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1 
 

 

Christian Ideas of Development: 

Understanding the current theories, networks, 

and priorities of Accord Organizations 
 

Stephen Offutt and Amy Reynolds 

 

 
We examine the ways that Accord organizations cultivate their identities and engage as Christian 

development actors. Based on a survey of leaders in forty-four Accord organizations and interviews 

with leaders in twenty-one, we find that leaders claim the faith identities of their organizations as 

central. At a theoretical level, most organizations generally rely on evangelical thought and practice in 

thinking about poverty and development, even as they also consult mainstream understandings of 

development. There are still some questions and tensions surrounding transformational development 

that confront many of these organizations in practice. At the network level, we find that church 

partnerships are the most central partnerships for many organizations, and we propose a typology for 

how such partnerships are employed, arguing that simply noting the shared vision of church 

partnerships might ignore important differences among strategies. Finally, we argue that at the 

organizational level, more attention should be paid to power dynamics and training, because a focus 

on external programming often may not reflect internal decisions within an organization.   

 

 

 
The Accord Network is a faith-based umbrella 

group. Its “Principles of Excellence” state that “Our 

Christian faith is at the center of our identity, motive 

and manner of being” (Principles…, n.d.). There are 

many umbrella groups for international development 

actors: Accord’s distinctive is based on the level of 

intentionality with which it pursues its faith commitment 

and the particular type of faith to which it adheres.  

This should mean that faith matters in the way 

Accord member organizations work. But how, exactly? 

We focus on three research questions within this broad 

area of inquiry: First, how do Accord members 

conceptualize development? Second, how do religious 

commitments shape the partnerships (and tensions in 

partnerships) that Accord members have? Third, how 

do faith identity and a focus on transformation impact 

organizational priorities and power dynamics within 

and among organizations? 

We argue that Accord member organizations 

articulate a bricolage of ideas, beliefs, and priorities. 

They are strongly influenced by Christian development 

ideas and partners, but they also draw on intellectual 

resources and participate in networks from the broader 

international development community. The integration 

of these ideas is not always seamless, leading to tensions 

and contradictions that require further research and 

discussion. In each of our research areas we thus 

describe the ways Christian development leaders 

currently talk about these themes and then provide 

questions around which further research and discussion 

would be helpful.  

 

Short History of the Christian Development 

Sector 
 

Religious actors have long been an integral part of 

the development sector. Evangelicals helped create 

U.S. international humanitarianism at the turn of the 

20
th

 century (Curtis 2018). They were also early adapters 

to the new way that the relief and development sector 

was organized in the post-World War II Bretton 

Woods era. A new organizational form emerged at this 

time: the non-government organization (NGO). World 

Relief, founded in 1944, and World Vision, founded in 

1950, were early examples of what has become one of 

the most prolific organizational forms in history 

(Reynolds and Offutt 2014, McCleary 2009). Since the 

emergence of the development NGO sector, faith-

based (mostly Christian) actors have represented 

between one-third to one-half of the sector (McClearly 

2009).  

A distinctively evangelical approach to 

development slowly began to emerge in the 1970s. The 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

2 
 

integral mission paradigm that was developing in Latin 

America served in many ways to help shape the 

conversation from which the transformation paradigm 

would emerge. Key moments in this global 

conversation included the 1974 Lausanne Congress on 

World Evangelization and the 1983 conference at 

Wheaton convened by the World Evangelical 

Fellowship. Authors like David Bosch, Bryant Myers, 

Rene Padilla, Vinay Samuel, John Stott, and Chris 

Sugden were influential in its development (Tizon 

2008).  

It was Bryant Myers who most completely 

articulated the transformation paradigm used by 

development agencies in his seminal work, Walking 

with the Poor (1999). The paradigm asserts that poverty 

is not primarily material, but rather relational. In other 

words, broken relationships constitute poverty. 

Relationships are broken in four different areas: 

between God and humans, between people or groups 

of people, between the person and the perception the 

person has of him or herself, and between people and 

God’s creation. Because poverty is understood in this 

way, Myers defines development as those activities that 

restore such relationships and help communities move 

toward a state of shalom. One aspect of this relational 

perspective on poverty and development is the 

importance of working with local churches to 

implement development activities. Together, these 

components make up the core of the transformation 

paradigm. 

A more recent and different discourse about 

religion and development has emerged in the secular or 

mainstream academy. In 2000, Kurt VerBeek argued 

that “development literature and development practices 

have systematically avoided the topic of spirituality” 

(VerBeek 2000, 31). Ideals such as the separation of 

church and state and the assumption that religion was 

on the wane in modern and modernizing societies 

caused many to assume religion was simply not relevant 

to poverty alleviation initiatives, and thus not worthy of 

scholarly attention.  

But these views have given way to the empirical 

reality that religion keeps showing up in development 

contexts. Researchers have noticed, and they are 

producing a new wave of scholarship that engages 

theoretical questions of how Christianity intersects with 

modernity in Africa (Gifford 2016), practical questions 

about religion’s role in specific development 

interventions such as microfinance (Manzur, Meisami, 

and Roayaee 2013), and political questions about power 

dynamics between donors in the North and program 

implementers in the South (Burchardt 2013). 

Researchers have also focused attention on what aspects 

of religion to consider, with studies examining how 

everyday religious practices like sexual ethics 

(Trinitapoli and Wienreb 2012) and prayer (Probasco 

2016) aid or constrain human flourishing initiatives. In 

the midst of such a dynamic and growing discourse, 

DeTemple’s (2013) call to think about development as 

a religious project itself is particularly prescient. 

Alongside the academic research, the international 

development sector has also engaged religious actors 

more seriously in the 21
st

 century. One approach has 

been to create offices dedicated to religion within 

government and multilateral organizations, such as 

USAID’s Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives, 

the World Bank’s Faith Initiative, and the UN’s Inter-

Agency Task Force on Religion and Development 

(Offutt, Probasco and Vaidyanathan 2016). Another 

approach has been to commission large studies on 

religion. DFID, the UK’s official agency for 

international development, issued a major grant for a 

multi-year study on religion and sustainable 

development. They partnered with leading universities 

and scholars (see Rakodi 2011 as an example of 

scholarship produced). The World Bank has hired 

scholars to write books on religion and development in-

house (for example: Marshall and Keough 2004; 

Marshall and van Saanenn 2007). These initiatives have 

helped change institutional thinking about religion 

within development circles. 

