The cycle of poverty has held a strange fascination in my life. I have seen it tear people away from Christ in two different ways, and unfortunately seen it many times. In the church I work with, and churches I have been a part of in the past I have seen poverty that was inherited pull a person away from that church, and ultimately away from Christ as they transition from youth to adulthood. Opportunities, typically those that are morally ambiguous, or in many case morally bankrupt, present themselves and offer to solve the poverty problem.
These opportunities are even more rampant and well distributed than they were when I was a youth. With the advancement of the Internet the job title of “content creator” has become more prolific, and sadly in many cases more compromising in nature. This new career of “content creation” can be very lucrative, but ultimately requires the content creator to subjugate their moral system in favor of cash, and though many people make a great living doing this, many more try desperately to escape what becomes a cycle of trading dignity for cash.
In other countries, and even in the United States it might simply be turning to a life of crime. That may sound dramatic, but it is not that much of a stretch. Sometimes it is as simple as theft here and there, again bending their moral systems to fit in with getting their basic needs filled. In other cases it might be selling drugs, or scamming people. There are honestly 100 different ways, and every one of them has the deep tendency to drive that person further and further away from God, even when they were raised in the Church, have God-Loving families, and what looks like it could be a good support network. When the rest of that network lives in poverty, inevitably, someone will try to break that cycle any way they can.
The opposite is often true as well. Sometimes the pursuit of money becomes a fixation, and leaving poverty behind leaves no room for Christ. I understand this path quite well. I myself came from poverty. I was the third generation in my family destined to start work at the lumber mill. It is not bad work, but we struggled. My grandparents lived in a small single wide trailer, my parents lived in a trailer. When I went to work for the mill, I lived with my uncle…in a trailer.
I have nothing against trailers. It is a great way to have a good home and not spend yourself to death or obligate yourself to a lifetime of payments. They are however often indicative of living in poverty. They do not age well, they can be expensive to maintain, they are not always the best financial choice vs. renting (since you typically still have to pay space rent, even after you own the trailer).
The issue I do take is what parts of the cycle of poverty typically expose themselves in these environments. I grew up in a relatively mild trailer part. To my knowledge there was one other large trailer park in my home town and ostensibly it was where you went to buy drugs, hire thugs, or get mugged. It was rampant with crime, and it was relatively well know to most everyone. Did I know people who lived there? Certainly. Were they bad people? Absolutely not. Did many of them get involved in crime or fight with every hour of their day to escape poverty? They sure did.
I did the same. Though I was raised in Church, and spent much of my young adult years in Church, I lost my way quite often. I parked my faith in pursuit of money more often that I would like to admit. Oh, I have to work Sunday. I just do not have time to volunteer right now. We need all the money we can save so tithing is not really an option right now. I need a break, let’s skip church for a few weeks (months, years). So many excuses, and so easy to make, I made them all and missed years of going to Church. Thank God for diligent pastors, friends who cared, and family who did not want to see my family slip away.
How to Solve This Problem
This brings me back around to the solution I am chasing. As a youth pastor, or at least an aspiring youth pastor, I see the problem first hand. I have watched the teens I have worked with march into adulthood and away from the church. I recently ran across a youth I have know for nearly seven years. He recognized me (it has been 3 years since we last spoke), seemed momentarily embarrassed, but approached me anyway. The smell of marijuana and alcohol poured off of him – neither of which is illegal here in Colorado. He was 21, but looked miserable. I asked him about life, work, family. He was there with a girl, but suggested they were “just hooking up,” and not serious, though they lived together. I did not see any point in chastising him about his recreational activities, but I was honestly disappointed that he was unemployed and living with his “not-girlfriend’s” mother.
If I am being honest, I should have seen it coming. I had seen it before. Once choice, another choice, and then a cascade of choices like dominos, and the student who was so ready to break free, willingly enters the cycle of poverty and sets themselves up to teach a new generation how to join the cycle themselves. It irked me because I went the other way. I wanted to escape the cycle, but I now realize that the slope is slippery no matter which way you choose to climb – up or down.
To me, now as a youth leader, and as an entrepreneur with over twenty years of experience the solution seems so much more simple. We need a plan to gently lift people from this life, strengthen their morals, strengthen their life skills, and keep them connected with a church that at the age of 18, 19, or 20 seems to have little to offer them unless they are planning to go into some form of ministry (music, missions, leadership, etc.).
The Outline of a Plan
Though I do not have it all solved yet, with prayer, study, and communication a plan is coming together. It has been years in the making and there are many parts and pieces that I would consider complete. To wrap this article up, I am announcing something that helps to give me the drive that I need and the accountability to continue forward through shadow and difficulty.
This program is being designed explicitly to fight this cycle of poverty. First, we need to address the primary driver. This is of course the lack of ability to generate an income. Through some of my previous ventures, including those that were designed to help bi-vocational pastors generate a second income using passive income techniques, I have honed in on some skills that I believe our youth who exist in the poverty cycle can use to help break through the glass ceiling.
- Marketing and Communications – These skillset allows them to better understand how to communicate ideas both in written word and one-on-one. This will have them get better jobs, start business ventures, and to reach out to the right people to get help with any type of venture, be it employment or business.
- Critical Thinking – So many times choices the limiting factor, and many people stuck in the poverty cycle think that their choices are limited. By applying critical thinking skills we can help them see there are often more options than they realize and to help them weight the pros and cons of those choices appropriately.
- Finance Management – Being in the poverty cycle does not equip people well with financial management skills. By teaching these skills we can help them avoid pitfalls, bad advice, opportunists, and to be prepared from the inevitabilities of downturns, bad economies, and predatory people.
- Moral and Ethical Understanding – Morals may seem obvious, but morals and ethics together can be a complicated scenario. It is also an area that when trying to escape the cycle tends to be stepped on, trampled even, and often forgotten in the dust left behind. It is easy to betray ethics when trying to survive. It is harder to betray your morals, but still easier than perishing. By increasing the foundation in both areas our goal is to make it more obvious when you consider options that would betray these things.
- Technical Skills – Our aim here is of course to focus on several area of technical skills, taught as vocational skills. These are digital marketing, artificial intelligence / data science, and software development. These three areas of focus allow our student to seek jobs, act as a freelancer, or even start their own ventures, but to increase their potential of becoming a high income earner, built on the foundation of other life skills.
As an important part of this program we do not expect them to go it alone. Our aim is to match every single student with a real life mentor that is also a teach in one of these areas. The aim here is to build not only a teacher / student relationship, but also to build a life long friendship that can assist in keeping the student connected not only to the Church, but to Christ more importantly. Having this mentorship in place is designed to operate more like friends in Christ, than as a long term teacher.
The final part of this program is an internship with a Christian company where the skills they have learned can be converted into real world experience and actual income. This increases their likelihood to succeed and boosts their morale as they grow into adulthood with new skills, new connections, and able to feel the power of God.
As we continue to develop this we will establish and alter as necessary our technical curriculums, our mentorship qualifications, how we ask churches and people to sponsor our students, what companies we work with (in the capacity of offering interns), and what life skills we teach, as well as the results of our student cohorts.
If you have any interest in taking part in this venture, building the Kingdom, helping to break the cycle of poverty, please reach out to us! Visit our contact page and drop us a message, we’d love to talk to you! At this current stage the total cost of a student working through our program (including course materials, and salary as an intern – which may or may not be funded by a company they are matched with) is around $3,000.00. As we fine-tune this program, and gain better understanding into funding on the internship side, this may increase or decrease significantly.
We are actively looking for financial partners, mentors, and educators right now. Please reach out if you can, and God Bless you!