Opelousas Built a Giving Fridge. It Was Looted by Morning.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: And we're back. [00:00:01] Speaker B: We're back. [00:00:02] Speaker A: Episode two. Actually, this is like more like episode seven, but I'm doing several in a row. [00:00:09] Speaker B: Episode two today. [00:00:10] Speaker A: Episode two today. That's right. That's right. So because I confuse people, I've been gone for a while and there's just so many things to talk about. Okay. So I think, I think, I think we have to talk about the giving fridge. [00:00:22] Speaker B: Yes, let's talk about it. Can I, can I. Most people have probably heard, heard about the giving fridge. Did you want to give a little overview? Quick. [00:00:33] Speaker A: Go ahead, Dave, tell us, tell us about the giving fridge. [00:00:35] Speaker B: I have thoughts. I was just going to give a quick, you know, rundown. [00:00:39] Speaker A: Let's go. All right, so let's go. [00:00:42] Speaker B: The giving fridge, it's been in construction for a while. It opens. It opened what, a couple weeks ago. [00:00:48] Speaker A: Couple weeks ago at this point? Yeah, it was a project of the Chamber of Commerce. Chamber of commerce does like a leadership class and each class has like a project that they do when they finish their class their year or whatever. And so this was this year's project, the Giving Fridge. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Yep. And so it's place where people can drop off free food. [00:01:08] Speaker A: In the fridge. [00:01:09] Speaker B: In the fridge. It looks like there's some shelving as well. And there's messaging that says only take what you need. [00:01:18] Speaker A: And within days, it was the next day. [00:01:24] Speaker B: The next day after opening. [00:01:25] Speaker A: Within hours. [00:01:26] Speaker B: It's gotta say. [00:01:27] Speaker A: Within hours. [00:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah. There's, you know, footage of people arguing and kind of fighting over food and everything's just getting cleared out. People are not just taking what they [00:01:36] Speaker A: need and they're taking literally everything. [00:01:39] Speaker B: Right. And it often, at least in one of the videos that kind of went viral, it was mostly young, able bodied men in the middle of the night taking, you know, most of the food. So there's a lot of layers here. There's a lot of layers here. [00:01:55] Speaker A: There's a lot of layers here. [00:01:56] Speaker B: So first, first, The goal maybe shouldn't be to just. There's obviously some things to maybe mock here or poke fun at a little bit. [00:02:09] Speaker A: Wait, let me add this too. So it is not just a single event of pillaging that has happened to the giving fridge. Like it's been systematic. Somebody else came up shortly, several days later, bought, I think they stocked the thing with nearly 2,000. [00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:02:24] Speaker A: And then that night, all of it taken again by the same people. Now I'm not saying necessarily the same people who took the first, which maybe it is, I'm not totally sure, but. [00:02:35] Speaker B: But it's all in one go. [00:02:37] Speaker A: Took the $2,000 worth of groceries and then rolled out again. [00:02:41] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [00:02:41] Speaker A: So this is, this is creating, this is creating a problem. Anyway, Sorry, Yeah, no, I was going [00:02:46] Speaker B: to say like again, the goal here of, of having some critiques or some satire here, like that is like surface level. I think everybody, nobody's surprised by any of this stuff that's going on. [00:03:00] Speaker A: I don't know. I think people, I think some people are. Okay, I think, because think about it like, I think some people are surprised. [00:03:05] Speaker B: Sure, I should have rephrased. Like, we aren't, we most aren't surprised. We weren't surprised. [00:03:10] Speaker A: Some people are surprised. We were all sitting here like, oh man, here we go. [00:03:15] Speaker B: Yeah, but the problem, that's, that's like the surface level, that's just kind of what's happening. A lot of people aren't surprised. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:23] Speaker B: But then, you know, below that, there was a lot of people who were well intentioned, probably who had, who had very good and high hopes that this would really help people. Absolutely. [00:03:36] Speaker A: Help people. Yes. [00:03:37] Speaker B: Now there might be that temptation still for some people to use it just as like a political ploy or something [00:03:41] Speaker A: like that, But I think 100% happening, [00:03:43] Speaker B: given the situation and who was doing it. Like, it seems like most people are probably looking for a way to really help the community. But then beneath that, there's the question of was it actually a good idea or is it ever really a good idea? Maybe from the start. Do you want to talk about that for a minute? [00:04:03] Speaker A: Well, absolutely. I've been working in ministry to the poor and people in need, the homeless for man, what, like 18 years. So a long time. I've been, I've been in this space for a long time and I've attended conferences on the subject, you know, heard speakers present who have way more experience in it than I do. I've read books on the subject, done research here, and we've lived and planted a church in the city of Opelousis which is very much full of people who live well below the poverty line, not just on a national