully unconcerned to work hard and make an impact in whatever field or career to which the Lord calls them
- Christians to stop dreaming of creative, courageous ways to love their neighbors and impact their cities
We want to underline all those bullet points, star them, mark them with highlighter, and write them on our hearts. It’s far too easy to get our heads right, but our hearts and hands wrong.
And they keep going (p. 23):
Hopefully no evangelical would say (or think), “Ah, let it all burn up. Who cares about food and water for the poor? Who gives a rip about HIV? Give ’em the gospel for the soul and ignore the needs of the body.”
And finally, one last quote from their introduction (p. 28, emphasis mine):
One last word before we launch into things: We want to say again that we strongly support churches undertaking mercy ministries in their communities. Both of our churches have programs and support missionaries that aim to meet physical needs while also hoping to share the gospel whenever possible.
I believe that Schneider goes on to do the exact opposite with the paper – using DeYoung and Gilbert’s work in exactly the way they seem to have feared.
Schneider’s rationale for examining this topic
Given the history of Christians helping the poor, one might ask why Schneider even needed to investigate this topic at all. His first nine pages seem to be his answer to that question.
Here, I will go through his argument in the order he presents it.
The Blue Bags are not helping the poor
To start this paper, Schneider wrote about the “help to the poor” (aka “Blue bags”) program at Blue Sky Church. He talks about the two affordable housing complexes that were served by Blue Sky Church, and bemoans what he sees as a lack of effectiveness of either. He concludes with this:
Is “help to the poor” a misleading name for the program? Not only is the attempt at filling a need to provide food failing to support any interest in church or the living God full of mercy and compassion, but it’s even unclear what the need is. The program itself seems to be most effective in satisfying the average Seattle churchgoer’s often subconscious qualification that a local church do something to advance the social gospel.
I felt shocked and betrayed when I read this. It’s an open admission of the duplicity of the program. A paper cited by Steve Morgan, Luke Williams, and my small group leader said plainly that the program was not effective. I felt like I had wasted those resources that could have been more fruitfully given to more effective programs.
For what it’s worth, I do actually think many of the recipients of the blue bags appreciated them. Maybe it doesn’t change their life, but each blue bag was worth about $30, and that’s significant to many.
He also slanders “average Seattle churchgoers” by affiliating them with the “social gospel” without evidence. And then he says that the Blue Bag’s most effective function is recruiting those churchgoers. Given that Schneider is no fan of the “social gospel”, one might wonder: what other incorrect values is the church appeasing?
Is there really anyone who needs anything?
“You know who needs help? You need only just ask.” – from the song “Old City Bar”, by Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Schneider spends the next 700 words stating that there simply is no problem to solve. To support this, he gives a few anecdotes where the help he tried to give was clearly not needed. I have heard similar reports in Seattle that many pan-handlers actually make far more than you’d think. But his argument in this section seems to be:
Some people say they need help, but don’t
Therefore no one needs help
However, I also spent a week every summer in high school volunteering at a school in a poor neighborhood of Seattle, helping underprivileged students who’d fallen behind during the year. Union Gospel Mission does incredible work, comprehensively caring for the urban poor. There are myriad organizations serving battered women, the disabled, the elderly, and many more. The elderly frequently have little things around the home that need fixed or improved to make their living spaces more livable for them.
At Vista, there were singles just barely getting by on minimum-wage jobs living four or five to a house. There were single mothers who I’m sure would have loved just to have a night off from watching kids or maybe someone could come do their dishes. San Luis Obispo, CA (SLO) has a huge homeless problem, and a couple of local organizations that are working hard to remedy it. Many workers commute to and from SLO because while this is where the jobs are, housing is unaffordable.
The idea that pastors would look around their city and find no needs that the church could meet simply demonstrates a lack of imagination or inquisitiveness. A few phone calls to local organizations would have generated a long list of needs to help with.