 

Organizational Realities 
 

A subset of scholarship on religion and 

development has engaged the questions that are most 

relevant to our study. How, for example, does faith 

shape an organization’s identity? How does faith shape 

its networks? In what sense is faith present in an 

organization’s values and mission? Scholarship around 

such questions indicates a wide range of what it means 

for development actors to be faith-based. Some 

scholarship has highlighted the ways that faith-based 

and non-sectarian development NGOs operate in 

similar ways, noting how programming may be similar 

(Jeavons 2004) or the ways religion is embedded in both 

(Schnable 2016). Other scholarship has shown that 

explicitly faith-based organizations differ from each 

other in very important ways. Reynolds and Winship 

(2005), for example, argue that there is a critical 

difference between faith-based programs and faith-

infused programs, while Clarke (2007) lays out a five-

fold classification of FBOs. Straightforward inquiries 

have thus unveiled the complexity and variation in the 

ways that faith shows up in development organizations 

and initiatives.  

Case studies of Christian development actors have 

provided further insights into how organizations 

manage their faith identity. Based on her in-depth look 

at Tearfund UK, Freeman (2018) argues that there is a 

difference between “Christians doing development” 

and “doing Christian development.” She shows that in 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

3 
 

the 1970s Tearfund was motivated by faith to address 

poverty, but used secular approaches in their work. But 

over the course of two decades, Tearfund began to base 

their programs, strategies, and goals on the emerging 

transformation paradigm. Such changes created greater 

distinctions between Tearfund UK and its secular 

counterparts. In another case study, King (2019) 

examines the ways that World Vision International 

(WVI) has played a key role in shaping the field of 

Christian development and even the evangelical 

movement around the world. Although internal 

discussions about strategies and implementation are 

constant, a synthesis of poverty alleviation and local 

church strengthening is central to the group’s identity.  

Behind such organizational analyses are more 

philosophical questions about how faith and 

development are connected. Erica Bornstein (2005) 

argues that “faith becomes the conceptual fuel for the 

prospect of change,” and “inspires a specific form of 

charitable giving with the promise of generating lasting 

material improvements in people’s lives” (2005, 7-8). 

Deneulin and Bano argue further that religion not only 

gives meaning to development, but actually defines what 

development means for people of faith. They state that  

 

development is what adherents to a 

religion do because of who they are and 

what they believe in. The engagement of 

religious communities in development 

activities derives from their core beliefs 

and teachings. It is not easy to separate 

the development activities (schools, 

hospitals, political protests, and so on) 

from the religious activities (such as 

prayer and worship) (2009, 5). 

 

In sum, religion and development organically inhabit 

the same spaces, and are constituted in part by the same 

activities. 

Taken as a whole, the current literature has made 

significant inroads into understanding the intersections 

and overlapping nature of faith and development. But 

important questions remain. Little is known about how 

communities of FBOs share beliefs, values, and 

resources. Nor has much been written on the decisions 

FBOs make and the resources they use to sustain their 

faith identity. We contribute to this literature by 

analyzing the Accord Network, which currently has a 

membership of one hundred Christian (mostly 

                                                        
1 The eight principles are summarized as follows: (1) Our Christian faith is at the center of our identity, motive and manner of 

being. (2) We acknowledge the reality and significance of the spiritual realm. (3) The Church is central. (4) Transformational 

practices start with us. (5) We recognize the whole system of poverty. (6) In our relationship journey with the church our local 

partners, and the community, we enter as guests, co-labor as partners, and continue as friends. (7) We support local communities 

and churches in measuring all that matters. (8) We tell the story with integrity.  
2

 The Accord Network’s membership list can be found here: https://www.accordnetwork.org/member-list 

evangelical) organizations. We find (1) that their 

Christian identities are central to these actors, even as 

several points of tension and questions remain, and (2) 

that more work needs to be done to fully understand 

what this all means and how to integrate it into the daily 

work of these organizations. 

 

Methodology 
 

Defining Accord 
 

This study focuses on organizations that are 

members of Accord or who participate in Accord 

Research Network meetings. The Accord Network, 

according to its website (www.accordnetwork.org), 

intends to “create a community of Christ-centered 

organizations.” It requires members to accept either the 

Apostle’s Creed or the statement of faith of the National 

Association of Evangelicals, both of which are 

comprised of basic beliefs in Christian orthodoxy. 

Accord also asks members to affirm the eight 

“Principles of Excellence in Integral Mission,” which 

were developed within Accord (“Principles …” n.d.).
1

 

At the time of this survey (2017), Accord had about 

85 member and associate member organizations. As of 

July 2019, Accord had 100 member and associate 

members.
2

 The network began in the 1970s with just a 

dozen partner agencies. Current membership includes 

non-profit development organizations as well as other 

types of ministries, institutes of higher education, and 

research groups. Accord’s membership remains open 

and fluid, and many members are those who have 

joined in the past decade. 

 

Survey Methods 
 

This study emerged from conversations in the 

Accord Research Alliance. We recognized that we did 

not have data about the research needs of Accord 

member organizations or how academics and other 

researchers could best serve them. To our knowledge, 

no previous study of this sort existed. We knew that 

organizations chose to become members of the Accord 

Network because of its Christ-centered orientation, and 

we suspected that faith would have a role in defining the 

nature and type of research needed. But beyond our 

own personal observations, we knew little else. 

We decided on a mixed methods approach, 

beginning with a survey, which was followed by open 

https://www.accordnetwork.org/member-list


Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

4 
 

ended phone interviews. To determine what topics 

were most worth pursuing, Offutt conducted a series of 

conference calls with leaders from Accord member 

organizations. With the themes that emerged from 

these calls, a team of Accord Research Network actors 

crafted survey questions. The survey was housed at 

Wheaton College and administered through Qualtrics; 

responses were recorded between July and September 

2017. 