average, but on a local average, which is even lower for quite some time. So I'm not speaking from ignorance here. We've been highly engaged in this work for a while. This is the wrong way to do this. Okay. It's just the wrong. If you go talk to people who are practitioners in this space, if anybody would have talked to somebody who was an active practitioner in this space, and I mean like ministry to what you call the Underclass, the very poor, the homeless. They would have told you immediately, hey, this is not the way to do it. You're going to create more problems. You're going to cause issues. That's not to say that you're not well intentioned, but your empathy here is actually creating a problem. You're letting your emotions drive the bus rather than providing real solutions to what are obviously problems around us. Two books that I could recommend to people really, really quickly. One of them is When Helping Hurts, written by a couple of guys, Steve Corbett and Brian Fickert. That's a great book that you could take up. I read that one probably, I don't know, a decade or so ago. And I give it away to people whenever they want to think about principles like this. And also Life at the Bottom. Oh, man, an author. I can't remember. It's a gentleman from England. But Life at the Bottom is a great resource for people to be able to understand the mindset and what's going on in folks who would be members of the poorest of the poor in order to more effectively help them. [00:06:27] Speaker B: Theodore Dalrymple. [00:06:28] Speaker A: Dalrymple, yes, that's right. Dalrymple. Yes. Thank you very much. So those are two very helpful books. I think what we've got going on here is an instance where people are genuinely like you were talking about before, trying to help, but they're just doing it in a way that's actually gonna cause more pain. Points. So, for example, one of the conferences that I went to that was. It was actually a CCDA conference, Christian Community Development Conference. I think this was in Tennessee, actually, now that I think about it. This was a while back, we got together, a big room full of practitioners for one of their breakout sessions. So it's all people who are actively participating in this type of ministry. And one of the presenters got up, I think they were doing a panel or something like that, but one of the presenters got up and they were like, hey guys, we're just going to do like a free form Q and A, because we know you guys all work in this space and are probably looking for ways to advance your projects. That way, if people have questions, you got some time and we can kick the ball around a little bit, maybe try to help you advance. And everybody was excited about that. And one of the questions came up about the proper way to start a food ministry in a poor community. This was again, this was like 10 years ago. Okay, 10, 15 years ago. What's the right way to start a food ministry? I think the Particular target was maybe the homeless, but they were just saying, what's the right way to do a food ministry in a community? Now, keep in mind, these are practitioners from all over the country. Okay. That. That have all got together for this conference. And one of the panelists basically said, well, I don't think you need to do that. And everybody's looking around kind of quiet like, what. What just happened? He said, yeah, I don't think you need to do that. I don't think we're starting with the right questions. And he said, all right, we got a room full of people who do this all the time. Hey, guys, how many of you have found that people that you're trying to reach in your cities and your areas are actually hungry? Raise your hand. No one? No. And this is 10 or 15 years ago. Okay. Like, this is not recently. If anything, it's gotten worse since then. Or. Sorry. [00:08:31] Speaker B: Less hunger. [00:08:33] Speaker A: Even less hunger. Yes. Thank you. It's hard for me to find my words there and then. The problem, I would say, is largely already dealt with, but we still see over and over again the creation of these ministries, outreaches, programs that endeavor to feed the poor. And our poor today actually have a different problem. Our poor today aren't hungry. They're overweight. Overweight. You know, like, it's a different animal [00:09:02] Speaker B: that we have if we're just. Yeah. Talking stats, data. That's the reality. And again, that's something else. That's. The wool has effectively been pulled over our eyes, though I think culturally, it's still pretty common in the political sphere to just say things like, people are starving. I've seen our politicians, I'm not saying locally, but more nationally, look into a camera and say that. But it's just not true. No, it's just not true at the national level. And I do think there's a. We've also. I say pull the wool over our eyes. We also often operate with at least a semi kind of Marxist view of life. We kind of have the assumption that the inherent goodness of people, maybe especially the poor, would never kind of take advantage of these types of systems. And yet, even though the evidence might say otherwise, we kind of just throw money at things, create food, food banks, with just kind of this baseline expectation that people are going to just do the right thing most of the time. [00:10:16] Speaker A: And that's not true. Yeah, I think so. The rebuttal to what you just said, though, would be like, but, David, are you saying no one is hungry anywhere in the United States right now? To which the Answer would be, there