Mars Hill Church Says it’s OK
The paper proceeds to compare the strategies of four churches with differing approaches. He says all of these are “respected, theologically conservative leaders within the church in this country.” The implication is that these are leaders we would generally listen to:
John Piper – Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Wayne Grudem – Scottsdale Bible Church, Scottsdale, AZ
Tim Keller – Redeemer Presbyterian, New York, NY
Mark Driscoll – Mars Hill Church, Seattle, WA
Schneider openly acknowledges that Piper, Grudem, and Keller all have substantial ministries to help both those in the church and beyond. He writes at length about Keller, sometimes using loaded language while other times contradicting himself. For example, he writes that Keller’s views may result in helping those outside the church more than within it, but then describes substantial aid programs within Keller’s church.
Keller has a doctorate and has studied this issue for much of his career. Schneider has neither of those credentials. Keller’s book Generous Justice is an excellent read on the topic, and a talk he did with Bryan Stevenson is a packed summary of his thinking. Keller is not a liberal or progressive – he’s a founder of The Gospel Coalition and has defended the Christian faith in front of a crowd at Google. Keller has done far more thinking and research on this topic than Schneider. The fact that Schneider so quickly dismisses him seems unwise and prideful.
Which brings us to the last figure: Mark Driscoll. For those of you who don’t know, Mark Driscoll was one of the founders and the leader of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. Driscoll was controversial for much of his tenure, up until MHC completely collapsed in fall 2014. Its weekly attendance reached 15,000 while hundreds of thousands regularly listened online. Its collapse was precipitated by numerous reports of bullying by Driscoll, wrongful removals of staff, and questionable financial decisions that seemed to benefit Driscoll. It’s so famously toxic that Christianity Today produced a podcast in 2021 titled “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Church.” The podcast was wildly popular and discussed across huge portions of the American evangelical church. If you’ve not heard of it, that’s potentially because of how insular the Network is.
I was at Mars Hill Church for four years until January 2012, when I asked a friend about his church: Blue Sky Church. It sounded amazing, we checked it out and loved it compared to MHC, so we switched. In my time at Blue Sky Church, which was in the shadow of this hugely famous megachurch, I heard many veiled jabs at MHC.
“We won’t do campuses”
“We won’t be a megachurch”
“We won’t put a guy on a screen”
“James C.” (presumably James Chidester) leaves this review on Yelp in 2015, about a year after MHC’s collapse, and as Blue Sky was opening their new building after it’s $5M+ renovation: “…There are no teachings played over video screen as the pastor is always there in person…”
I spoke with Luke Williams a couple times about MHC, and he had nothing but scorn for it.
Why does that matter? Because Schneider bases his entire reason for even considering the topic on the fact that Mars Hill did little for the poor: “For such a large and influential church to lack ambitious programs aimed at fulfilling some economic need such as ending homelessness or digging wells in a third world country speaks just as loudly as the constant calls and fund raising to address these needs by Social Justice proponents.” (p. 9)
Even then, he acknowledges that Mars Hill does have a partnership with the Union Gospel Mission and actively supports single mothers in the church who don’t have family to support them – two things I never saw in the Network.
Summary of Schneider’s opening argument
Schneider summarizes with a statement meant to transition to the meat of the paper with these words:
Biblical texts are quoted on every side of the argument, and to answer the questions that surround the church’s mission and role in helping the poor, I now take time to examine the more famous texts that are said to speak on the matter in order to determine what they say in their proper context. I recognize my own deficiency in interpreting every subtlety and nuance of scripture, but I hope to show that the Bible is clear in what it speaks to regarding help to the poor. (p. 9)
A few observations:
“Biblical texts are quoted on every side…” – this is an attempt to create confusion where there really isn’t much. Even MHC was doing more than the Network at this point.
“…and to answer the questions that surround the church’s mission and role in helping the poor, I now take time to examine the more famous texts that are said to speak on the matter in order to determine what they say in their proper context” – Has this really never been done before? I don’t mean to sound snarky, but it’s like Schneider is saying, “No one has done this properly in the history of Christianity, so I, Brian Schneider, a first-year seminary student, am going to do this.”
