The Church has the Answerers: Poverty, UBI, Homelessness, and AI jobs | Ena Richards

Episode Summary: 

What if poverty isn’t mainly an economic crisis, but a discipleship crisis?

This week, we sit down with a true expert, Ena Richards, founder of Work for a Living, to challenge the dominant narrative about poverty. Ena argues that poverty persists where destructive worldviews persist. It thrives in soils of blame, envy, entitlement, unforgiveness, addiction, fatherlessness, and victim identity.

The solution clearly isn’t more handouts, but hearts transformed. Not performative empathy, but practical love. Not Sunday-only faith, but Monday formation that produces real economic impact.

We discuss:
 • Poverty as a discipleship problem
 • Homelessness in the US and root-cause restoration
 • Job creation and dignity through work
 • Why universal basic income misses human design
 • How AI can be leveraged — not feared
 • Equipping churches to move people from dependency to contribution

The gospel is good news to the poor because it changes identity, and identity changes work. If the Church took Monday seriously, what might change?

Who is Disciple Nations Alliance (DNA)? Since 1997, DNA’s mission has been to equip followers of Jesus around the globe with a biblical worldview, empowering them to build flourishing families, communities, and nations. 👉 https://disciplenations.org/

🎙️Featured Speaker: 

Ena Richards is the founder and international director of Work 4 A Living International, a global movement equipping unemployed youth and adults with the skills, character, and vision needed to thrive in the workplace. Originally launched in South Africa in 2007, the initiative has since expanded across multiple continents. Now based in the United States, Ena partners with churches, nonprofits, businesses, and schools around the world to address poverty through job readiness training, entrepreneurial development, and a biblical understanding of work. Her passion is simple but transformative: restoring dignity through meaningful work and helping communities break cycles of dependency with excellence, purpose, and hope.

📌 Recommended Links

     👉 Website: Work 4 A Living - WORK 4 A LIVING

     👉 WORK 4 A LIVING | THE WORKING CHURCH

     👉 Connect with Work 4 A Living: info@work4aliving.org

💻 Follow Us:

     📲Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/disciplenations

     📸Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/disciplenations

     📽️YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DiscipleNationsAlliance/

📩 Ask us anything: info@disciplenations.org 

Episode Webpage

Transcript

Framing Poverty Through Worldview

Ena Richards 0:02

But as the church, we don't know that we have the answer to this problem. We believe that poverty is too big. We do not believe that the gospel is powerful enough to address this issue, which is why we skirt around it. It depends on your worldview. If you think other people got to give me work, universal basic income where there's no requirement to work would sound fantastic to you. I think it's the worst thing that can possibly happen because we are made to work. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He'll give you your heart's desire. How profound a question is that? What does it mean to delight yourself in the Lord?

Luke Allen 0:47

Hey everyone, welcome back to season three of Ideas Have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. As you guys know, the mission of this show is to tell you guys how our mission as Christians is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. Amen to that. However, our mission, the Great Co-Mission, also involves working to transform our cultures so that they increasingly reflect God's truth, goodness, and beauty. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission, and today many Christians are having little influence on the surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we continue to rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God. And we are talking exactly about that today on an episode where we're really honing in on the question of poverty, and this is poverty worldwide and what that looks like in its many facets. My name's Luke Allen, guys. I'm one of the hosts here on the podcast, and I'm joined today by my dad and co-host, Scott Allen. Hey dad, how are you doing today? Good, Luke. It's great to be with you. Yeah, this is fun. And we just wrapped up an episode uh with a good friend of ours, uh long-term friend of the DNA's, uh Ina Richards, um, to discuss poverty. Uh, Dad, before we peep before people hop into this episode, what's a what's a quick summary of what they can expect?

Scott Allen 2:04

Ina's probably done more to think about the intersection of biblical worldview, biblical truth, and how that needs to be at the foundation of any effort uh to help the poor uh people who are struggling with poverty to come out of poverty. And so we just uh really tapped into that like wealth of knowledge that she has, but we got into some specific issues that um I think are on the forefront of people's minds here in the United States, particularly homelessness and even the the rise of artificial intelligence and uh how that's going to affect employment, especially for some uh people that are kind of at the beginning stages of their career on the first step of that career ladder. Uh there's fear that um you know it's going to displace a lot of workers. There's people talking about things like universal basic income. A lot of questions like that that I've been kind of wanting to talk to Ina about. And so we had a chance today, which was really great.

Intro And Mission

Luke Allen 2:53

Yeah, hit a lot of things today. Um, really drove into as always the ideas behind uh behind all of this going on today because ideas have consequences. So without further ado, let's hop into the episode of Ina Richards.

Scott Allen 3:07

Well, it's great to be with Ina Richards today. Ina, thank you so much for taking time to to join the podcast.

Speaker 3:14

Thank you so much, Scott and Luke.

Scott Allen 3:16

And we're gonna we're gonna talk today about um topics of biblical worldview and how it should shape our approach as Christians to helping and serving people who are struggling with poverty. Uh Ina has been on the podcast before. She's a a true expert on this question. Um, and so it's really wonderful, Ina, that you can be with us today. She's the uh for those of you who don't know who she is, she's the founder and the director of a wonderful organization called Work for a Living. Uh it aims to help unemployed young people, youth um living in conditions of poverty to gain and sustain employment. Um is a native of South Africa, but um, I would say recently, I don't know, Ina, when did you move to Atlanta? Or to Georgia, I should say. Yeah.

Speaker 1 4:00

Yeah, just about four years ago. About four years ago.

Scott Allen 4:03

Okay. So now living in the United States and uh and um she's married to Walter and she has three adult children. And um, you know, I'm sure there's so much more that you could say. I think for me, the thing that always comes to mind is just your powerful, unique approach to employment training that incorporates biblical worldview um and how that has made such an impact and a difference in the ministry that you're doing. Why don't you start by just telling our listeners a little bit more about yourself and work for a living, uh, the the ministry, the heart of it, the scale of it, whatever you want to say. Just uh give us a little bit of background on that.

Why Loving The Poor Must Be Practical

Speaker 1 4:41

Thank you so much, Scott. Yeah, so um I think if I could just perhaps give a short little history. Really, um probably 2003, I really wanted to ask the, I really asked the Lord, like what I was I was working, I was in the sort of professional space, and I was asking the Lord, like, what's what's the what's my purpose? That I guess everybody asks. And I'd I read Isaiah 58, and Isaiah 58 really broke my heart for the poor. I'd read it and I was like, this is it. I mean, this is desperate. You know, why are we sitting in countries that have got so many resources and we've got such abject poverty? And um, at the time I went and spoke to all the professionals that know about poverty, the church leaders, the academics, the poor themselves, why are we poor? And almost everybody said the problem is lack. It's because we don't have enough. So we thought, okay, well, let's fix the lack. And we went out and we got jobs for people, we put funds together for business and started helping people, and um, you know, it was an absolute disaster. And just to link it in with DNA, at the time, you know, people, our students would go out and work, they would, they would get fired, they would quit, they would start businesses, the businesses would fold. But at the time, our pastor had been to a vision conference in Pretoria and and somehow just started teaching about biblical worldview in church. It was just like, okay, we're gonna do a series on biblical worldview. And I remember sitting there thinking, this is it, this is the answer. And started building, we had this program that taught excellence, but then started building biblical worldview into this program and just saw the most amazing transformation. And that started the journey really of work for a living.

