Stories from Community Development - Clyde Zimmerman - Anabaptist Perspectives Ep. 108

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I’m here with Clyde Zimmerman. We’re in Altoona, Pennsylvania. In a previous episode we do with you, you were describing the SALT Program, and some of the different things you’ve been involved in. Can you just unpack what does that look like practically? How does this actually work with helping alleviate poverty in dire economic situations? Again, the SALT Program is an acronym. Means Shared Accountability, Lending and Teaching. That’s where the term SALT comes from, but it is from a practical aspect savings groups is the biggest vehicle that we use. There’s a handful of methods we use like vocational schools, micro loans - we call it Agri-Plus which is working with farmers, and helping subsistence farmers, but the single biggest aspect is savings groups, and savings groups - how they form is say 30 people come together in a group in a community, and they elect officers from their own people - president, secretary, treasurer, and then they form a series of bylaws what’s going to govern them, and all of those aspects are done by them. Those are choices they make. Okay. So you’re not coming in dictating? No. These are all things they choose.

How much money will they save each week? Is this called a 01:32 - share? The share value. In a place like southeast Asia that share value’s a lot of times about 10 cents, 20 cents, and every time when they come together. Every week a typical SALT meeting then, the facilitator - the SALT facilitator - which must be a Christian that believes in the Lord Jesus Christ that is living a vibrant life for the Lord is what we try to do - and they come together usually weekly or bi-weekly the facilitator comes, and then we have a SALT teaching manual, and there’s many different kinds of manuals and teaching content that are appropriate for the context in which they’re working, but they may spend 30 minutes - 15 to 30 minutes - in teaching, and it’s very participatory learning or conversational type learning - open-ended questions and discovering what the teaching is. So there’s usually a Bible principle like honesty, like work, like there’s a Bible principle of non-resistance, marriage, the family, the home. Many different things like that, and there’s usually a big picture story which is a truth or a factual story.

Could be from the Bible, and then there’s in real life, and that’s 02:48 - where they wrestle with how do we live this out? That’s the first part of a SALT savings meeting, and then they will save their money. Just for simplicity we’ll say everybody’s saving a dollar. So there’s 30 people. One week they come together. They have thirty dollars. Next week they come together. They have sixty dollars, then ninety dollars, then a hundred and twenty dollars. So a month or two in, they might have enough money to then take small loans from their own savings, and again most of these people are the poorest of the poor in their context, and they don’t have access to traditional banks or financing. They could never go to the bank and get a loan.

They just won’t, so what ends up happening then now they 03:29 - through their own savings they’re accumulating sufficient savings which are held in a lock box usually with key holders from the group, and they’re only open in the public meeting, and then over time the members in that group make a request to the group for a loan request, and then the group approves it. Nobody else does, and they give that money, and then they earn interest or finance charges that goes back to the group, so if they do this - usually a term is one year. So now they have formed for a year. They might have a thousand dollars at the end of the year, and a lot of times they carry that forward into the next term. So now, slowly, slowly over years of time, the economics continue to rise, and the whole goal here is not to make wealthy entrepreneurs, but what the purpose here is is to help them use their resources they have, and save them for a future known expense whether it’s a business expansion, farming, maybe input costs - different things like that - so they can better provide for their families. So that’s a neat model, and I know you spent some time overseas specifically Bangladesh.

Outline what you’ve seen, what you’ve been involved with there overseas. Yeah, before I worked for SALT in the program, I actually from our mission - our church’s mission - I was our representative from our mission, so I worked closely with Gary Miller at the time. This was back in 2014, 2015, and we weren’t living there full time at the time, so I was going over about once a quarter, and working with the native staff, and in the early days of that program, I still remember walking into those communities, and the poverty is so severe it just hurts deep within, and you say, how would ever make a difference? Even when you first start something like this there’s a foreigner there. What’s the handout? What are we going to get? What’s being given? And so obviously we have no handout for them. We’re a teaching organization and a self-help savings, and so I still remember leaving and thinking, Lord will this ever work? How will it work, and you leave.

You go home, and you come back three months later, 05:53 - and they’re still like, you’ve got to give us some seed money. You’ve got to give us something so we can start faster, and of course SALT doesn’t do that because all that does is mitigate against what we’re trying to do, and developing, and six months go by - a year goes by - and you come back, and not only did the folks stop asking for something. They’re so excited about what’s happening in their community, and their homes, and in their villages where there was no hope, and now there is. Had things changed a lot? Physically not so much, but here it did change. In their hearts and minds there started to be a slow change. You know God could bring everybody to the faith.

God 06:37 - could remove poverty, but Genesis 3 is real. We live in a fallen world, and the needs are severe, so, Lord, help us to find a way to be able to be a blessing. For some reason God chose to work through men and women. It’s still a mystery in my mind why He did that. So based on your experience especially over there on the field, what is one story you encountered or a person you encountered that deeply impacted you? There’s many. I think you know just seeing God call men and women.