“I recognize my own deficiency…” – Does he? At this point in his life he couldn’t read the ancient languages. He’d been a pastor for a couple years under a lead pastor who’s never been to seminary. And he’s going to critique Grudem, Keller, Piper, and Driscoll, who have been at this for decades.
And here’s the kicker… He’s going to “show that the bible is clear” that those men are incorrect. Not just that the Bible may be ambiguous. He’s not planning to point to a mistranslation or anything. He’s not going to point to an argument made by some other respected scholar. He’s just going to read the Bible and determine that it clearly states that so many who came before are wrong.
This is hubris, arrogance, and pride.
So, in summary, Schneider’s argument across the first nine pages is this:
Blue Sky Church’s program isn’t having the impact they wish it had, which is measured by bringing people into the church, not whether they were helped.
Homelessness isn’t really a significant problem, so there’s nothing to do anyways
Most Christian churches do something real for their community, but a famously terrible church near us, that Blue Sky Church throw stones at regularly, doesn’t do much (but still more than Blue Sky does).
So, he’ll look at some biblical texts to figure this out, because no one else has done that right yet.
And that’s all instead of just saying: Mars Hill Church seems to be highly controversial, so let’s just discard it (when it collapsed two years later, that should have then been even easier) and follow the lead of more mainstream thought. The reason for MCH’s collapse is relevant here. In part, it came out that MHC had been using church funds to help market Mark Driscoll’s latest book. It also came out later that Mark Driscoll was drawing a salary upwards of $500,000/year, while he would regularly scream (yes, scream) at the church for not having given enough money to the church. In other words, at this point it sure seems like MHC’s lack of generous giving was due to a love of money, not a well thought out reading of the Bible.
Schneider’s logic and process
I’m not going to go through Schneiders analysis of all of the biblical texts. First, it’s long. Second, I’m not a trained theologian or biblical scholar and neither was Schneider when he wrote this paper. You’d be much better served by reading any of the numerous books written on the topic by experts.
However, I do want to consider the logic of the paper. Schneider’s argument as he walks through the verses seems to be this:
Many of these verses show that help to the poor should be primarily toward those in the community of Israel or the church
And some verses show that we should expect people to work, so we don’t have to help them if they are lazy.
And spreading the gospel should be primary.
So, we don’t need to do much, if anything.
Sándor Paull repeated this type of argument when he was in SLO at a small group leader meeting for Vista Church in April 2021. “The world wants us to be a soup kitchen. But we need to spread the gospel.” This form of argument is known as a “false dichotomy” in which Schneider and Paull are basically saying that either we make helping the poor the primary thing or we don’t do it at all. DeYoung and Gilbert refute this view and argue that there are many degrees between those two points (italics theirs):
Our generation tends to think about motivation in two speeds and two speeds only—there are things that are of the utmost importance, and things that are of no importance. There’s no in-between.
…
We need another speed. We need a speed that’s somewhere between of the utmost importance and of no importance. Something like really, really important might do the trick.
DeYoung, Kevin. What Is the Mission of the Church? (p. 229-230). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
Biblical Texts
There are three parts of Schneider’s analysis of biblical texts that I felt comfortable addressing.
One key verse missing
A friend of mine who is an elder in his church (not seminary trained) recently told me that the question of whether Christians and churches should be engaged in helping the poor is settled by Galatians 6:9-10 (emphasis mine):
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
So much of Schneider’s analysis centers around whether we are to help those who are outside of the church, or just those in it. But, Paul fully endorses “doing good” to “everyone”. Yes, he then directs them to particularly care for the household of faith. But that can’t be exclusive, given the first part.
To leave this verse out is quite a significant omission. Perhaps he has a rationale for it, perhaps he doesn’t. But the paper simply does not address this passage as near as I can tell.
The Good Samaritan
I’ll just say that I find Tim Keller far more compelling than Schneider here. I believe he covers this parable in his book “Generous Justice.”
It feels possible that Schneider, like the lawyer questioning Jesus, may be “seeking to justify himself” by hoping to limit who his neighbors are to a smaller population. This is potentially evidenced by Schneider’s fears that helping “anyone in our path,” might be too big of a task.
