Morgan-Scott Project

MSP News Editor Ray Boles

Morgan-Scott Project (MSP) was founded on Christian concern for the poor in Morgan and Scott counties in rural Tennessee.  Our primary mission is to develop and implement programs that enable impoverished individuals and families within these counties to become healthy, productive, self sustaining members of the community.  A secondary objective is to provide compassionate relief for the elderly and disabled of this community.

MSP derives most of its support from churches and from individuals within those churches.  MSP is non-denominational.  All churches are invited to participate.  It is most appropriate that churches support efforts to help impoverished people because poverty and spiritual problems are so often intertwined.

In their book, “When Helping Hurts”, Corbett and Fikkert point out that the primary causes of poverty are (1) lack of knowledge, (2) oppression, (3) poor life choices, and (4) lack of material resources.  The solutions to poverty, they point out, depend on the causes.  The solution may be (1) education, (2) social justice, (3) changes in lifestyle, or (4) gifts of material resources.  The key is to choose a solution that corrects the root cause.  Though gifts of material resources may be necessary to provide temporary relief and to learn the root cause, they only rarely correct the real problem.

Lack of knowledge, oppression, and poor life choices often lead to material poverty.  When material poverty is present for an extended period of time it may lead to a loss of hope, and that is a spiritual problem.  Oppression itself frequently leads to loss of hope.  Poor life choices are often the result of a lack of spiritual orientation – lack of a relationship with God.  One could even call ignorance, oppression and sin a kind of spiritual poverty.  To repeatedly supply an individual with material gifts when the real cause of his or her situation is lack of education, oppression, or poor life choices only reinforces the spiritual poverty.

Morgan-Scott Project seeks to learn the causes of poverty in this community and to develop programs to address these causes.  This is not an easy task.  Often it is necessary to provide temporary relief while the cause of an individual’s troubles can be ascertained and addressed.

At the same time, we recognize that some people, because of age or infirmity, are unable to help themselves.  To these we extend material relief to demonstrate God’s love to them.

Jesus’ ministry focused on the poor.  He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on  me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).  We hope that you and your church will recognize the relationship between spiritual poverty and material poverty and join us in this endeavor.

Article by Ray Boles

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.