Social Work-J

God tells us to feed the hungry and cloth the naked but the church is very reluctant to help and is often resistant to efforts to involve it in helping the poor. It is hard to pin down the reasons for that reluctance but I feel that part of it stems from a feeling that the church doesn’t have the resources and it doesn’t have the people experienced in dealing with the problems, yet the church was involved in Social Work long before the government ever got involved. The church doesn’t have the people trained to do it now because it has neglected Social Services for 50 years and there are very few Church Social Service agencies today. The Church based agencies used to minister to the poor and provide the training and experience  for church workers. When clients approach churches, they usually deal with secretarial staff first, yet the secretarial staff in most churches do not have the training to evaluate problems and pastors often do not either. In addition, pastors are often busy or absent a great deal.