The survey had five major sections. The first 

section asked for details on the organization; where they 

worked, the types of programs they did, the size of their 

budget, and their denominational identity. The second 

section asked about non-sectarian partnerships and 

program databases that might be of use to members. 

The third and fourth sections, not discussed in this 

paper, dealt with monitoring and evaluation and other 

research practices. The fifth section inquired about 

development theories, the integration of faith and 

development, work with churches, and measuring 

spiritual metrics. The final section requested 

information about organizational priorities and 

programs for training personnel.  

The survey targeted leaders in organizations and/or 

people who served in research departments. The 

survey went out to all members of the Accord Network 

in 2017. Eight organizations that were not Accord 

members at that time, but that had participated in the 

Accord Research Alliance between 2015-2017, were 

also invited to participate. Fifty-five people responded 

to our survey. We dropped four cases because they 

were incomplete entries. This left us with fifty-one cases 

to analyze, representing forty-four distinct 

organizations, thirty-nine of which were Accord 

members; five of these came from the pool of eight 

Accord participant organizations. Sixteen respondents 

reported being the CEO or President of their 

organization. Ten respondents reported being either a 

Vice President or on the senior leadership team. Eleven 

respondents reported that they were either the leader of 

the organization’s research team or a research analyst. 

Seven respondents fell into other categories, including 

being managers or directors of other departments. We 

used responses of the person with the highest position 

in the organization for analysis when more than one 

respondent existed for an organization. The data was 

uploaded to STATA and SPSS, where it was cleaned, 

coded, and analyzed. 

At the end of the survey we asked respondents if 

they would be open to a follow-up phone interview. 

Twenty-seven people agreed to do this. We were able 

to contact and interview twenty-one. The themes of the 

phone interview were the same as those on the survey, 

                                                        
3

 This set of ninety-five organizations are the current Accord members absent the colleges/universities that are members of Accord. 

It also does not include our sample of invited organizations. 

but we used this opportunity to ask some exploratory 

questions as well.  

Phone interviews were conducted from 

September-December 2017. Interviews usually ran 45-

60 minutes, although a few were roughly thirty minutes. 

The interviews were recorded and transcribed. They 

were then uploaded to Atlas.ti, a qualitative data 

software package, where they were coded and analyzed. 

 
Data 
 

Those who responded to the Accord Research 

Network survey appear similar to the larger Accord 

sample. Table 1 compares the budget of our 

respondents to those who are currently (as of 2019) 

members of the Accord organization. In both our 

sample and the larger Accord membership, there is a 

lot of variation in budget. Our sample is nonetheless 

comparable to the broader Accord membership in this 

regard. 

 

 Accord – 

current 

members
3

 

Accord 

study 

sample 

Expenses / Budgets   

  Under $1 million 24.2% 18.2% 

  $1 million-$5 million 31.6% 31.8% 

  $5 million-$25 million 13.7% 13.6% 

  Over $25 million 15.8% 18.2% 

  Part of denomination  

  or parent organization  

7.4% 9.8% 

   Not reported 7.4% 2.3% 

Total N 95 44 

Table 1: Budget Size of Accord Members and  

Survey Participants 

 

Table 2 presents an overview of the types of 

development programming in which survey 

respondents are engaged. About half of the 

organizations are involved in church 

empowerment/biblical training, economic 

development and microfinance, medical/health issues, 

disaster response, agriculture, and sanitation. By 

contrast, advocacy work stands out as something in 

which only a small fraction (or less than 20%) of 

organizations engage. Many are engaged in multiple 

types of activity. Organizations also operate in countries 

around the world, with most of their activity occurring 

in the minority world/Global South.  

 

 

 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

5 
 

 

Areas of Activity Percentage 

   Economic development  56.8% 

   Medical/Health 54.5% 

   Church empowerment 52.3% 

   Education 50% 

   Agriculture 45.5% 

  

   WASH 45.5% 

   Relief/Disaster 43.2% 

   Child Development 43.2% 

   Biblical training 31.8% 

   Political Advocacy 18.2% 

   Immigration/Refugees 11.4% 

Regional Engagement  

   Sub Saharan Africa 86% 

   Asia 68% 

   Latin America 59% 

   North America 52% 

   North Africa/Middle East 41% 

   Europe 32% 

Non-denominational Identity 75% 

Total N 44 

Table 2: Programming/Activity of Accord Members 

 

 

Conceptualizing Development 
 

The Dominance of the Transformation Paradigm 
 

A foundational question of this study was: How do 

Accord members think about and define development? 

The transformation paradigm is certainly relevant, but 

no study has been done that shows how widespread 

these ideas have become within Accord or among 

evangelical development organizations more generally. 

Nor is any research available, outside a few well-

chronicled organizations, regarding how seriously the 

paradigm is taken by those who do know about it.  

We thus began our study by asking: “How 

important is the integration of faith and development to 

your organization?” All respondents indicated it was 

important, with 78% saying it was very important (or 

evaluating it as a five out of five). Similarly, when 

respondents were asked if program efforts related to 

faith enhance or detract from efforts to reach poverty 

related outcomes, 80% of organizations indicated 

efforts were generally positive, and the remaining 20% 

said they were both positive and negative. This suggests 

that there are high levels of agreement that faith is 

important to what Accord organizations do, and that 

without faith integration, they would be less effective at 

fighting poverty. 

Survey respondents think that what they do is 

different than what mainstream development 

organizations do. They conscientiously rely on 

Christian resources – particularly the transformation 

paradigm – to formulate their development approach. 

This became clear when 68% of respondents listed 

either Walking with the Poor or Steve Corbett and 

Brian Fikkert’s book, When Helping Hurts (2009), as 

two books that influenced their own views on 

development. When Helping Hurts summarizes the 

transformational development paradigm articulated in 

Walking with the Poor, makes it accessible to a wider 

audience, and provides new ideas for its application. 