Scott Allen 6:25

Ina, talk more about that if you don't mind. You've said that loving your neighbor, especially your neighbor who's living in poverty, has to be practical and not abstract. And I want to just ask you to shape a little, or how's that conviction shaped the way you approach your work in impoverished communities?

Speaker 1 6:42

I think for me, the the shock came about as we started working with churches. Um it was interesting as we taught biblical worldview, the natural consequence was that people started giving their lives to the Lord. It wasn't something we expect, it wasn't something that we planned. It was that that scripture that speaks about my word will always go out and achieve everything that it was meant to achieve. And it was like we were seeing it happen. I mean, what did we know? We didn't know what we were doing, but teaching biblical worldview, and the Lord came in like a flood, and people's lives started transforming. But I think as we then started working with churches, we started seeing people, leadership, content with the fact that as long as I've got the people in church and as long as I'm preaching lifestyle, and as long as I'm I'm as I'm preaching the Bible, but I don't even know that the people are unemployed. I haven't even asked. I've never even done a work order to know who is either unemployed or underemployed in my church, and how much does the Bible speak about employ about work and finances? And I just we just sort of realized um how essential it is that if we're gonna genuinely love our neighbor, we need to love them in church, firstly, holistically. But secondly, it doesn't help that your goal to love people is to get them to church. Surely our goal should be how do we get this person, what is the best thing we can do for a poor person? I mean, we can get into that later, but that's a question that we have asked many times. And one of the things we have to consider is work. I mean, how can you be okay with the fact that people are sitting in church, but we don't even, we're not even concerned about whether they're working or not. So certainly from a leader church leadership perspective, but secondly, from an unemployed person's perspective, uh we can't just be preaching at people and saying, God bless you. And not and and and secondly, we can't be saying, preaching at people saying, God bless you, you don't have enough. Okay, let me give you. Because that also is not good enough. Let me help you, let me give you a handout. You know, surely we need to be how do we fix this situation? Why why do you let's love people to the end.

Church, Sunday Focus, And The Theology Of Work

Scott Allen 9:12

Why do you think that's the case, Ina, that that in many churches uh these issues just aren't addressed, issues of of of work. You know, are you working? How do you think about work? Um what what what what's your thought on that?

Speaker 1 9:27

I think Scott, because our goal is Sunday. Instead of our goal being Monday, I mean, um I mean we the church actually is closed on a Sunday, should be closed on a Sunday. Nine o'clock till 10:30, the close, the church is closed, everybody's in church. There should be an equipping happening as according to Ephesians 4.12 for the purpose of going out and being the church Monday through to the next time we meet. The church doors, the church opens again at half past 10. But if our goal from Monday through to Sunday is let's prepare for the whole week for one hour on a Sunday, we're never going to be reaching the the purpose is the pew, the purp the goal is the pew, the goal is not the city. The goal is not to just shepherd the people, the goal surely must be to equip the people as shepherds to the city. And I think that inward focus that we see, I mean, I'm not even speaking about anywhere here in the States or anything, but I mean that we see in Africa, Latin America, it's it's got I think it's got devastating devastating consequences.

Poverty As Discipleship, Not Economics

Scott Allen 10:33

Well, you know, you you definitely have the same problem here in the United States. I can I I can't tell you how many times I've heard a pastor preach from the pulpit on the subject of work and why it's important, uh, what the Bible, how the Bible shapes our understanding of work and employment and things like this. Um it's just not it's just not talked about. So the implication is um, yeah, that people will be working and work is good, you know, but um but i there's just not a lot that's done to to to teach people to think biblically about it. Um I want to just keep kind of pushing in on this same um subject here. Another thing that I've heard you say, Ina, is that poverty is uh when we think about poverty, that it's fundamentally a discipleship problem and not a money or economic problem. I that's always struck me. Can you unpack what you mean by that?

Speaker 1 11:30

Well, I I think it it depends on well how how how critical is worldview in terms of poverty. So so if my if my worldview is that work uh other people made me poor, I'm gonna sit and wait for restitution, restoration, I'm gonna wait for all of that. I'm gonna wait for people to fix my problems. If my worldview is work is normal, it's not even optional that I work. I don't mind whether you're in a wealthy country or not a wealthy country. It is not normal to sit at home doing nothing. But if your perspective is sit at home doing nothing, or your perspective is work is normal. There's a piece of land, plant something. I have an oven, let me bake biscuits, let me bake cupcakes, let me work is is normal. So and and so I think from that perspective it's really key. But I also think in terms of the pillars of poverty. I mean, most people look at the pillars of povert or poverty and say it's an economic problem. But the truth of the matter is, what are the pillars of poverty? Mindset. The poverty mindset, I'm poor, I'll always be poor, I can't change. Entitlement, us workers versus you bosses, blame, um uh fatherlessness. Fatherlessness is a pillar of poverty. Um, unforgiveness. Unforgiveness, as far as I'm concerned, is an absolute pillar of poverty because if I and and and it's preached from the pulpit, because it's an easier out from the pulpit to preach and say, people have made you poor. Suffer well, my brother, suffer well, my sister. You know, Isaiah 61. Uh we've been anointed to preach the good news to the poor. The good news can't be suffer in your poverty. The good news surely should be, hey, it is what it is. Have you been treated badly? Yes, you have. Right now, what are you gonna do next? So there are fundamental pillars of poverty that need to be taught. Obviously, belief systems. I mean, ancestral worship, we don't even, we're not even talking about that. But the the the fundamental principles of poverty are very different to what the world says they are. Our government in South Africa has spent billions on upskilling people. Let's upskill people, let's create jobs. We still have people where we create jobs, we've got interviews ready, and people don't pitch for the interview. By the by the hundreds and thousands, there's something fundamentally wrong thinking that it's just a lack of a job. We need to change the way people think, we need to change the way people um understand poverty, and biblical worldview is extremely powerful because give people a biblical worldview that work is normal, especially if you're a believer, you serve an agricultural god who plants a seed in the ground and everything is always growing. Plant those seeds into people's lives that you have to work. It's a it's a profound thing when we see a student and we and they grasp that concept that that concept. It's profound.

