During last year’s Ebola crisis, when World Vision recruited Sierra Leone religious leaders to teach prevention in their communities, Christians and Muslims decided to work together. “It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen,” recalls Rich Stearns, head of the organization’s American arm. “We had Christian pastors speaking in mosques and Muslim imams speaking in Christian churches.”
This is not your father’s World Vision. Founded in 1950 to support evangelical missionaries running hospitals, schools, and orphanages overseas, the organization initially refused to accept government grants or work with secular groups or other denominations. Today it takes hundreds of millions of dollars in government funds. It works with Muslim imams, Buddhist priests, and the famously agnostic Bill Gates.
The organization’s evolution shows the delicate dance performed by many faith-based nonprofits working in secular fields. Though some hide their religious identity or shed it altogether, World Vision has adapted over the years, not always without controversy, and become a leader among international relief and development groups.
“They’re not hiding their faith commitment,” says David King, director of the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving at Indiana University. “What’s fascinating is that they have maintained their religious identity even as they professionalized and broadened their range of partnerships.”
A New Flexibility
World Vision began to move from its evangelical, go-it-alone roots in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it first accepted government aid. Increasingly, it hired professional staff and broadened its mission from simple charity to a coordinated attack on the many contributors to poverty, whether clean water or gender equity.
This strategy required a new flexibility as World Vision began to work with the regulars in the relief and development field and foreign governments. “As a Christian organization, we want to have a firm center and soft edges,” explains Mr. Stearns. “A firm center means we don’t compromise our core identity and beliefs. But we don’t want to have hard edges when we deal with the world.”
An example of this “firm center, soft edges” operational theory: New World Vision hires must commit to the Apostles’ Creed or to the organization’s statement of faith, which declares the Bible “the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” At the same time, the organization draws broadly from the Christian world for its staff: Its 1,200 employees in the United States come from more than 50 denominations.
Though seemingly simple, World Vision’s approach is not without tensions that occasionally flare up. Christian conservatives, who remain World Vision’s strongest backers, lashed out when the U.S. board voted last year to make gays in same-sex marriages eligible for employment. The organization quickly reversed itself, which in turn angered many liberals.
Mr. Stearns says the original decision was aimed to pull World Vision from the battle over gay marriage dividing churches and denominations supporting the organization. “We were trying to defer this issue to the local church and, ironically, to avoid the controversy by saying, ‘That’s a matter for your local church and your denomination to deal with.’ "
But he admits it was a confusing message. “We’ve had to rebuild some bridges and explain what happened.”
In global meetings following the controversy, World Vision leaders reaffirmed that the organization’s mission remains rooted in faith, Mr. Stearns says. “We take the view that we are who we are. We are a Christian organization with Christian values, and we would rather be a smaller organization faithful to our values than a larger organization that compromised those values.”
“So far,” he adds, “we don’t believe that we have to be smaller because of our values.”