For comparison, we analyzed combinations of all other 

authors that were mentioned, secular or Christian. No 

other combination of authors could be created that was 

cited by more than 18% of respondents. The 

transformational paradigm is the unrivaled framing of 

Christian development for NGO leaders participating 

in this survey. One typical respondent noted, “We look 

at [poverty] from a pretty relational aspect… disconnects 

in relationships with God, with self, with others, with the 

community.” Myers’ work was the only theologically 

driven definition of poverty referenced in our data. 

But our respondents did reference economic and 

other non-theological definitions of poverty. They often 

paired such mainstream ideas with the poverty-as-

broken relationships concept. Some articulated poverty 

as lack of access to education or job opportunities. 

Others articulated a structural understanding of 

poverty, arguing that people are poor because they are 

oppressed by the powerful. Some respondents with 

medical backgrounds argued that diseases are both 

causes and consequences of poverty. Respondents who 

used these kinds of definitions never explicitly rejected 

Myers’ poverty-as-broken-relationships position. Nor 

did respondents try to synthesize these mainstream 

ideas with Myers’ thesis. Rather, respondents tended to 

move fluidly in and out of these different ideas of 

poverty.  

These same organizations noted too that they often 

implement technical program components in the same 

way that non-Christian organizations implement them. 

Respondents of the survey and interviews reported 

trying to follow sector-wide best practices in medical 

interventions, WASH programs, MFI initiatives, and 

educational components. Sometimes respondents 

suggested they might even improve on industry wide 

best practices. As one interview respondent stated, “…as 

for the methodology [that we use]… it is very 

transferable to somebody who would not profess faith, 

or would profess a different faith. We’d gladly train a 

non-Christian organization in the use of our tools.” 

There was a strong sense that faith-based organizations 

benefited from information-sharing in technical areas 

with mainstream organizations, and that faith-based 

organizations should share as well as receive learnings 

in these areas. 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

6 
 

 

Connecting Spiritual and Material Poverty  

 

Nearly every author who has contributed to the 

transformation paradigm, both in Christian 

development and in mission circles, assumes that 

spiritual and material development can and should 

happen together. But other streams of literature assume 

an inverse relationship between the two. To find out 

how our respondents perceived this relationship, we 

asked a series of questions about this theme. 

Respondents were first asked, “Do you think that those 

who have a conversion experience will be more likely 
to see improvement in poverty or development 

indicators as well?” 

We received a wide variety of answers. One leader 

responded simply and affirmatively: “Absolutely. Yes.” 

Another responded almost as strongly in the negative: 

“Not particularly.” Most, though, wanted to nuance 

their answers. One respondent stated that “I can answer 

it only in a sense of forty years of ministry in seeing very 

often how as people move towards Christ in 

relationship with him. I just notice, but I don't know 

statistically what it means, but it does seem like people's 

lives improve in significant ways...” This response was 

counterbalanced by a fourth respondent who said, “I 

believe that spiritual experiences do [help alleviate 

poverty, but] conversion specifically -- to an 

understanding of Christian doctrine and 

acknowledgement of a Christian doctrine-- no.” In this 

the respondent affirmed the power of religion generally 

to improve material well-being, but did not want to 

single out Christianity as having a unique impact in this 

regard. 

To pursue this line of thought beyond the point of 

conversion, we asked: “Do you have the sense that over 
time the Christians in a given community will come to 

experience less poverty on average than non-Christians 

in a given community?” This hypothesis has backing 

from social science theory and research. Scholars as far 

back as Max Weber and H. Richard Niebuhr note that 

“ascetic sects” move up the social ladder over the 

course of time. More recent scholarship argues that this 

dynamic holds for evangelical communities in Latin 

America and elsewhere. We wanted to know whether 

our respondents perceived this to be a dynamic in their 

development initiatives. 

The leaders we talked with held different 

perspectives on these issues. Some responded 

negatively or seemed to be agnostic. As one respondent 

put it, “what is amazing about grace is that God works 

through all people. All of his creatures are created in 

his image. God created them as creative and talented. 

All of them. So I don't see that distinction.” Other 

respondents were reluctant to take a position on this 

question, as one said, “Aaaahhh, that’s a really good 

question… I don’t think I could actually say definitively 

one way or the other.” It is nonetheless worth noting 

that none who shared these sentiments opposed a faith-

based approach to development. They simply 

understood its effects differently. 

Respondents who said that Christians were likely 

to experience less poverty over time often provided 

qualifications. One respondent stated that “I think… 

having a relationship with God… can unlock so many 

doors of poverty that are holding people back. But 

yeah, I think poverty is so multidimensional, I think 

that’s hard to say.” Another responded with “Okay, 

defining poverty … so typically income, education, 

those are some of the outcomes we're talking about. …. 

So just a conversion experience maybe not, but 

churches that understand integral mission and are 

carrying that out, then I would say yes.” This 

respondent believed that a spiritually mature and 

properly functioning community might experience this 

kind of uplift, while people who make an initial 

commitment to Christ, but whose lives do not 

subsequently change, would not likely be affected in the 

same way. 

Some respondents perceived a diffusion effect in 

Christianity’s positive impact on poverty. One 

respondent said that “it’s likely [that over time 

Christians will experience less poverty], but I also think 

that changes in attitudes are in some ways getting caught 

by the whole community.” Another respondent 

sounded a similar sentiment, saying that “in our 

experience… the level of poverty of the whole 

community changes together,” an idea that has support 

from the work on religion in the 1960s by Talcott 

Parsons, as well as from the growing body of literature 

about diffusion theory.  

The final question we posed in this series 

addressed a commonly held belief that as people 

become less poor, they also become less religious. We 

wondered if leaders of Accord held this perspective, 

and if so, whether this created any tension with regard 

to how they viewed the long-term spiritual impact of 

successful poverty alleviation programs. 

The responses we received to this question tilted 

strongly in the direction of believing that there is an 

inverse relationship between material wealth and 

spiritual dynamism. The observations were provided at 

different levels. One respondent said that “I just have a 

notion from history that as societies gain economically 

they become more secular.” Corresponding 

observations about what happens at a local and 

individual level included the comment that “sometimes 

the more resources somebody has, the lower their 

connection [to God] and spiritual development is.” A 

third respondent saw the tension in the question for the 

transformation paradigm: “I want to say maybe [people 

become] more religious [when they become less poor], 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

7 
 

but I don't believe that. Poverty has been alleviated in 

some of the places we worked specifically and religiosity 

has actually gone down.” 