Mindsets, Forgiveness, And Breaking Blame

Scott Allen 14:40

Yeah, yeah. I mean for them to realize that. You've done such a great job, Ina, and I think the the thing that I I just find so powerful about the ministry you're doing at work for a living is that you you're not just content to work at that level of job skills training. You go right down to those worldview, those foundational worldview issues and barriers, and you say, until we address these things, uh nothing at that job skills level is really going to matter. We've got to deal with these deeper beliefs. And uh, you've done such a good job of integrating biblical worldview training and thinking and just biblical worldview discipleship. This idea comes from your culture, your religion. It's not biblical, it's leading to poverty. You need to replace it with the truth, biblical truth, that leads to growth and flourishing. Um, and it's just, I don't know any other organization that's doing the kind of work that you're doing as well as you're doing in that area. Uh I think a lot of Christians that we we think about biblical worldview and we tend to think about it in terms of um apologetics, philosophy, you know, this and that, but you've made it really practical and integrated it at the base, the foundation of the work you're doing to help lead people out of poverty. So I just I I just want to thank you for that and you know, just encourage all of our listeners to if if you're if this is your calling, if you're working in and with people that are struggling with poverty, particularly unemployment, you need to you need to connect with Ina and work for a living and learn about what she's doing and uh how how she's going about it. Ina, I was you're as you were talking there, I was thinking about a uh as I was writing my book a few years ago, why social justice is not biblical justice, there was a infographic that the um Smithsonian Institution, the Museum in Washington, DC for African American history put out. And it it was it was an infographic on what they called whiteness, and um the kind of the um uh the description that they had of what whiteness was was a worldview description. And it included things like um hard work, uh being prompt and on time, um, you know, the some of these things I just was like, what you know, uh and it was it was saying that you know these are it was painting this as a worldview that was oppressive, and that, you know, there's there's a different way of thinking. And I thought, you know, all this is gonna do is trap people in poverty, and furthermore, it has nothing to do with the color of somebody's skin. This is all about what the Bible is teaching, right? It just so happens that these ideas maybe were introduced into the United States or into the West, um, and and and people had white skin, right? And they learned them, but they're but but they're they're by no means associated with white-skinned people. I anyways, I was just thinking about that. Any comment from you on that? I know that's uh just a big issue here in the United States.

Speaker 1 17:47

Um I mean, it's obviously a big issue. I mean, I come from South Africa, right? You know, we we we wrote the handbook of all things bad as far as as far as wrong worldviews are concerned. So that's been something that we've had to climb out from under uh to be able to say, well, do we even have a right to to speak? And you know what? Yes, we do. There's something that we can do to help people. I don't care whether we're black or white, and I don't care whether the audience is black or white. We want to be able to help people. And and I think from our perspective, you know, we're not looking at it from a perspective of rights of the person doing the work. We're looking at it from a perspective of saying, listen, man, we want to address poverty in your life. What does an employer want? He doesn't care most of the time, hopefully, whether you're black, white, Hispanic. Does he want somebody on time? Yes. Because it affects the bottom line. Does he want someone to be excellent? Yes, because it affects the bottom line. Does he want somebody to be just to to be valuable, to make themselves valuable? Yes, because it affects the bottom line. And and I think if we can get out of the worldview of self and me and myself, instead of thinking, hey, what am I expected to do? Let's I mean, if if in the States especially, if you are marginalized, or even if you perceive yourself to be marginalized, right? Whether you are or whether you're not, that's not up for debate. Here's the key issue: employers cannot find people to work. Employers cannot find good people to work in the US, right? South Africa is different. There's a lack of jobs. That's the that's that's sort of a driving force. Here, the the demand is from employers. They can't find people to come to work. What an opportunity it is if you are marginalized in this nation. What an opportunity to step in as someone and say, I'm gonna be excellent. Yes, in the past I was treated badly because I'm I come from a minority group. But what an opportunity, if you're excellent, to step in at a level higher than what you would have stepped in and to get promoted way quicker.

Scott Allen 19:59

Talk about it specifically, your work in the United States, Ina, coming from South Africa, given that, you know, right now the economy is growing. There are industries are moving in. I think of Phoenix, where I used to live, and we've got massive uh chipmaking facilities coming in from Taiwan, and you know, I could go on and on, and there's just a lot of growth. Um, so there's a lot of jobs now, right? I would uh you're probably seeing the same thing in the South there where you're you're living. Um what what kinds how is it working for you in the United States, the training that you're doing with work for a living?

Speaker 1 20:33

Yeah. Scott, so we've actually just started now. We've got a couple of facilitators from uh Philadelphia, a couple of places that have just actually come to South Africa, been in our six, seven months training for the first time. Um, so it I can't we've taught our business program in our church and so on, but um I think primarily we've we've done training with some companies. We had Chick-fil-A contact us and say, hey, we are uh they had actually visited um Eswatini, which is one of our neighboring countries in South Africa, and they're saying we sit, we've got the exact same problems they were down in Louisiana that we've that that we saw when we were down near South Africa, that we've got in in Louisiana, you know, do you have a solution? And we spend some time working with their with their staff to be able to instill these principles of how do we actually develop our staff to be excellent, how do we get them to choose to be excellent? But it's early days here. I think the initial plan was not necessarily to come here to get even get started in the States, it was to really be a bridge between Latin America and Africa. But as we've got here, every time we speak about what we do, we've had people say we need this here. We just have to find the right vehicle and for the Lord to open the doors in his time.

Scott Allen 21:49

Okay. So you're working in Latin America, in Africa. Are you working all over the world, I know?

Speaker 1 21:55

Predominantly those areas. We've had some of our material translated into Urdu, we've got a Woman who's just visit uh attended some of our training to take it back to Germany. In fact, it's a woman that I met in Prescott at the first DNA conference.

Speaker 2 22:08

Oh wow.

Speaker 1 22:09

Um and yeah, primarily Africa and Latin America.

Homelessness And Root-Cause Restoration

Scott Allen 22:14

Gotcha. I I I love talking to people that have that have lived in different, you know, have had that experience of living in one country and then moving to another country and living there as you've done from South Africa to the United States, and how that's uh shaped um your understanding of poverty and just what is it, how is how is poverty different, Ina, uh, from from South Africa to the United States? What is how is it thought about differently? What you know, just if you could speak to that a little bit, I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Speaker 22:46

Yeah.

Scott Allen 22:47

Or is it similar? Maybe it's just very similar. I I I know when I I had some friends from Kenya, and uh, well, you know, Dennis Tongoy and other friends that have come to the United States, and uh they often say, and Mother Teresa famously said, This is, you know, this is one of the poorest countries I've ever been in. And for Americans, that's kind of a shock because we obviously don't think of ourselves generally as a country as being a poor country. We think of ourselves as being a wealthy country. Um, but we think of wealth and poverty almost entirely materialistically, as you were talking about, you know. Um, you know, there's a famous kind of quote from somebody in the Johnson administration, President Johnson back in the 60s in the war on poverty. And he said, We're gonna go to war on poverty, and the way we're gonna do it is we're just gonna give the poor enough money so that they're not poor anymore, you know. And I thought I've always thought that's just such a such a powerful worldview kind of statement. Poverty is purely materialistic, right? But when my African friends come to the United States, they see poverty differently. They see it as much more social. Um, and in Africa, you have rich social ties in a country like Kenya, families are relatively strong and whatnot. Then you've got the larger tribe-clan thing. Uh, but in the United States, people are isolated, alone, and they they just see that as poverty. Like this is a this is an extreme form of poverty here, you've got. And um, I've often I've often been struck by that. That uh, you know, this moving between countries and cultures gives you different perspectives on poverty. So, yeah, any comments you have on that, I'd love to hear, Ina, just from your experience moving.