probably are people who hungry. [00:10:32] Speaker B: Right? Absolutely. [00:10:33] Speaker A: And then their response would be, but even one is too many. Right. Isn't that the classic response? But see what that tactic is though, that's an emotional manipulative tactic. It's not actually a tactic that's really trying to solve problems and deploy resources effectively. It's a tactic that's trying to appeal to the emotions. Any good leader, whenever they're in the middle of a conflict, looks around and doesn't say, how do I keep everyone from dying? If you're in a battle, okay, because you're going to war, someone likely is going to die. Rather, what they're doing is they're looking around, they're saying, how am I going to win this battle in the most effective way possible by enduring the least amount of losses. Right. In other words, how am I going to deploy the resources that I have effectively? Yeah, we're not going to. You can't let the even one, if there's even just one, it's too many. That's a poor way to think through things. And it just doesn't deal with the reality of sin, the reality of our limited abilities of influence, spheres of influence, limited resources. Instead, we should be saying, how can we take what we have and steward it faithfully to generate a return. [00:11:51] Speaker B: Yep. Amen. And we're in a, to use your battle kind of illustration, we're in a battle, but there are no one's dying from starvation. So that's not even like the real risk. There is poverty, definitely. [00:12:07] Speaker A: They're dying from diabetes. [00:12:09] Speaker B: But there's a different solution. Right. And there's also, and this is where we get into a lot of different topics. There's also a big difference between emergency help and then actually guiding someone, helping someone on a path that will eventually generate wealth and self sufficiency. [00:12:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:27] Speaker B: And again, while a lot of efforts can be very well intentioned, when they're using basically kind of what could be a better emergency? Like sometimes like hurricane hits, tornado goes through crisis, boom. Get the food there, bring the food, give, give away free food, you know, help, help people that are, that are in the middle of a desperate, you know, need like that. But when we're looking at communities that do endure poverty, the things that will generate wealth, the things that will get people out of poverty are not this. [00:13:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not. And one of the things that that book When Helping Hurts, really harps on is international missions. Because missionaries will travel to other countries and they will deploy their resources into an area and very often the effect is now they've made that area more dependent on external resources. And so instead of those folks learning how to build and innovate and create and do their own thing faithfully and effectively and create their own wealth over time that then they learn how to steward well, they actually just keep looking for whoever it is for the missionaries who come and then they look to them to provide for their needs. And I saw this firsthand. I did a lot of international mission trips for years. We would travel to Central America, South America, and we would go into the barrios, into the very, very poor areas. And when the gringos rolled in the white people, when the white people rolled in, those kids knew good stuff was coming and they would whoosh like the kids in the barrios. And it would even get to the point sometimes where our guides would say things like to us, hey, do not take your hands out of your pockets or don't hand anything to anybody because then you're going to get mobbed. Because that was what it had devolved into. Rather than actually going into an area and helping people, we were creating a high, high degree of dependency. And for those children to see the gringos come in and know that they were going to get something good, that probably means that the gringos show up every couple of weeks like a new tour of, of helpers who are actually not helping at all. They're actually making things worse. Yeah. So I think whenever we talk about things like this, the next immediate logical conclusion is like, okay, well then what is the right way to do this? How do we deal with this situation? And again, we have to remember that the people who started this probably were very well intentioned people. Right? They were saying, hey, we recognize that we live in a very poor community and we want to help it, but the solution for Apelousis and St. Landry parish to get out of poverty, and I need everybody to hear me, is not more free stuff. We have free stuff everywhere. Here people live in free houses, they eat free food, wait for an election year, folks are giving away food for free like crazy every election year. It's wild to me. We have free housing, we have, I mean it's free medical care, we have free on, free on, free on, free on, free free education. And yet things here just keep getting worse. That means something. Okay? We've got to realize that that means something. So what do we do to course correct? Well, a friend of mine had a great idea. They said, hey, can we just put a job employment board up next to the Fridge. Like, I love that idea. Can we, like, can we do that? Can we point people in directions where they can become self sufficient? Now in my counseling in the past, what I've found in situations like this is it takes a little bit of pastoral care and counseling to help get people off of the free relationship. Yeah, it takes some time to be able to get them there. But if they repent and believe on the Lord Jesus, he says you should work. You should not just work to provide for yourself, but you should provide for yourself. But you should also work enough to be a blessing and provide for others and to be generous with your money. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him earn a living and be generous and give to others. And so what we have to do is kind of help people get out of that mindset which they're incentivized to live in. Right. If they work at all, they lose all their benefits. Even if they get married, they lose some of their benefits. Like there's penalizations that happen inside of this slavery system that we've created for people today that actually doesn't want them to get married and doesn't want them to get a job. It wants them to stay right there in poverty. It doesn't incentivize, exit the situation. Whereas statistically, men and women who get married and stay married make more money. [00:17:35] Speaker B: It's like the systems that we've created to help try to help alleviate the problem kind of from the top down have actually incentivized the problem. [00:17:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it makes it worse. Yes, it absolutely does. It absolutely does. Marriage. People who get married and stay married make more money over time. And people who work, even if it's just like a base level job, statistically they don't stay there. The longer that they work, the more money that they make over time. [00:18:09] Speaker B: Right. [00:18:10] Speaker A: Like, I think personally the dead end job is just a lie. I think that's just a lie. I'm just gonna be here working this dead end job for the rest of my life. No, I don't know anybody who's done that and who's worked faithfully. All the people that I know who have worked faithfully have moved up. [00:18:27] Speaker B: And on the other end, you and I probably know dozens of stories of people who really have gotten out of poverty and out of addiction and things like that. We go to church with them and know people who run ministries who work with these guys and we get to hear some incredible testimonies. But none of them got out of poverty or difficult situations from handouts. No not to say there weren't any, like, gifts or free things along the way, but what got them out was learning how to work hard, taking responsibility, getting some training and some education, and learning how to live as a human being. [00:19:11] Speaker A: Well. And so let me also say this. I have been the recipient of great generosity in my life. Not only just recently, whenever my son had to go have some treatment in another city state for a long period of time, but before that point, I worked at a local institution and they paid me like 1200 bucks a month. And in order for us to live while I was working that particular job, we. We were the recipients of generosity from other people. So, like the person who rented us a house, gave us a killer deal on a house. They only charged us, I think it was like 400 and something dollars a month to rent the house. I was like, wow. And then we had 800 bucks left for everything else. And we. [00:20:03] Speaker B: But those people knew you. [00:20:06] Speaker A: They did. They knew me. They had relationship with me. I would even go as far to say that several of them were and still are mentors in my life to this day. And it was good. And it still is good. I text them every. I mean, they don't live here anymore. They've moved away, but I text them every now and then. In fact, one of them is still named in my phone. My Hero. That's their actual name now. They did that themselves as a joke, but I still see it every day. I'm like, look, I remember this guy, my buddies. But we're not saying that generosity in and of itself is wrong. But there's a right way and a wrong way to deploy it. Okay. And instances where we're just only and not. [00:20:53] Speaker B: Are we saying that it's non or wrong? Sorry, we are saying that it's good, but it needs. We need to have the right categories. [00:21:00] Speaker A: You ought to be generous. Like the Bible tells us you should make enough to be generous. But there is a type of fake generosity that actually destroys people. Go look up the statistics about the people who win the lottery. Just pause this episode, Google it on your phone, then come back and push play. Overwhelming. I think it actually might be 100%, but overwhelming amounts of people who have won those prizes get right back into the same amount of poverty again. Right back. Wealth can destroy people. People who receive large settlements, like large, like payout settlements, whether it's an accident or some kind of other legal settlement or something like that, that can actually end their life in a worse situation than it was whenever it started because they weren't ready. They weren't trained yet and how to handle it. Wealth is not a blessing all the time for everyone. Wealth can actually be judgment. Heads up. [00:22:08] Speaker B: Yep. [00:22:10] Speaker A: So how would we do this correctly? I think a job board is a great idea. I think that our city as a whole, our parish as a whole needs to invest some time and some resources into real business development here. So, for example, think about it like this. The giving fridge. Right. We're going to give away free food, free meals, free groceries to people. Okay. Who you putting out of business to do it? Because I know