Ministry Leader: Church Must Reclaim Mandate to Provide for the Needy
by Allie Martin
September 27, 2005
(AgapePress) - Dave Daubenmire, founder and president of Ohio-based Minutemen United, is encouraging Christians to realize that it is up to the Church in America, not the government, to take care of people in need, including victims of disasters like Hurricane Katrina.Shortly after the August 29 hurricane hit several Gulf Coast states, members of Minutemen United set out to deliver food and supplies in south Mississippi. The group's volunteers also made their way to Kenner, Louisiana, where Daubenmire says government help was nowhere to be found.
The ministry founder says many of the people the volunteers encountered were individuals, even Christians in some cases, who had come to rely on government handouts. "We look at what happened in inner-city New Orleans, and it is unbelievable to see how many people sat out there waiting on government to come and serve them," he remarks.
"We have to raise up people to understand that government cannot protect them," Daubenmire says. In fact, the former high school coach contends, "It's not the role of government to protect them, and it's time for the Church to reclaim the job that we've been mandated to do -- to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked and to reach out to those that are hurting. Those are Christ-ordained mandates that the Church must do, and we want to help wean people off of federal government."
Daubenmire believes the dependency mentality that has so crippled so many generations of America's poor can be partly traced back to the federal government's decades-long experiment with its 1960s program for liberating the poor, often referred to as the "War on Poverty." He says although many people talk about the need to end the war in Iraq, he feels ending the so-called War on Poverty is long overdue.
"Forty years and look where we've got," the Minutemen United president says. "We've got people who didn't have the -- whether it be the common sense or the wherewithal or the vehicles -- to be able to get themselves out of the flood's way. They didn't have that." And the reason many do not have it, he asserts, is because "government has created a permanent underclass."
Daubenmire believes committed Christians can do more for hurting and displaced hurricane survivors than all the federal agencies combined. And not only is the Church coming through for the disaster victims, but he adds, "If the Church would donate money to Christian ministries, I believe that this [could be] the greatest opportunity for evangelism in probably the last 100 years."
The head of Minutemen United adds that his organization will be helping to coordinate relief efforts near New Orleans for the foreseeable future.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
