International Development is Synergy with God’s Grace
By Nathan O’Halloran, Senior Program Officer
At the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, the Christian idea of “development” is beautifully portrayed in the description of a new world. It is both God’s work and human work that helps bring about what is called the “new heavens and new earth.” Development in the Bible is a synergetic activity, merging God’s activity with human labor in order to heal what is broken and
bring about constant newness of life. The One seated on the throne promises, NOT to make all new things, but to make all things new (Revelation 21:5).
This idea of development as bringing forth the new from the old in synergetic cooperation with God’s grace probably best describes my own observations while visiting, listening, and learning about our partners’ work in Christian development in Africa. There is, of course, nothing easy about this work. There are profound challenges and longstanding barriers that often stand in the way of the restoration they are toiling to bring about. Yet they are finding success, and this is what it looks like:
Two young women stand up at a gathering about child protection in Malawi. They describe their experiences of forced child marriage. One shares her story with a strained look of detachment while the other breaks down in tears. Both of them, through the extraordinary work of our partner, have experienced deliverance from their ordeal as “child brides” and have begun the slow work of healing.
A group of high school girls describe what is like to go to schools that do not offer proper sanitation facilities. They routinely miss five or more days 
of school a month because they do not have the necessary sanitation items and feel ashamed to remain. They begin to fall behind with no chance of catching up. Now they have a new sanitation block with showers and restrooms just for them, reducing absenteeism and restoring a sense of dignity. The joy on their faces is striking.
I watch as 12 different small enterprise entrepreneurs get up on stage at the conclusion of their accelerator program to tell the story of their new startup to thunderous applause. Each of them has come from hardship I can hardly imagine, and yet their courage and imagination drove them to find ways to serve the community in new and transformative ways.
College-age alumni breathlessly tell me what it was like to climb Mount Kilimanjaro as a cohort at the conclusion of their leadership training program. Never could they have imagined that they would attempt such a feat, never mind all make it to the top! Yes, they had to carry each other on the last day. It was harder
than they ever could have imagined. They never thought they would make it… and then they did. Now they feel they can battle through any hardship and accomplish whatever they put their minds to.
A disabled woman describes what having a household latrine means for her sense of self: “My sense of dignity and self-respect were again preserved.” The latrine is less about the gain in sanitation infrastructure than it is a relief from shame and fear.
Another woman describes what it means to her to be in charge of the community water committee: “I feel important. I feel like I have a purpose again.”
Never would I have known, before I began this work, that perhaps the most significant effect of providing water to a community is the removal of danger from daily water collection. Parents describe their child being mauled by a crocodile or drowning while collecting water. Girls describe assaults at water sources, or men offering to carry water pails in exchange for sexual favors. Now water is available just a short walk away.
In all of these remarkable ways, the development work of our partners is building the “new heavens and new earth” in synergetic cooperation with God’s grace. And I have the astonishing blessing of observing how God is making, not all new things, but all things new in small pockets of East Africa.