A few respondents expressed a minority view on 

this question, believing either that spiritual depth could 

increase as material wealth increases or, more modestly, 

that increased poverty does not mean increased 

spiritual health. One person who saw spiritual and 

material advance moving together referred to it is as “a 

chicken and egg type of thing.” Another said, “I could 

see both. I can see in a more western environment, as 

prosperity goes up, perhaps attributing it to some sort 

of spiritual influence.” Others focused on the 

implications of saying poverty improves our spiritual 

lives. One said flatly that “if people are living in need 

and missing out on an education, there's no romantic 

spiritual wonder in that,” while another said, “I don't 

think the idea is that we need to live in poverty in order 

to experience God more.” Poverty in this perspective, 

is certainly not necessary, and may even hinder, 

spiritual growth. 

 

Poverty and Systemic Change 

 

The international development community is 

increasingly aware that systemic change and political 

advocacy are needed to deal with the complex roots of 

poverty. Christian development organizations are part 

of this broader awareness (Reynolds and Offutt 2014), 

but this new emphasis on advocacy emerged after the 

transformation paradigm had already become 

established. Recent efforts to help Christian 

development organizations think about advocacy in the 

context of transformational development exist (Offutt 

et al. 2016), but the most recognized components of 

Christian development theory still do not emphasize 

faith-based political advocacy as an effective tool. 

Advocacy is interestingly situated within Accord. 

Less than 20% of Accord organizations indicate that 

they do advocacy—by far the lowest type of 

programming that we asked about, and this in spite of 

the fact that Accord highlights advocacy work in its fifth 

Principle of Excellence. This may be because 

organizations, especially the smaller ones, do not feel 

sufficiently empowered to do effective advocacy. One 

of the most effective ways to increase leverage in 

advocacy is to partner with others. In the interviews, we 

asked leaders whose organizations are not currently 

involved in advocacy if they would participate in 

collaborative advocacy efforts in which other Christian 

organizations are taking the lead. Some expressed 

concern about unduly stretching resources or personnel 

and others qualified their answers by saying it was 

contingent on the issue, but all of them answered 

affirmatively. Some did so enthusiastically, such as one 

respondent who said, “Oh, absolutely!”  

 

Questions for further discussion and research 

 

A: The connections between reducing poverty and 

increasing spiritual well-being are messy and poorly 

understood, in spite of the many claims of 

transformational development scholars and 

practitioners that they complement each other. How 

should Christian development take account of this 

reality? 

    

B: While transformational development is a central 

paradigm used to combat poverty, what theories are 

employed to make sense of wealth? That is, while 

poverty is viewed as a hindrance to flourishing, how 

might Christian organizations more adequately 

theorize about wealth and abundance?  

 

C: We note that none of our discussions with leaders 

surfaced issues of inequality. We also did not 

directly ask about this issue. But if relationships are 

central to understandings of development, how 

might organizations think about the problem of 

inequality (and not just the problem of poverty)? 

How might this be captured in program evaluations 

and designs, for example? 

 

D: What role does advocacy play in theories of 

development change? How do organizations think 

about systemic and structural issues surrounding 

poverty and exclusion, and how do they respond? 

 

 

The Partners and Collaborators of Christian 

Development Actors 
 

Creating community and facilitating networks has 

always been the central purpose of the Accord 

Network. But we know of no formal studies with 

respect to how and with whom Accord members make 

connections. A deeper understanding of Accord 

member networks is important because faith plays a 

role in building bridges and boundaries within and 

around communities.  

This study shows that Accord member 

organizations’ partners are many and diverse. Some 

partner with Christian organizations; others with state or 

non-sectarian actors. By far the most common 

partnership for Accord members is with churches. We 

thus pay special attention to them in this report. Many 

Accord members also choose to present themselves as 

faith-based actors within the larger international 

development sector. This sometimes requires them to 

position their faith differently than they do in explicitly 

Christian networks. Both types of networks carry 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

8 
 

implications for the kind of research Accord members 

need. 

 

Networks In and Beyond Christian Development 

 

Figure 1 highlights some of the more common places 

where Accord members find partners in the 

development sector and highlights their diversity.
4

 

About two thirds of survey respondents reported 

coordinating or collaborating with Accord sometimes, 

usually, or always. The United Nations has been a 

partner to over half of the organizations.
5

 Further, one 

third of all organizations report coordinating activities 

with the Joint Learning Initiative for Faith and Local 

Communities (JLI) at least sometimes, which on its 

website describes itself as an “international 

collaboration on evidence for faith groups’ role and 

contributions to local community health and wellbeing 

and ending poverty” (https://jliflc.com). 

 

 
Figure 1: Organizations with which Members 

Coordinate or Have Coordinated 

 

Most, but not all, leaders of Accord organizations 

appear willing to enter interfaith settings, though some 

organizations do not see the point of interfaith 

partnerships. As one leader said, “...because we have 

such a holistic approach, it would make that type of 

partnership rather difficult.” Other leaders did not 

report having any interfaith partners, but were not 

                                                        
4

 NGOs that responded as having coordinated their activities with an organization sometimes, usually, or always are contrasted here 

with those reporting never having coordinated with one of these four groups.  
5

 Evangelicals in other parts of society often report feeling embattled or marginalized by mainstream society. But our respondents 

reported the opposite, as was summed up by this colorful comment: “I am not super aware of any people honestly that pooh pooh 

Christian development. I know there are skeptics, but I am trying to think of any who are actually against integrating religion into 

development. I don’t know of anyone.” If organizations do not perceive themselves to be marginalized, diverse partnerships can be 

more easily established. 

 

against it. Said one respondent: “So I think we wouldn't 

be against doing that. I'm not sure that it has occurred.” 