Speaker 1 24:22

Well, well, uh if I may cut right through to it.

Scott Allen 24:26

Yeah, please.

Speaker 1 24:28

The truth of the matter is the people in Africa would still want the poverty that they have that they have here. So we might say uh it's a different top of poverty, and the poorest country in America is our poorest country in the world is America. But yes, the truth of the matter, give anybody a chance in Africa to come to the States, and they're still going to. So, so let's not fool ourselves into thinking and speaking about social poverty. It is an important thing, and I understand us 100% understand that there's, you know, there's there isn't the infrastructure and so on. But I think from my perspective, and and maybe we cut through it really, because at the end of the day, we want to see, we do want to see the economic change, but our our method of getting to the economic change is not economic. We want to see the economic change at the end of the day. We want to see people working and not only working, we want to see people thriving. We want them to start businesses, we want them to grow. But our our methodology of getting there is not let's give them more money. I think what I what shocked me, the biggest shock for me, has been uh we were invited to speak in a church in New Orleans. Um I don't know if I've said that right.

Scott Allen 25:40

But um I don't say it right either.

Speaker 1 25:43

New Orleans.

Scott Allen 25:44

Um New Orleans, it's kind of like one big word exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 25:47

Yes. And it it was it was it it was predominantly a black church, and we were sharing about what we do, and it was so interesting to hear the people's reasoning. And I don't know if it's relevant that it's a black church, it just happened to be a black church and probably is relevant considering worldview, but but it was so interesting to hear people's reasoning of why they struggle. And as they started, the one woman stood up and said, The reason we are poor is because our young black men, when they start working, they get substandard pay. And then another lady said, and when we start working, you know, we um we are discriminated against and our children. And then the next one said, But the reason we are unemployed is because the foreigners come in and they're taking our jobs. In other words, the Mexicans are coming in and taking their jobs. So for me, that was such a shock because my jaw dropped to the ground, but this is exactly what we hear back home.

Speaker 3 26:46

Okay.

Purpose, Discipleship, And Financial Wisdom

Speaker 1 26:47

The Zimbabweans are coming into our country, the Zimbabweans are taking our jobs, that's why we're poor. And I'm saying the being marginalized or perceptions of marginalized, I'm I'm not debating that. But the point is this when you do get that opportunity because you're excellent, right? Why don't you work really hard so that you get promoted? Because you you have got every opportunity in this nation. There is absolutely no reason in this nation for you not to be working. I cannot understand it. I think it might be I don't want to go in and work at a minimum wage. I want to go in at a different level. But why not go in at a minimum wage and develop yourself and grow yourself and get promoted and you understand finances well so that I can invest into myself. So the point I'm trying to make is there definitely are similarities in the sense of worldview, whether you're white or whether you're black, it's other people have made me poor. Instead of looking at it from a perspective of, okay, other people have made me poor. What now? It's not the issue, it is not that other people have made me poor. I mean, look what happened in South Africa. This it's an evil, I mean, how evil an institution was apartheid, how evil an institution was slavery. The point is, what now? What happens if God was the one who set the people free? How are we gonna go forward? Are we gonna go forward with gratitude and thanksgiving and saying, Lord, what an opportunity now I have to build a future for myself? Or are we gonna look back and say, other people have made me poor, there's no hope for me. It's extremely, extremely powerful and perpetuated by the church.

Luke Allen 28:41

Yeah, that's such a it's such an important statement. You know, other people have affected your life and made it worse. Yes, that's true in a lot of cases. In most people's lives, other people have made their life worse to varying degrees, some extreme cases. But what are you gonna do about that? That's that's the question right there. And it that that statement sounds very unloving in a way, like, come on, what are you gonna do now? But it's it's also the most loving statement in the you can possibly tell someone, you know, yes, you only have one leg. I recognize that, I realize that. I'm sorry for you. But what can you do about that? And that's you help them forward, you help them move into God's good design for them, instead of just you know, staying there with them in their hurt, which we should do, but it's it's but what can we do now? What can we do now? And that message is so important. It's it's important across the board. You know, it's important with people in poverty, it's important with people with you know, a lot of a lot of young men right now like to blame their dad. My dad did this to me, and this is the way I this is why I am here, or blame the economy right now. A lot of young people, oh, the economy is against me, you know, oh my my student debt and all these things, and what can I do about my life? You know, yeah, sure, you're you're the product of some unfortunate decisions, but what are you gonna do about it? Yeah, and how can we encourage people towards that in the most loving way possible? How do we do that?

Scott Allen 30:06

Yeah, you know, if yeah, and if I could just add, how does the Bible you know shape our thinking on that kind of victim mindset versus this empowered mindset of what are we going to do about it? How do we move forward?

Speaker 1 30:17

Yeah. Well, I I think if I if I touch on something that that both of you have said, like that seems like an unloving thing to say. For me, the most exciting thing is again asking, what is the best thing we can do for a poor person? I I mean, I look, we've worked with probably 50 odd thousand people unemployed people who've come to through the programs and start working and excel and get promoted and their lives, given their lives to the Lord. I'm like, the only reason that we have any authority to speak on the topic is just because of the hope that is there, the hope of the gospel. You know, the poor will always be with us or do is is biblical, but there should be no poor amongst us, is just as biblical. The hope that we've seen in young people who've been unemployed for two years, five years, ten years start working. Um, and all of it because of what God says, a worldview that has been a renewing of the mind in an individual. It is only that that gives us the authority to speak about it. Because otherwise it would be a cruel statement. Otherwise, it would be how how self-righteous you are. As a white woman, to be able to sit here and say, you know, pull yourself together, what now? And that's not the point. Forget about who's saying what. The point is the hope of the gospel, the good news to the poor is available to everybody. The church has the answer. We have the answer, but we don't know that we have the answer to this problem. We believe that poverty is too big. We do not believe that the gospel is powerful enough to address this issue, which is why we skirt around it. So for me, it's the most hopeful thing and the most loving thing that we can do. When we started in Work for a Living, we helped everybody. We went out of our way to help people. What a disaster that was. Because we never climbed down into that pit of poverty, had compassion, instead, and said, Yes, the ladder. Now I'm gonna give you everything you need to help you to climb that ladder. Instead, we stood at the top and said, Listen, man, I'm superior enough to just pull you out of this thing and then be done with it. You should be fine now, walk on your own. And there's this profound difference between that. The one is arrogant, I'm coming in and I'm your saver. I'm gonna pull you out and I'm gonna set you up and pull yourself together. Right? Forget about the past, move forward. And we're saying no, let's climb down into that, but let's deal with the root issues of why you actually are poor. Let's put a mirror to to your situation, and then let's equip you, and then you climb out of this pit and you run away from this hole so fast that you never ever come here again.

