When the church has a choice of dealing with government agencies or church related agencies, it seems to feel that the government agencies are more qualified. I was working for the welfare department when a church first approached me to help them develop a ministry to the poor. The church had no one that was experienced in working with the poor and knew I was a pastor as well as a Social Worker. While the government has many professional staff that have much that they can teach the church, many frontline government workers do little to deal with the problems clients face. While government workers have the training, they work mostly with paperwork and rarely get directly involved with clients. When I worked for the welfare dept., I sent out the forms and the client filled them out and sent them back. I reviewed the form and approved them, if they qualified. I was only supposed to contact the client if I had a problem with the paperwork. I wanted to help many of them and often went outside my assigned duties to help them, when I could, but I rarely had time to do much. Workers can rarely delve deeper into the client’s problems then seeing that they have the necessary paperwork and meet the necessary criteria, due to heavy caseloads. If they can’t help, they generally tell them to look elsewhere. On the other hand, church agencies often deal directly with clients and seek to locate other resources the client may have that they can use to help themselves. In addition, they are often aware of a wide variety of resources beyond their own which they can refer clients to. As a result, government agencies often refer clients they can’t help to church agencies like the Salvation Army who are more aware of resources available and have more time to help.