Some of those that do have interfaith interactions 

referred to interfaith tables they participated in, which 

were often set up by local or national governments. One 

leader put it this way: “some officials might have an 

interfaith commission or interfaith leaders come 

together. Regularly those are things that we try to get 

engaged with.” Finally, some organizations reported 

integrating people of other faiths into their 

programming. As one leader said, “if the faith leader is 

engaged and can be an influencer of thinking, then why 

not engage the faith leader that community is most 

likely to listen to, which will be a leader of whatever 

religion the community is?” In all of the responses we 

received, it was clear that national or cultural context 

was one of the determining factors in how programs 

approached this issue. 

In terms of work with secular or non-faith actors, 

as Figure 1 reveals, at least half of the respondents noted 

that they have worked with USAID and the UN. Still, 

only 18% reported being members of InterAction, 

which is the largest US-based mainstream umbrella 

organization for international development nonprofits. 

More discussion might help ascertain why this is the 

case – for example, InterAction does have steep dues. 

In spite of this, interviews suggest there are benefits to 

being part of this network. As one leader said: “I am 

going to learn from some of the best non-faith-based 

orgs out there who are doing amazing work... So I have 

no problem whatsoever learning from the amazing 

work they have done outside of faith-based orgs.” In 

sum, non-faith-based agencies appear to have legitimacy 

among many Accord member organizations. Learning 

about best practices and funding opportunities were 

cited as the most frequent motivations for partnerships 

with such entities.  

 

Connecting with Churches in Development 
 

Leaders of Accord organizations clearly indicated 

that local churches are important players in community 

transformation. Our survey asked whether working with 

local churches adds value to or detracts from anti-

poverty efforts. Only two organizations recorded efforts 

as non-positive (one as neither positive nor negative, 

and one as slightly negative). 89% of all responding 

https://jliflc.com/


Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

9 
 

organizations suggested that local churches help poverty 

efforts at levels between 5/10 and 10/10. These 

responses indicate a strong belief and adherence to the 

transformational development message that good 

development is church-centered development. 

But there is great diversity among Accord 

organizations with respect to how to partner with local 

congregations. There are even different approaches 

within some organizations that vary strategies based on 

the context and capacity of local congregations. Data 

from our research uncovered five church partnership 

models; 1) church as sole implementer, 2) church as 

primary partner, 3) community as primary partner with 

the church in the mix, 4) partnerships with 

denominations or national church networks, and 5) 

church can be substituted by organizations of other 

religions. We discuss each of these below. 

 

Church as sole implementer: For some leaders, it was 

the church, not their organizations, that was the primary 

stakeholder and implementer of given projects. In these 

cases, the organization operated like a funding 

organization and a capacity building agency. To the 

extent that they are able, such organizations responded 

to churches and their plans rather than initiate project 

ideas. Said one respondent: “They are the ones who 

come up with the plan, they are the ones who submit 

the application.” A leader from another organization 

with a similar partnership strategy stated that “We don't 

do much implementation. The local church has full 

ownership of programs and we support them through 

raising their capacity for funding, doing strategic 

planning with them and connecting them to other 

[strategic partners].” A third leader stated that “we 

regard [the local church] as the implementer and we 

wouldn't do anything that is not with them or through 

them.” In some of these cases, for example, if a church 

wants to do a health-related or microfinance project, the 

organization provides technical support, but they make 

clear that they want to remain in that supporting role; 

they do not wish to drive the project. This approach to 

church partnership perhaps best embodies the ideals 

that many in the transformational development 

movement have, and which are consistent with the asset-

based community development ideas that are 

increasingly prominent in international community 

development. 

 

Church as primary partner: Not all organizations take 

such a hands-off approach. A second partnership 

model was one where the organization feels responsible 

for at least part of the project implementation. Some 

such models leaned in the direction of still working 

through the church, but with a stronger role for the 

organization. As one leader put it, “there is definitely a 

laying out of what each party is bringing to the table and 

the role of each of the partners in the partnership… 

[but] the goal is to make the Bride of Christ beautiful 

through the partnership to empower the local church.” 

Other such models leaned in the direction of the 

organization doing the project, but trying hard to allow 

local churches to influence the process, even from the 

very beginning. For example, one leader explained their 

entry into communities in this way: “We meet with 

[local churches] before we start to actually mobilize a 

community around a project... and try to align our 

mission with what the church is already doing in that 

place.” A third partnership model was to have the 

organization empower churches to run parallel 

programs. Said one respondent: “Usually we 

implement our things, we help equip churches to 

implement things… similar goals, but it wouldn't be like 

they're implementing our projects on our behalf.” In 

these examples, both the church and the organization play 

major roles in project implementation, even as roles, 

responsibilities, and decision-making power shift 

between actors from case to case. 

 

Community as primary partner with the church in the 

mix: A third type of collaboration was one in which 

organizations partnered with congregations, but only 

insomuch as congregations participated in the 

organization’s broader process of engagement with the 

community. For example, an organization may form a 

community board and invite a local pastor or pastors to 

sit on the board. But the board, not the church, is 

viewed as the primary point of community interface for 

the organization. In other cases, organizations ask local 

churches to serve as advisors to projects that the 

organization runs in and with the community. A third 

approach along these lines is to encourage churches 

and their members to simply participate in 

development projects. One leader stated that “Our staff 

will typically do most of the training in the community 

and the local church will just be part of those trainings, 

so it won't be exclusively the church body.” This general 

approach might best be summed up as community-

based development as opposed to church-based 

development, but with resources dedicated to ensuring 

that local churches are on board. 

 

Partnerships with denominations or church networks: 

Some organizations chose to connect with church 

bodies at regional or national levels. For example, one 

respondent said that his organization spends a lot of 

time “connecting with networks at the national level. 