Luke Allen 33:02

Wow.

Speaker 1 33:02

And that's the approach.

AI, Work Disruption, And How To Pivot

Luke Allen 33:04

That's that I love that that that that that approach of climbing down into the pit with them. Because uh I I've heard you say before, love or we already addressed this, love is practical, right? And it's not abstract. And it's not just peep teaching people stuff either. It's living life with people, you know, just teaching people, you know, job skills and then saying, I hope you implement this, that's not loving, you know. That's not fully loving. Go go walk alongside them, go walk with them towards God's good design for them. And as I've been uh this isn't really a question as much as it's a statement. I've been watching work for a living for I don't know, four years now. And that's that's your guys' approach that sets you apart from any other um any other ministry that I've noticed do this well, is a lot of Christians will talk about the sacred secular divide. Sacred, you know, most Christians are familiar with that phrase now, and we shouldn't have a sacred secular divide. Um, and most Christians, when you say like you should have a what's a biblical worldview of your work, or how does God talk about work? They'll say, Yeah, you know, whoo, I agree with you. Yeah, God cares about my work. And they'll they'll say, I don't have a sacred secular divide about my work. But then you'll look at them and you'll see that they have you'll see you'll see this divide. They don't actually are they're not living this out. And so they'll agree with you intellectually, but they won't agree with you practically. But what work for a living does is you you step into people's lives and you walk alongside them and you disciple them, not in your standard understanding of discipleship as reading the Bible, but you walk with them towards God's good design for them. Towards their best, right? Yes. Yes. And in so doing that, and you don't even you're you're not even outright evangelizing them, but in so doing that, walk alongside them towards God's good design for them, they eventually come to know God most of the time. A lot of people through the work for the living programs have become Christians. You I think I think you said most, something or something like that. Yeah. That's overcoming the sacred secular divide. That's living in God's design for us, which is proclaiming the good news to the poor. But it's in such a practical way that it's it's in a category that we say is secular, but you do it so practically that it just shines God's light all through their lives and they eventually come to know Him. Yeah. Like that's what it looks like to break that divide.

Universal Basic Income And Human Dignity

Speaker 1 35:17

And I think I'm just so excited that you mentioned that because that's something that that is our um so so righteousness makes a nation great, the Bible says, right? So if our nation is not great, okay, where do we need to go and look? Are we righteous or are we not? So if righteousness makes a nation great, according to the Proverbs, right? Let's be let's be let's be working in that space. Okay, let's not be focusing on trying to bring people to church. Let's be making sure that they live righteousness, righteous, righteously. Um, our focus from the beginning of this year, Hosea 6, 6 says, I want you to know me. The Lord says, I want you to know me. And our goal is how do we take a student who walks in through our door looking for a job? All they want is to be able to afford a golf GTI or the Mustang or the whatever they want. That's their goal in coming. They want the job to be able to make more money, to buy the things that they want. We build the kindling, we build the fire for three, four, five weeks. We build the fire in their lives using biblical worldview. We present the gospel. Those that give their lives to the Lord, we then say, okay, how do we now walk a road with you in terms of discipleship? Because our goal is not even to start discipleship groups, our goal is can we get this person to join hands with the Lord to genuinely know him? Delight yourself in the Lord, and he'll give you your heart's desire. How profound a question is that? What does it mean to delight yourself in the Lord? If we can answer that question, and if we through discipleship can genuinely get people to love him and subsequently obey him because they love him, and therefore live righteously. Everything changes.

How To Get Involved With Work For A Living

Scott Allen 37:03

I want to go back, uh Ina to what we were talking about just prior. We were talking about mindsets that contribute to poverty. Uh, I was asking about differences in South Africa and the United States, and you were talking really about similarities. Um the the similarity being kind of a victim mindset. Um, the reason that I'm struggling with poverty is because Zimbabwe immigrants, Mexican immigrants, uh, you know, whatever it is, an economic system that's rigged against me and and this and that. Um and um that is contrasted with um a a kind of a biblical a biblical view that uh starts with the word gratitude. Um and that that word gratitude is uh somebody has described it to me once as the cardinal virtue of of of the Christian faith. It all comes back to gratitude, you know, gratitude just for your very life, you know, for God, for everything that you have that comes from God. Um, you know, that it just starts, it's so fundamental and so foundational. And yet, in the contemporary worldview that's dominant in uh our both our cultures in South Africa and the United States, there's no room for that word. You don't even hear it. Uh the emphasis is all on uh victimization, grievance, envy, resentment. Um, the problems with the world are somebody else, you know, I'm so I'm to bl somebody else is to blame for my conditions, my circumstances. And I it brought to my mind, um, I was listening to a Venezuelan living in New York City. He was fascinating just recently, you know, since Maduro was taken and put, you know, on trial. And he was uh talking about Venezuela and how when the communists came, they came through the vote, you know, people in Venezuela voted them in, and now he's in New York, and we have a essentially a communist mayor that was just voted in, you know, and he's now living in New York, he's alarmed, he's concerned. And the person interviewing uh him said, Why is that? Why do people choose, you know, to uh uh elect these people that are going to essentially tear their countries or communities down? And he said, because they traffic in he said it's part of our human nature. I I would add fallen human nature, but they traffic in victimization, grievance, envy, resentment. It's easy to win elections that way. And uh I thought that was really profound because these ideas, when they're put into practice, they never lead people out of poverty, they only cut make it worse. And um and yet people keep making those choices again and again because because yeah, because there's something in our fallen human nature that wants that. But then you contrast it to what the Bible teaches, which is gratitude. And you know, uh gratitude for what? Often when we were teaching in the DNA in very impoverished communities, people would say, What do I have to be grateful for? I have nothing, you know, and we would say, Look at your hand, you know, where did that hand come from that you've got, you know? Uh that's an amazing thing that you have there. And that's just one thing that you have. Start being grateful for what you have. And then ask God, what can I do to be a good steward of what I have, right? To, you know, to to put it to work, you know. And that it was just that shift of mindset from victim to gratitude that made the difference. And I that's kind of what I was hearing you say as well. Like we have to sh make that shift at that basic worldview level.