Church Distributions
Schneider does assess one biblical verse that’s always bothered me in the network: Acts 4:32-37, which contains:
“There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and sit was distributed to each as any had need.”
He states that the church should do this, but I’ve never seen anything like it in the Network. Many churches have a mercy fund, but the Network does not. My wife and I would set aside money to help needs as we heard of them, but we would have happily donated this money to the church for them to distribute as they heard of needs, so that it could be used more broadly.
Schneider’s Conclusions
Schneider finishes with what I take to be the following conclusions:
Not our problem: The job of what we might call welfare is a governmental function, and therefore is out of scope for churches and should be left to the government.
Oppression is bad. No disagreement there. However, there was never any teaching on what oppression looks like it and how we might avoid committing it.
Purity is a prerequisite to helping: I’ll just keep this whole quote: “The type of injustice God opposes is crooked business practices, impartial judges and oppression from the strong over the weak. A community with these unrighteous practices is not functioning in a manner that pleases him. Before focusing on a help to the poor program, a church ought to purify itself from injustice in order to help the poor effectively in a loving community devoted to Jesus.”
First, I’ll assume he means “partial” judges, not “impartial.”
Second, is this an admission that the network is not focusing on help to the poor yet because we have too much injustice within the church to be able to help effectively in loving our community? If so, how is that going, when the church is refusing to hear any allegations of abuses within it? Honestly not sure what to make of this.
Discipline the lazy, don’t help them: He advocates for being careful not to encourage laziness, and states that “church discipline may be merciful to those caught in idleness.” First, I haven’t seen this done in the network. In fact, the church has basically no official process for church discipline outside of removal by vote of the elders or people they appoint. Second, one of the things I found striking about this was it again seems to downplay the existence of any real needs, tagging many of the poor as “lazy” and therefore more worthy of discipline than help.
Don’t encourage love of money: Less than three years after this paper was written, Blue Sky bought their building for $5 million, and did a building remodel costing upwards of another $5 million because in Steve Morgan’s words the existing building “looked like a dump.” After being told he’d offended people he clarified that to those who are looking for churches, we aren’t up to the standards of the area. Context: this church was built a couple miles from the headquarters of Microsoft, the one-time highest value company in the world (disclosure, I work for Microsoft). It had multiple luxury car dealers within a mile of it. In that context, read what Schneider writes about the poor: “Those who love money do not love God, and so the pursuit of wealth over the pursuit of God cannot become the effect of a program to bring help to the poor, since it would then be harmful to the poor.” I read that to mean: we wouldn’t want to help the poor people in ways that make them think that wealth is important. But then why is Blue Sky Church spending millions of dollars to make themselves more palatable to the already wealthy?
Care for Christians primarily, and helping anyone else is just evangelism: He states, “Christian help to the poor should therefore primarily be directed towards care for fellow Christians, with any help outside of this done more sparingly and for the direct purpose of spreading the gospel and making disciples, not solving economic problems.”
The right ways to give – it seems like he’s saying you need to meet all of these:
Out of joy
Without incurring debt
Even if you’re poor or suffering hardship
In secret
To the church for the church to distribute as needed (which is not possible in the Network)
The right things to give to:
Relationally meeting needs of those you know
Family taking care of needs before the church steps in
One church sending money to another in time of need
In Summary
I don’t believe Schneider has effectively made his case. Important mistakes include:
Denial of real needs that need met
Leaving out significant verses or significantly twisting others in his analysis.
However, even more than that, his paper casts doubts on how the network has proceeded:
Continuation of the Blue Bag program, even posting it on Instagram at Vista Church (see Matthew 6 on “sounding trumpets before you.”
He says that the church should collect money to distribute to those in need – this is not practiced in the network.
If this teaching is so helpful and revolutionary, why would it not be published? Even submitted for peer review by other biblical scholars? He’s effectively arguing that large portions of the Christian faith are misappropriating funds toward the wrong things.
Looking forward to hearing others’ thoughts on the paper!