[This is with either] evangelical alliances or council of 

churches or things like that, or sometimes a 

denomination.” This respondent also said that while his 

organization doesn’t always have a local congregational 

partner in a specific community, they will connect at a 

district level with inter-denominational groups. A 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

10 
 

second leader said his organization is able to scale up 

more effectively if the partnership is at the 

denominational level. His organization looks for 

denominations with a track record for addressing the 

types of issues that align with their programs. They then 

come alongside the denomination and provide financial 

support, expertise, and capacity building to accomplish 

specific shared objectives. Some organizations even 

create new multi-denominational church networks 

specifically for the purpose of partnering with clusters 

of churches rather than individual churches. The desire 

from organizations to sign MOUs or LOUs with larger 

entities often has to do with economies of scale; 

sometimes it also allows organizations to be free from 

the responsibility of nurturing congregational 

partnerships for specific local-level initiatives. 

 

Church can be substituted by organizations of other 

religions: Organizations that work where Christians are 

in a pluralistic context, or one where no Christian 

presence exists, reported working with organizations 

and leaders of other religions. This can look very 

different based on the different programs that 

organizations run. One leader explained that in 

majority Muslim contexts, their organization relies on 

Muslim leaders to distribute relief supplies. Another 

leader explained that they seek out representation from 

mosques when they put together a community 

committee for their projects. A third organization 

recognized the importance of religion in programming. 

They talked about spiritual nurture programs that are 

suited to the religious makeup of the communities in 

which they serve—in other words, they nurture the 

spiritual lives of people within the context of their own 

religions—they don’t try to make them Christians. The 

leader explained that “in [the] interfaith context [and in 

the] non-Christian context it might be a more general 

sense of spiritual nurture. And very often the best 

partners for that would be [non-Christian] religious 

communities.”  

To summarize, Accord members have a vast and 

diverse array of partners. Churches are by far the most 

common of these. Our sense is that the church 

partnership models currently in use make pragmatic 

sense, but we are not aware of any careful theological or 

missiological work that has been done to guide these 

ideas. We also see other important networks at play, 

and our survey shows them to be important sources of 

knowledge and best practices. In discussions of 

partnerships among Accord organizations, the 

following additional questions need more attention. 

 

 
 

 
 

Questions for further discussion and research 
 

A: Are church partnerships being used to reach 

program goals? If so, are those goals consistent with 

theories of change within organizations? 

 

B: What are the most relevant missiological and 

theological principles that relate to church 

partnerships? 

 

C: What kinds of best practices exist for working with 

interfaith and non-sectarian actors? In what 

circumstances might Accord organizations benefit 

most from the wisdom of such actors, or from 

coordinated action with them? 

 

The Organizational Priorities of the Christian 

Development Sector 

 

Research on nonprofits and effectiveness has 

found that a greater focus on diversity and staff care are 

important for missional success. But we know little 

about how Christian development organizations think 

about their own personnel structures and 

demographics.  

We asked respondents to rate on a scale of 1-10 

how much effort their organization focuses on a series 

of issues: racial inequality, cross-cultural training, 

empowering local and indigenous leadership, gender 

inequality, psychosocial care (e.g. trauma), religious 

conflict/diversity, and staff self-care. Of these, 

empowering local leaders was by far the highest value, 

with roughly 75% stating that it was very important 

(score of 8-10). The mean for empowering local leaders 

was 8.1. The next highest value was staff self-care, with 

30% of organizations rating it between an 8-10, and with 

a mean of 6.2. 

 

 
Figure 2: Different Organizational Priorities and Issues 

 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

11 
 

The mean scores for the other six priorities ranges from 

4.7 to 5.6, which is over a full standard deviation below 

the mean score of empowering leaders. These include 

diversity markers (board diversity, gender inequality, 

racial inequality, religious conflict and cross-cultural 

training), as well as psychosocial care.  

Previous research has found that Christian 

nonprofits struggle more than other peer organizations 

with having a diversity of leadership, and differences in 

gender equity are striking. Women’s representation 

within Accord NGOs worsens as budgets increase. 

Recent analysis of 2014-16 tax records for over fifty 

Christian development actors shows that board 

leadership is a particularly weak area for Christian 

organizations, with over half of organizations having 

boards with fewer than 20% women (and 11% with no 

women serving on the board). Further, this research 

also found that while 40% of InterAction members have 

women leading their organizations, it was 13% for 

Accord members. Previous research has shown that 

evangelical development actors, like most evangelical 

nonprofits, do about half as well as peer groups in the 

area of gender diversity (Reynolds 2014). 

Interview data from this study show a slightly 

different picture than the survey data. In the survey, 

board diversity, gender diversity, and racial/ethnic 

diversity were generally valued, but did not rise as 

important shared priorities for all Accord members. In 

the interviews, many respondents acknowledged 

problems created by gender inequality, noting that 

issues of gender and leadership can be magnified on the 

field and within church partnerships. A common 

problem on the field is that men in a community will 

not get involved in projects if the staff member leading 

it is a woman or if the community representative is a 

woman. This can aggravate an initial tendency, which 

several respondents noted, that in general it is more 

difficult to get men to participate in the first place. One 

respondent related that  

 

it has to be acknowledged that there are 

differences in the way that cultures perceive 

leadership and sometimes it's proven difficult for 

certain individuals to step in to do a project and 

maintain a sense of leadership and have that be 

fully supported and respected by the local 

church; particularly in my thinking of places I've 

worked in Central Africa where there is this 

barrier to get over about how they perceive 

women in leadership. 

 

Another respondent told a story of how some years ago 

her organization hired only women to lead a program 

under the auspices of a large local church, and then 

handed the program over to the church. Over the next 

several years, all of those originally-hired personnel 

were replaced by men. 

Some respondents saw pathways for women to 

participate in leadership. One noted that some African 

nations have national policies on gender balances for 

community-based organizations, and that this has 

helped a lot. Another respondent observed that 

although the church leaders they work with are male in 

one region, they have a strong female staff member 

there, and she seems to be highly respected and the 

leaders are responsive to her initiatives. Two other 

respondents reported that although in the minority, 

they have worked with pastors who are women in the 

field, and those have been fruitful partnerships. 

Challenges related to gender are thus reflected both in 

the home office and on the field. They are navigated 

with varying levels of success. 

Addressing psychosocial care and religious conflict 

received the most “not important” votes. This seems to 

imply that few organizations work in war torn regions, 

and especially those regions where war is created by 

religious conflict. We did not pursue these issues in our 

follow-up interviews. Why this is so and what it means 

for Christian development work could be important 

areas for future research, especially given the increasing 

concentration of poverty within fragile states. 