Speaker 1 40:33

Um I think I think though, Scott, it's um it's a it's it's um it's a few steps. It's not just a shift from grumbling to gratitude, it's actually dealing with a grumbling. If if we're not getting to a place where we are dealing with that, and that's why I'm saying that if if as the church, instead of um, I mean, I I spoke to a group of pastors the other day in South Africa, um, in in poor communities, and we said we want to take all the people that are unemployed in the church, we want to teach the the churches how to teach business skills, and we want them to then teach their congregations, you know, and and we have you done a work audit? Like, have you checked who's unemployed? And one by one the pastors put up their hand and said, Do you know why people are unemployed? It's because uh the em of the employers that don't teach them to work properly, so they get fired. Do you know why people are late? It's because employers have never taught them to be on time. And so it went on. And the truth is if we are not dealing with that grumbling and and and and how powerful the church would be if the church came in and said, you know what, grumbling is a sin. It's it's it's a bad thing when your default mode, what is your default mode? I I to have a talk with myself the other day, is your default mode of grumbling and dissatisfaction, or is your default mode one of joy and gratitude? And if it's if it's grumbling and dissatisfaction, we have to deal with it. And and that's where I think we speak about in church, I will, you need to forgive your brother, you need to forgive your father, you need to forgive your mother. We speak about those sort of superficial levels, but am I prepared to forgive somebody who oppressed me? And and it doesn't make what the oppressor did right. In in South Africa, apartheid was an evil, evil citizen. But the people who perpetuated it, do they care? If they're still racist, they're still racist. But if I'm a black South African, what can I do here going forward? I choose to let that person go. I choose not to grumble, I choose to put good financial principles in place in my family's life, I choose to work hard, I choose to teach my children to work hard, I choose to put disciplines in place, I choose to be excellent, I choose to make myself valuable, and I am moving forward with my family. Yeah. And I'm not gonna get stuck there.

Scott Allen 43:16

I think forgiveness, um, it it is a way of saying, you know, I forgive you so that I can be set free from the power that you have over me. That's no longer going to determine uh my identity or who I see myself as. I forgive you, you know, I'm going to move forward. I'm not gonna be bound, you know, in that bitterness and resentment that I have. I'm going to forgive you. Meaning practically, I'm not going to con I'm not going to think about it anymore. You know, I'm gonna forget I'm going to forget, you know, to the degree that I can what you've done so that I can be free from the bondage that that creates in my life and I can move forward. I think that um forgiveness is very much about ourselves. As opposed to, you know, the other person in some ways. Yes.

Speaker 1 44:04

Because I think if that default mode is generally unforgiveness, we will always find somebody. I mean, we had a student in the in a class the other day, a black guy, and he was just saying, I hate the foreigners. Like, don't even use that word in front of me because the foreigners come in and they take everything from us. Right? And that, and he's been unemployed for how long? And he's filled with it.

Scott Allen 44:29

Yeah, that resentment.

Speaker 1 44:30

And it was it was an amazing thing to see his process of he just broke down the one day when we spoke about blame and the power of unforgiveness on his life. And how he was set free from that. And and and and just turned around and started loving people and loving foreigners and got employed and wasn't held up by these by all of this baggage anymore.

Scott Allen 44:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1 44:50

You know?

Scott Allen 44:51

And again, it doesn't, it doesn't discount the reality of some of these things that are, you know, truly oppressive or difficult or challenging. We live in a fallen world, right? I mean, so we're not pretending that that doesn't exist, but we're allowing ourselves to not be bound by that uh so that we can move forward. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I when I talk about poverty here in Bend, Oregon, where I'm living, um, I think of homelessness because it's in the newspapers almost every day. People see the homeless on the streets. It's a huge issue in most of our West Coast cities, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland. Um, I I don't know as much uh what it's like in your part of the United States, but it is the dominant issue when people think about poverty here in this part of the country. And the the homeless very much are portrayed as victims of circumstance and they need to be, you know, they need to be provided for. Um anyways, I wonder if you could talk to that issue a little bit. How should practically should we think about that and address that issue uh as Christians in the United States? It seems to me it's a it's a I think a real challenging issue because I think there you can make the case, I think uh governments, city governments, state governments are actually making money on uh keeping people in in a in a kind of a situation of homelessness because yeah, there's just so much money now that's being given. We have this huge, you know, the giant welfare state, and we saw this in Minnesota. There's just so much fraud and corruption around welfare now. And so much of it is, yeah, you you know, it's dependent, isn't it, on keeping people in conditions of poverty. But I wonder if you could speak to that at all. And because I know a lot of people want to help, and typically the the the kind of the uh first reaction is just go and give them something, you know.

Speaker 1 46:40

Well, I think you know, certainly I don't know enough, and and we can't do anything about the politics of the day. Right. And the politics of the day, whether it's in the United States or whether it's in South Africa, is exactly the same. There's corruption, yeah, there's fraud. Yeah, there's corruption and fraud in South Africa, um, there's money, there's all sorts of problems. But as the church, surely we have the solution. I mean, I think the core thing for us, because we obviously have a big homeless problem, it's a little bit different in South Africa, but tremendously broad. Um, and we have we have many people when we set up a work for a living center, the church well-meaningly says, Okay, let me let us bring all the homeless people to you. And and and we want to get the homeless people working. The problem is not economic. Again, I mean, why do most people, truth be told, end up homeless? It's either a trauma, it's mental illness, or it's addiction. Okay? So you take it.

Scott Allen 47:45

That forms it, frames it as you you you lack shelter, you know, as a you know. Yes. Go ahead, you know.

Speaker 1 47:51

And and and and and we we in the beginning were like, okay, great, we got a center started, uh, we've got all of these people. They're I mean, they're the poorest of the poor because they're homeless, right? So what happened? We we worked with them um on a superficial level, they got a job. What do you do, somebody who's got a history of addiction, to the point that they end up on the street, now you get them a job. You've cleaned them up nicely, okay? You've got them a job. At the end of the month, what comes in? A paycheck. Have you solved the problem? What does that paycheck get you? I mean, it's gonna be a matter of months, and the paycheck's gonna be used for what it was used for in the beginning that got them into the problem in the first place.

Speaker 3 48:33

Exactly.

Speaker 1 48:34

We need to be identifying the root causes. Isaiah 58, 6. It's the core of what we do, certainly. Untie the cords, loosen the chains, find out what the cords are, find out what the chains are around people, set the captives free, break the yoke. Once the yoke is broken, once addiction, once there's been rehabilitation, then you can start building into that person. Okay, now as an exit strategy, we can teach you to work. In the beginning, when we started work for a living, we had um uh uh street workers, people would bring women who'd been on the streets. What a disaster it was, the same thing when we helped them to get employed or start businesses before the root cause of why they ended up on the street was dealt with. So, what we did is we partnered with organizations who worked with these women and got them um got their mindsets right, set them free, did deliverance if deliverance was needed, untie the cords, loosen the chains, they were set free, the yoke was broken. Then, fantastic. Now, let's teach you to work because you you're healthy, you're well, your mind is clear, okay? They went on to be managers, they went on to be business owners, but the rehabilitation, the restoration has to happen first, and we need to be dealing with the root causes of why they got there. It's the same as the poor. Why are you poor? Let's let's find out, let's hold a mirror and let's deal with a root cause first. Let's not just put a plaster on it and make ourselves feel better by fix trying to think that we're fixing it.

Scott Allen 50:14

That's so well said, Ina. Yeah, because if you don't, then yeah, no matter what you do beyond that, it's going to kind of backfire, right? You know, it's it's it's gonna it's gonna be ineffective.

Speaker 1 50:24

It's not loving people well.