I still remember one time there was a man in his 70s, 07:22 - and he answered that call, and became a believer. There’s many stories like that, but I’ll share a recent experience a couple of years ago - you know the way the program works is usually the folks in my role try to visit each program once a year. Now some countries is more frequent than that, but in general we visit once a year. I still remember a few years ago I was working with the native SALT staff. A lot of times when we get together in November we reflect on what happened the past year, and talk about goals and vision for next year, and where we want to go, and what’s the Lord doing? What do you think? And we slowly try to develop a plan for the next year, and I had the opportunity to bring my daughter with me, and she’s fluent in the language.

She’s spent a number of years there teaching English, and 08:16 - I said to her - I said, would you come with me? What I’d like for you to do is talk to the women that are believers - these that were Muslims previously, and now they’re followers of Christ, or they were Hindus, and now they’re followers of Christ, and just ask them what’s it like? What’s life like in their village. And in southeast Asia if you ask a Christian what their testimony is? When did you become a follower? How did the Lord call you? Without fail you will hear, oh, four generations ago my great-great-grandfather became a Christian, and I’ve been a Christian - our family’s been a Christian - ever since, and that’s exactly what the Muslims say for Islam, and so on, and the Hindus the same way. I understand why they’re saying it, and then I’ll say, no, tell me about your personal relationship with the Lord. How did you become a believer? Oh, I’ve been a believer since birth. That’s usually what you hear. Now some of that is cultural disconnect, and them not understanding what I’m asking, but that’s what you hear.

When my daughter was with me here a few years ago, and we were busy in 09:27 - meetings, and she was sitting with - you know we have a vocational center there. They teach sewing, and some of these believers lead that course, and so they teach there, and so she’s sitting with them just talking to them one-on-one in a small group. So tell me about your life? Before you were a Muslim. Now you’re a follower of Christ. How is it in your daily life and in your community? And my daughter told me - she said, you could just see the joy on their face. It was just permeating through their whole being, and they would say things like, before I was in darkness, and today I have this joy and peace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and so just one example after the other where they took risks in their community to share it with their family - share the faith. They’re just so full of the faith.

It just bubbles out of them 10:26 - to their neighbors, and co-workers, and family members, and I was like, they put the Anabaptist churches in America to shame in outreach as we call it, or reaching out to the lost around us. These folks while they were in a southeast Asian country they didn’t know that professing Christianity of southeast Asia says, well four generations ago my great-grandfather became a believer. They didn’t know any of that. They just said what happened. What the Lord Jesus Christ did in their own life, and that’s a powerful testimony of what Jesus Christ does to all believers that come to the faith whether it’s somebody in our own circles or one of our family members - whatever the case may be. So, right on the heels of that, what do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned from being involved in this work? Tell a story. This past January - I’ve been making a lot of trips to Asia the last handful of years, and I’d be gone, and gone, and gone, and finally I told my wife - I said, why don’t we just take this winter, and go to Asia, and visit all the countries, and then we come home, and that’s exactly what we did.

We visited Indonesia, Cambodia 11:41 - in the north and south in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, and then Myanmar, and then India, and then Bangladesh. Obviously some programs I’m pretty close to, and I know them better than others, but in the middle of all of that, you just hear personal stories of what God is doing in the lives of men and women. Those that aren’t believers that He’s calling, and those that are believers, and about halfway through that trip, I said to Anna Mae, God is doing things all over the world like this. I know this little snippet in this one country, and all of a sudden I was like, are we even making a difference? So somehow we have to find the middle of those pressure points of recognizing how mighty a God we serve, and what He’s doing in ways way beyond the SALT Program - way beyond our efforts - our feeble efforts - and yet still being willing to be faithful right where God has called us. So if there was one thing you could leave with our audience as we close out this episode - maybe a way they can get involved or food for thought maybe as they listen to this - what would you say? I would say this: I believe the Anabaptist community of America has this view that to be a missionary we need to get on an airplane, and I believe that’s a very wrong view. I believe it includes that.

Absolutely, and I’ve probably spent more time on airplanes than most. I believe it includes that, but please look at the resources the Anabaptist community has in North America. Are we using those resources? And look at how small the resources are of Anabaptist missions comparatively speaking, and as you think about America today - America is becoming an unchurched country. Young people don’t know who Jesus Christ is. Many people are facing severe poverty, and needs in this country, so if I would say one thing, if you think about the SALT Program, please pray for the indigenous staff in every country because that is where the power is for them to share with their own through the Lord Jesus Christ, but what about us? We have a role to play, but it’s this small. What about right where we live? If my neighbors have a problem.

Do I live my life in such a way that they’ll reach out to me? Do I 14:20 - need something from my neighbors, and that’s been the vision of the Salt and Light Program is to give a tool for people that are seriously interested in reaching out to their co-workers, their neighbors, and those around them, and be able to share the gospel - put it into shoe leather as intentionally in our own communities as we tend to do overseas or in our mission work. Wow. That’s a powerful way to leave this episode. Thank you so much for sharing, and sharing those stories. It’s been a blessing, and may God help us be faithful. Amen. .