 

Need for faith-based training: We also asked a series of 

questions about personnel issues. Given the priority of 

Christian identity for these organizations, we asked 

survey respondents if their organizations provide 

personnel training in explicitly Christian development. 

62% of the organizations stated that they provide such 

training. Interview respondents helped us to see what 

that looked like. One respondent explained that in their 

orientation for new personnel, “Bryant Myers and 

others are introduced.” Another leader said that they 

have a book list for new employees, and conduct a 

weekly book study with titles such as Walking with the 
Poor, When Helping Hurts, and Mission Drift by 

Greer, Horst, and Haggard (2014). A third leader 

explained that while their trainings include Christian 

authors, they want their employees to read more 

broadly. As this leader said, “We also don’t want to be 

insulated from the world and what is happening around 

us.” 

For some smaller and younger organizations that 

did not provide training in Christian development, this 

is an aspiration for the future. The leader of one such 

NGO stated that 

   

we’re getting our heads around making sure our 

staff remains healthy first, and then I think being 

able to make sure your staff is more educated. 

Each of these things for staff care… are capacity 

issues, you need to have enough money to have 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

12 
 

enough staff, that your staff can stay healthy. And 

then you have to have enough more money to 

hire enough staff so people can take the time that 

they need to take on necessary learning. So, it’s a 

growth and capacity thing for small organizations 

like ours.  

 

The survey also noted that many organizations made 

use of resources to assist with training in Christian 

development. Over 84% said that a certificate from a 

Christian college or seminary would be (or has been) 

useful in this regard—with an equal divide among those 

who have used such programs and who would use such 

programs. Likewise, conferences (like Accord) and 

Christian education in Christian colleges are two 

resources that a majority of organizations reported as 

being useful for them in their training to date. 

 

Questions for further discussion and research 

 

A: What hinders organizations from truly empowering 

local leaders (and how might power be adjusted, 

shared, or handed over)? This a priority for many 

Accord organizations, but it does not always happen 

on the ground as desired. 

 

B: Is enough attention given to organizational structures 

and organizational dynamics? Are the same 

standards in their work regarding attention to power 

dynamics (gender, racial, national) and good 

governance also at play within the organization? In 

what ways might care for employees, attention to 

flourishing, and right relationship be strengthened 

within the organization at all levels? 

 

C: If Christian development is different from other 

development efforts, how do Christian 

organizations manifest and reflect this in their 

training?  

 

Discussion and Conclusions 
 

Members of Accord organizations identify with 

faith on a variety of levels, including how they think 

about development and change, poverty, collaborations, 

relationships, and program implementation. The 

transformational development model (and especially 

Walking with the Poor) is still central to the ways actors 

think about Christian development, although new 

questions are also arising. 

How do Christian development actors think about 

poverty and development? How are anti-poverty efforts 

connected (or not connected) to addressing inequality? 

What does development or modernity look like? How 

do theories of development that are very relational 

connect with program implementation and research on 

the ground? There are debates within the development 

community about how important addressing inequality 

and extreme wealth is for poverty-reduction, and 

relational theories of development seem relevant to 

such debates. A number of different tools are available 

in the social sciences for measuring poverty, inequality, 

and development (such as the Sustainable 

Development Goals, the Multi-dimensional poverty 

index, or the Human Development Index). More 

research might also examine how theories of 

development are connected to the definitions of 

poverty used in program implementation and 

monitoring and evaluation. This paper has not 

addressed the different programs that exist, nor has it 

addressed the way faith impacts monitoring, evaluation, 

and research. More attention is needed in these areas 

because measurement and budgets reflect priorities and 

ultimate values of organizations. 

In the three areas of Christian development that we 

have addressed, we have posed in each section a 

number of questions that Accord and its members 

might consider. Most, if not all, are connected to the 

ways that development is a religious project, as 

DeTemple (2013) argues. We add that the lack of 

clarity among organizational leaders regarding the link 

between poverty and spiritual well-being might be 

addressed by further research on the religious aspect of 

development itself. 

Connected to this issue is a need for increased 

attention to the wide range of spiritual, biblical, and 

ecclesiological issues that are not directly related to 

broken relationships, but are nonetheless relevant to 

transformational development. Within Accord, Myers’ 

work is the primary framing device for understanding 

spiritual poverty, even when other biblical ideas about 

spiritual poverty are available. Respondents, for example, 

did not reference witchcraft, demon possession, evil 

spirits, curses, juju, or other forms of spiritual attacks. 

They also did not discuss lack of biblical knowledge, 

bad doctrine or heresy, the relative absence of local 

churches in some regions, or the need for spiritual 

revival. None of these are part of the main discourse 

surrounding spiritual metrics. 

Finally, and connected to this, we note that while 

Christian organizations are involved in a wide range of 

development efforts, some key strategies are noticeably 

lacking. How, for example, can and should 

development work be complemented and informed by 

advocacy and/or attention to policy? And how do 

Accord organizations measure and engage the complex 

causes of poverty that are beyond the reach of 

community-level development projects, including 

systemic realities and public policies? Like the themes 

of Christian development theory and church 

partnership theology, research into these areas could 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019  

13 
 

significantly improve the way Accord members 

approach their work in development. 

 

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Stephen Offutt is an associate professor of 

development studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. 

He has worked in Christian development and 

missions in El Salvador and South Africa. Offutt’s 

current scholarship looks at the intersection of faith, 

poverty and development. 

 

Author email: stephen.offutt@asburyseminary.edu  
 

 

Amy Reynolds is an associate professor of sociology at 

Wheaton College, where she studies and teaches on 

economic globalization, religion, and gender. Her 

current research analyzes gender inequality in 

Christian development organizations as well as 

differences in economic ideologies around 

poverty/inequality among development actors.  
 

Author email:  amy.reynolds@wheaton.edu  
 

mailto:stephen.offutt@asburyseminary.edu
mailto:amy.reynolds@wheaton.edu