Scott Allen 50:26

Yeah, yeah. And I I you know, as you're saying that, I hear this passion that you have to to really truly help people, to get to that root cause that's causing their brokenness and to, as you say, break those chains, those root chains that are that are that are that are holding them down that Satan is using to keep them in bondage. And yet often I find Christians aren't driven by that. They they're driven by a sense of empathy, you know, um, and they want to kind of assuage their their whatever, their feel their what drives it is their own feelings and trying to feel better about themselves or to do what's right. You know, I've I've I've you know I'm I'm d whatever, I'm doing what I can, but it's not really trying to help them ultimately get out of the problem that they're that they're in. I I don't know if that makes sense, Ina, but uh it it bothers me when I see that, you know, that we yeah, we can be driven by empathy, compassion, but ultimately it's not assuaging our you know, empathy and compassion that should be driving this thing, it's actually helping the people that we're trying to serve, you know, isn't it?

Speaker 1 51:36

And I think at the end of the day, the Lord knows the solution. The Lord knows what a person on the street and he knows their whole history. But but with all due respect, if we want to know the Lord, what is gonna help us know the Lord more? Listening to a pastor or listening to the Lord with time? I'm not saying listening to the pastor is not essential, but where do we get? Do we listen to the pastor more? Do we listen to the Lord more? It needs to be we listen to the Lord more. I sit with him in the morning, I hear his voice and I read his word and he teaches me about poverty. And he, I've seen the homeless, it breaks my heart. I want to do something. Let's not go on man-made ideas or certainly not political ideas. Let's go with, hey Lord, what does this group of people in this community in this city need? You know who the drug dealers are, you know whether drugs is an issue here, you know whether it's veterans that have got mental illnesses, you know what the problems are. How do we set something up that helps people and deals with a root cause so that they can thrive?

Luke Allen 52:47

Yeah. I mean, that's so practical though, is it's all around us. It's individual, it's each person's life. You know, our stories are so unique because we're all we're all unique. And until you can get to know that individual person, you really don't know how to diagnose them properly. And if you can't get the right diagnosis, you're not going to be able to solve the issue that that person's going through. And I think it's just good to remember that our world right now is so broken, this is all around us. And I think so often as Christians we think, okay, I want to go help the poor. Let me go, let me go help some kid in Africa, which is great. But it's all around us as well. There's there's there's there's day-to-day things we can do with the people that are surrounding us. I was shocked um recently when I saw the it was a study that was done. The most recent study was in 2023 for the most depressed countries in the world by percentage of the population. And number one was Syria. No big surprise there. You know, that's a very war-torn area of the world where the poverty mental depression, yeah. Yeah, uh depression cases. Number two in the entire world, the United Kingdom, you know, the the the mental health epidemic right now is real. Number three was the Netherlands, you know, beating out Haiti, beating out Ukraine in a war right now, beating out you know, all these other countries that you'd expect to be up there at the top of the list. The United Kingdom's number two, the Netherlands number three. You know, first world nations by by all counts, but you know, the these people are broken around us. And you know, the US was a little bit further down the list, but um brokenness goes a lot further than than monetary poverty, even though, like you said, that is a real issue. We do want to deal with that, right? The economic poverty. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, but I I mean uh even though uh in a lot of first world nations um we don't have the economic poverty, we still have the job issue. People aren't working. And as you say all the time, Ina, if you are discipled, you will be working. It's it's not it's not an option. It's one of the first commandments given to Adam in Genesis, you know. Work garden.

Speaker 1 54:48

I think we need to look at ourselves as the church. You know, we need to be looking around and we need to be getting people working. I mean, um, we need to be, if we can't be getting people working, we need to be um preaching how people can be working, uh managing their finances. Let's be talking about money. I mean, I had a pastor in um DC, uh, we told him that we use jobs, business, and finance to draw people in. And then we teach them a biblical worldview, you know, because everybody wants all the young people, they want the Corvette and they want the SUV. And he was like, you can't do that. But why? And he said, because they're gonna be thinking about money all the time. I'm like, they're thinking about money all the time anyway. Whether they're in your church or whether they're out, let's be teaching what God says about these principles so that not only do we get people to live righteously, but also so that they have purpose and they can teach others to do the same. I mean, I look at the levels of depression. How powerful is no purpose? And and and how powerful is God's message that every one of us should be making disciples. When last did we hear something about discipleship? When last were we were we taught about the is how essential it is for each one of us to go out and make disciples and be discipling people? The church is the answer.

Scott Allen 56:14

Amen. Yeah. Ian, if we're getting low on our time here. I I there's a question I'm just dying to ask you because I, you know, I hear these things uh in media and I'm just in the world around me, I'm observing, and I'm always wondering, gosh, I wonder what Edith thinks about this. So now's my chance to ask, yeah. One of these things is uh the AI revolution that we're all just kind of learning about and experiencing right now. And um uh, you know, the uh the leaders of the AI revolution in Silicon Valley, some of them, as I listen to them speak, they say things like um, and they worry, frankly, they worry that we're going to displace a lot of workers, especially on that first rung of the ladder with AI. It's going, they're just not gonna be able, their their jobs will be replaced uh by AI. And um, and then they go on from there and they say, we're gonna have a massive unemployment problem. Um, and what are we gonna do? How are we gonna deal with that? And they talk about things like universal basic income. We'll just give people money so that they can, you know, you know, they don't have to work, they can just um sit at home, but it but at least they'll be cared for financially, you know, because they they won't be able to work. Anyways, I'm hearing those things, I'm sure you're hearing those things, Ina. What's your thought? How do you respond to those kind of things, that that thought discussion that's out there right now?

Speaker 1 57:36

Yeah, I think, Scott, you know, I mean, I mean, we it's open for debate, good, evil, good, bad, right, wrong. I mean, that's not the issue here. The bottom line is this if we're working with the poor, you need to be able to pivot. We need to be preparing the poor and say, hey guys, this is coming. Okay, if you're a truck driver and all of a sudden now um you're unhappy because the univers uh because of AI is gonna replace all truck drivers. Um, okay. What are you gonna do next? You need to be thinking ahead. Surely that God has given us creative, if God has given people the creativity to develop AI, okay, surely it wouldn't be well it could be. I mean, it could lead to to global poverty. I mean, I'm I I don't know, but I also think that we are creative people, right? Okay, maybe there aren't gonna be as many jobs available, but one thing we're doing, I mean, we've got uh online platform where we teach online skills that employers want. So whatever employers want, from retail to office administration to computer literacy, we've already started writing a series on how to use AI to develop your your career. Because what do companies do? Companies pay between $20 and $100 per person to have access to AI, right? The people who use it in companies are able to use it to 10% of its capacity. Can you imagine somebody who is underskilled as an office administrator who really understands AI and really understands how to use it to benefit them, to make them excellent? Is it a long-term solution? I don't know, but in the meantime, pivot, get on with it, be prepared, start businesses. What a time it is to start businesses using AI.

