Conditions worldwide paint an often-bleak picture. Consider these scenarios:

A long line of people wait outside a rural African clinic. Some have walked for miles in the hot weather just to see a doctor. Now there is not enough time to see all the patients and the people have nowhere else to go.

A dozen poor families in a tsunami-devastated area send their children to a school set up by a humanitarian relief group. The school lunch will be the only meal some of the children will eat all day, but the funding was a one-time gift that will soon expire.

Refugees in a war-torn land wait behind a barbed wire fence to receive a bundle of clothing and some vitamins.

While overwhelming needs around the developing world have compelled many churches to take action, often the mission work churches undertake is inadequate and short-sighted. Churches may readily undertake relief efforts that provide some immediate needs for impoverished people and make donors and volunteers feel good about themselves, but in the long run may not bring meaningful results.

"The bigger purpose is what God wants to accomplish in the world," says David Mays, Great Lakes regional director for Advancing Churches in Missions Commitment (ACMC) and the author of several practical resources on missions for the local church. Also a consultant for healthy church missions, his work with ACMC connects churches to one another to learn about effective missions ministries.

"There's no doubt that there are benefits for yourself, whenever you do God's will, but there's sort of an insidious sense in which our ‘me-ism' gets into missions," Mays says.

Thinking longer term helps churches envision programs that can bring lasting change to a community. This also means thinking in terms of others and their stated and felt needs. In this way, individual congregations are just learning what most mission agencies have long preached: teach a man to fish rather than giving him food.

Beyond that, outreach strategy worldwide is becoming defined as whole-life transformation—spiritual, physical, social and emotional. This work is labeled "transformational development" or "wholistic" outreach, with the "w" purposely added to denote efforts to reach the whole person.

Transformational development defined

The basic elements of this type of ministry include a community- or church-based approach to training indigenous believers to meet an area of need among themselves. While the vision is cast by an outside group, the local community is empowered to buy into the idea while being trained and enabled to take over, then multiply the effort elsewhere.

Wholistic ministry is about sustainable development from the inside rather than the outside. Perhaps the place where this distinction is most obvious is disaster relief. While recent worldwide disasters have brought great opportunities for global outreach, they have underlined the importance of a transformational development approach.

Transforming impact

Dr. Ted Yamamori, international director for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, notes the upswing of evangelical response in particular to worldwide disaster and the subsequent consideration of mission philosophy.

"More evangelical ministries and churches are recognizing the importance of wholistic ministries," says Yamamori, noting that is not a fresh development. Yamamori says it can be traced back to the 1974 Lausanne Covenant, and further back to Christ's ministry. "Globally speaking," he says, "it's not new."

According to Stan Rowland of Medical Ambassadors International (MAI), transformational development "seeks to transform individual lives physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually in local communities by meeting people at their point of need."

What distinguishes this type of work from other evangelism or aid programs is the integration of spiritual and physical ministries. Then, the transformation continues to pass from one person to another. Like seeds of the gospel, they then can multiply across a community, a city and a nation.

Transformation in Ethiopia

Fukado Endale, senior minister at the Mekanisa New Covenant Baptist Church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, said the overwhelming physical needs of his community necessitate a wholistic approach to outreach for his church.

"Ministry of Ethiopia is overcoming both physical and spiritual problems," Endale says. His church of 250 adults and 300 children started a wholistic HIV/AIDS clinic and counseling center to provide physical care in addition to psychological and spiritual counseling.

With AIDS, church leaders in Africa have discovered that medical care is not enough. Dr. Florence Muindi of Life in Abundance International works with indigenous churches in Ethiopia, Kenya and elsewhere to help them implement community-changing ministries by meeting needs.

"We are looking for a way to equip the churches as a place where they can find health," she says.

Along with physical treatment and care, churches can also provide spiritual direction and hope. Says Muindi: "Finding that hope in the church is a wonderful opportunity."

The opportunity in the transformational development model has potential to shorten the line at the African clinic by meeting needs within the community and through volunteers. It helps churches create sustainable development projects so local communities determine a way to educate their own children. It has potential to transform the displaced lives of refugees with not only physical, but spiritual restoration.