in these neighborhoods in Appaloosas that a lot of these kitchens sell out of the kitchen. A lot of these families make plate lunches, they make dinners, and they sell them out of their back door. I know people in town that have done it. I've bought from them. Right, right, right. Some of the best chicken wings I have ever had in my life came out of some dude's kitchen in Appaloosas. Like, not even at a restaurant. They were awesome. In fact, they were. They were named after weed strain, actually flavors. But I digress. But they were amazing. They were very good. They didn't have weed in them, by the way. Officer. Officer. They didn't have weed in them. But it was a. How many of those institutions are we knocking out? How many of those people are we preventing from now having a business? [00:23:31] Speaker B: Sure. [00:23:31] Speaker A: Now building something. [00:23:32] Speaker B: So. Yeah. The things that are communal and productive are being cut off. Yeah. [00:23:39] Speaker A: De. [00:23:39] Speaker B: Incentivized. [00:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Why would I bother making groceries anymore? They can just go down to the fridge, down the way and get their dinner. Oh, man, my business is over. How much money are we taking from local grocery stores that are already struggling? [00:23:52] Speaker B: Right. [00:23:53] Speaker A: Is this not an effective tactic? So I think instead incentivizing the development of business, like Find Ways. And I had a friend of mine, I think it was Seth Robin, who had an idea. He wanted to, like, find ways to help people start new local businesses. He was like, trying to figure out how to sponsor them into starting a business. Yeah, I think it's a great way to think, man. Like get behind these people, these local businesses, these local institutions, become an investor. And investing. Giving somebody money as an investment implies a return on that investment. Do you know what I'm saying? And so there's a degree of accountability here and there's a degree of relationship. And the context for this exists within the local church of like small no interest loans to just say, hey, here you go, buddy. Good luck. Here's some seed money. And Then I've bought, I don't know, a 20% share in your business in 10 years. We'll come back and talk and see what that's turned into, see how that could continue to grow. That's a good way to kind of work through these things. We could think through systems like that. And that's not far off. Right, right, right. That's not impossible if we're able to fundraise. I saw those fridges over at the giving fridge. Like those are commercial grade fridges and it's got looks like high speed WI fi, Internet connected to it and big fancy cameras and they built a structure around it like that's probably $30,000 worth of gear just hanging out over here on the corner. Maybe some of it was donated. Who knows what kind of businesses could we incentivize to start here in Appaloosas with that kind of startup capital? 30 grand? Yeah, bruh. [00:25:33] Speaker B: Yep. And I think, yeah, one of the problems, and this is where there's not a quick probably solution to this, but we've looked to the wrong source for these solutions for a long, long, long time. And that's where we talked about earlier, the, you know, kind of incentivizing of the wrong, the wrong things, people. For things to change. We're going to have to get out of the mindset of always government has to do needs to get closer and closer and closer. Right. The closer you are in relationship to the people that you're helping. [00:26:02] Speaker A: Yes. [00:26:02] Speaker B: The better it's going to be. There's the church, there's the family, there's your neighbor. [00:26:07] Speaker A: Yes. [00:26:08] Speaker B: But that's going to be the big hurdle, I think in people's minds and the practical hurdle of people getting out of poverty. Right. Because they are incentivized to stay. [00:26:18] Speaker A: They are incentivized to stay. They are. And we've ministered with lots of folks and helped lots of people make good steps out of that situation. Some people into completely new and different lives than they used to be in. By the grace of God. [00:26:31] Speaker B: Amen. [00:26:31] Speaker A: It can be done. It's not impossible. There is a way out. More free stuff is not that way. It's just not. Maybe I should say only more free stuff is not that way. [00:26:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:26:47] Speaker A: Generosity is good. This is not a podcast saying stop being generous. You guys are saying not to be generous. No, that's not what we're saying. Listen to the whole episode. But we are saying that it's important to in your generosity, like David was saying, have relationship accountability, a trajectory for someone and to also know when to say no, when to say, we're done. We're done now. This is not going to work anymore. That's helpful for people. Some of the best answers that you can give people in their life for their benefit is no. Great helps. Great helps. Yep. [00:27:26] Speaker B: All right. [00:27:26] Speaker A: Well, guys, thank y' all so much for listening to another episode of the Parish Circuit. You can go to our website or find our social media presence. If you've got questions or topics that you would like us to cover, we would love to cover them, too, and we could chat about them more and more. Send them to us and we'll see how it goes. In the meantime, thank you for listening, and we'll see you all next time. [00:27:43] Speaker B: So long.