Scott Allen 59:25

Oh, yeah. I like your your positive take on all that. What about universal basic income? Um, this idea that uh we'll just pay people that aren't able to be employed, you know, so that they don't die or whatever it is. I I I can imagine what you have to think about that, you know, but I'd like to hear it from your own words, your own lips.

Speaker 1 59:44

Well, wow, have we not seen the impact of that in in South Africa where we've got a grant system? The sad thing is we've got a grant system of 500 Rand, which is like 30 bucks. Okay. Uh, and um people just get used to it. Okay, we've got this little bit, let's just live on it. It's a terrible thing, and I think it comes down to worldview is work normal or not?

Speaker 3 1:00:08

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:00:09

People don't give you work. You work. I have a piece of land, I'll plant it, I have a stove, I'll cook something, I'll go stand somewhere. How many businesses in the United States? I was in our business program, we've got one story of a woman who had five dollars and she started baking cupcakes, she's now got a half a million dollar business. Uh, sorry, a half a uh half a million dollar business baking cupcakes, right? It depends on your worldview. If you think other people are go have got to give me work, universal basic income where there's no requirement to work would sound fantastic to you. I think it's the worst thing that can possibly happen because we are made to work, it goes against everything, and human nature is such that if someone's gonna give me a thousand or two thousand dollars, I'm not gonna use it to upskill myself to eventually be able to say, thank you, I don't need it from you. I'm not gonna use it. I'm gonna use it to pay for the car that I want, do the things that I want. Human nature is not built for let's help you, besides the economic principles behind it of just the cost and government, where has it really worked? How much has the Dole system devastated the UK? How much has the grant system devastated South Africa, bankrupting in the process of bankrupting our government?

Scott Allen 1:01:36

Yeah, I think at the root level, it's just it's a it's a again a worldview issue. It's a faulty, it's a wrong, even demonic kind of worldview because it views people not as human beings, but really as animals, right? You can just put them out in a pasture and feed them and they'll be content. But that is not who we are. We are, like you say, God created us to as image bearers to create, to work, you know, to to do something. And um, we just can't be human, fully human, without that aspect of our lives, you know, uh functioning. Um so I think you're exactly right. I think it's it's a really dangerous idea, but it's gaining traction, you know, right now. And uh I just think it's rooted in a faulty worldview of what it means to be a human being, you know, as you say, fundamentally. Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:02:27

They did an they did a a poll um in the in Switzerland because they wanted to give every uh Swiss born um citizen, I think it was the time it was 2,500 euros. And they voted as a nation. And the nation voted and said no, we do not want it. It will make us lazy.

Luke Allen 1:02:53

Yeah, well, that's such a that is a very Swiss thing to do. If you go to that country and you look around, you can see that work ethic that they have. Yeah, it's it's everywhere.

Speaker 1 1:03:02

Let's learn let's learn from that, you know? Absolutely. Let's not let get people get used to breadcrumbs.

Scott Allen 1:03:08

No, you're you're it's dehuman, it's dehumanizing them, yeah, essentially.

Speaker 1 1:03:12

It's making it we should fight against it as the church and say, no, we don't we don't want that. We don't want people to get used to that. We want people to thrive and grow and develop and work.

Scott Allen 1:03:20

And the other thing I heard you say, Ian, is there's always going to be work to do, right? This idea that somehow people will be displaced by artificial intelligence or uh whatever there we don't obviously we don't know how things are going to unfold in the future. This is a radically powerful and new technology. But at the same time, there will always be things that we can do, right? I think that I was hearing that conviction that you had, you know, it's just how do you think about it?

Speaker 1 1:03:45

I mean, we might be wrong, we might not be be wrong. But the bottom line is this how do we help the people now? And right now, the people need to pivot and be prepared. And can we help people at grassroots level and get them to shine like the sun because they know something that other people don't? Amen. Which is which is possible and and awesome to see.

Luke Allen 1:04:06

Yeah, it's great. Yeah, I'm I'm encouraged. I'm just I'm just looking right now at the Psalm 8, uh verse 5, which is the one where it says, You have made them, us humans, a little lower than the angels, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have made them rulers, not serfs, rulers over the works of your hand and put everything under their feet. Everything. Including AI.

Speaker 1 1:04:30

Yeah, and the Lord is, I think the Lord at the end of the day is the ultimate chat GPT. I mean, he he knows everything, he knows everything about business, he knows everything about what it's gonna be like. Yeah, and if we sit with him and hear his voice, he's gonna he's gonna show us what to do.

Scott Allen 1:04:46

Yep. Amen. Amen. He is uh not artificial intelligence, he is all wisdom and all knowledge, right? Amen to that. Well, listen, Ina, thank you for this wonderful conversation today. And uh if you're out there listening and you have a heart to really see people in your community uh that are struggling with poverty, uh, and you want to make a difference in their lives, maybe in your own family, uh, you need to learn from Ina and from Work for a Living. I just want to really commend you, Ina, and your ministry to anyone that's involved as a Christian in this issue of poverty, poverty alleviation. How do people learn more about you and your ministry? How do they connect?

Speaker 1 1:05:30

Uh so we've got an email address, so it's info at workfor a living. Um, I'm sure uh Luke can send that out. So it's work the number four and living.org. Um, contact us. If somebody wants to start a work for a living um base, then we've got quite a lengthy training process. We've got about eight months that we work online. Um it's quite a rough process because we want to we want to undo worldviews. We want to be sure that if we're gonna serve the poor, we serve them with excellence. With people who've got the right worldview that can genuinely climb down that ladder and stand and say, This is what you need to do. So every year we run this program. It's called Y School. And the Y stands for Yada, which is really to know the Lord. At the end of the day, that's at the top of the pile. How do we get people to know the Lord? Because everything from flows from there. So they can be in contact with us. We then have a QA session every two weeks, every Friday. And then we'll give them start dates, etc.

Scott Allen 1:06:34

So you can start a work for a living program in your own community through your own church.

Speaker 1 1:06:39

100%. 100%, yes.

Scott Allen 1:06:42

Well, I want people to pray about that, consider that. And uh and this is the group I'm gonna commend to you to to look into for a really biblically worldview rooted approach to poverty fighting.

Speaker 1 1:06:53

So yeah, thanks, Scott.

Scott Allen 1:06:55

Well, thank you, Ina. Yeah, thanks for all your encouragement and uh just your friendship. Uh we are super super grateful for you. And um, and uh Luke, any final words from you before we wrap up?

Luke Allen 1:07:06

I just really appreciate this, Ina. Thank you so much for your time. And um, I'm really excited to see the way that Work for a Living continues to expand. I'm so glad that it's expanding in Latin America right now. Uh, but I really hope to see it here in my own country as well, continue to to grow. So I'm I'm looking forward to that.

Speaker 1 1:07:21

Thanks, you guys. And let's pray for the workers and thank you to what DNA does, because that was the that was the game changer right in the beginning. So we really appreciate you guys.

Scott Allen 1:07:31

Oh, glory to God. Amen. All right, thanks for being with us today. Okay, guys.

Speaker 1 1:07:34

Bless you guys, man. Bye-bye.