Christians in International Development

Darrell Bock: 

Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for Christian Leadership and Cultural Engagement at the Center for Christian Leadership, the Hendricks Center here in Dallas at the Seminary. My guest today is someone I've known since he was six years old, David Hoehner, who happens to be the son of Harold Hoehner, who was department chair of New Testament when I came to teach here. We used to go over to his house, hold events, and host students. It's also a graduate seminary. 

David, we're so glad you could be with us today. 

David Hoehner: 

Thank you. It's a privilege to be here and be a part of this podcast. 

Darrell Bock: 

David has taken an unusual route as a seminary grad. He went to the seminary. Which year did you graduate? 

David Hoehner: 

I graduated in 1998. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, 1998. Then from there, he didn't go into the pastorate, he didn't go into teaching, he didn't go into several things that most graduates do. He ended up in the world of international development, which is going to be our topic for today. We're going to talk about how Christians work in the service and charity workspace, kind of a huge combination, some of it with NGOs, some of it with organizations that are tied to government and other organizations. We're going to have David to walk through his life and how he got from A to B, since it isn't a normal A to B trip for a seminarian. Then we're going to talk about what's going on in that world today. 

David, why don't you start us off? You grew up in Dallas, obviously. Where did you go to college? 

David Hoehner: 

I went to the University of Texas, like you. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay. That's exactly right. Were two UT grads, although I try not to broadcast that too much. They think I'm a football player. Then from there, you came to seminary, I take it? Or did you work for a while before you came to seminary? 

David Hoehner: 

No, I had some detours… Not detours, but my seminary story is a little bit more conventional in parts of it than I think maybe you remember. But after University of Texas, I've been involved with a couple different student ministries. One of those was Cru. At the end of my time at the seminary, this was at University of Texas, this is 1991, it was kind of the late stages of Glasnost under Gorbachev. A team formed from two Cru staff members, then several UT students, and then one extra person who ended up becoming my wife who had graduated from Auburn University to work at Moscow State University. 

Darrell Bock: 

Oh, that's right. You were in Moscow… You were there before your sister was. Is that right? Or did she go at the same time? 

David Hoehner: 

I was. She had gone on a summer project earlier, my older sister. Then, yeah, I went there, spent a year there working at Moscow State University, helping support a student ministry. Stayed an additional year, moved out to Novosibirsk, which is in the biggest city in Siberia, I believe, and helped start a student ministry there. Was there through '93, and came back and went to Dallas. Really enjoyed that student ministry, but was interested in really helping churches in theological training, which was nascent, for obvious reasons, at that time. The first seminaries and theological schools were forming in the early '90s. 

Darrell Bock: 

Here's a hard question. How cold was it in Siberia? 

David Hoehner: 

Really cold. We weren't in the coldest, coldest part of Siberia. It'd probably be something equivalent to Southern Canada or North Dakota. The average day in the winter was probably -5. I went cross-country skiing in as low as -27, but not crazy temperatures like -50 or -60. 

Darrell Bock: 

Oh, I'm glad. I mean, us in Texas, those numbers don't even register with us. You came to seminary, and then after seminary, what'd you do? 

David Hoehner: 

Okay, so after seminary, actually, we went back overseas to initially work with a ministry. We joined an organization called World Venture, and returned overseas in 2000 with two young kids at the time. We moved to Donetsk, which is in eastern Ukraine, where our mission had several families and we went there to do language school. It was in the speaking of Ukraine so we learned Russian with a view to moving somewhere else probably and working at a theological school. In the process of that year, I was invited to join the faculty at Donetsk Christian University, which was the second-oldest Protestant seminary theological training school of that time. It started in 1991. I joined the faculty there in 2001. 

Darrell Bock: 

You were there for how long? 

David Hoehner: 

We were there in Ukraine overall six years, five years working at the school after language school. Initially joined as a teacher, taught a course in the gospels, and then it was a small enough school where you taught what was needed to be taught. I taught courses in mission theology, spiritual formation, historical theology, theology. In my second year, I was asked to be academic dean so I served in that capacity for four years as well. Helped them through accreditation program, opened up some new programs including some distance learning programs. It was delightful years, really delightful years. 

Darrell Bock: 

I can imagine then that the conflict that exists now is something that is almost painful to think about, given that. 

David Hoehner: 

There's been really few things in life that have been as wrenching to me as this. I would say probably nothing else apart from my father's death in terms of how deeply it has torn us. For us, this started much earlier than for a lot of America. We actually went back and took our kids there in 2013 just to reacquaint them with where they had lived in their early childhood and some of their first years of schooling for our boys. It was a place that wasn't perfect, but was prospering economically, had really grown forward in terms of democratic deepening in many ways. We saw friends that had struggled when we left in 2006 that were running successful businesses. 

Little did we know, and we actually left our boys there another two or three weeks just to connect, that within six months, that part of Ukraine would be taken over by Russia in 2014. They did Crimea and then they did eastern parts of Ukraine after that. We saw almost all our friends leave, go to the western parts of Ukraine to Kiev, or Lviv, or other places. We saw their lives uprooted. We actually raised some money to help support them in that transition. 

Then, of course, in 2022, 10 o'clock at night, watching the news, and seeing the full onslaught invasion. Some of these same friends who had moved from Donetsk woke up in Bucha having bombs and having to abandon their house that day. We took one son in for about a year or two of a student family that we were close to. He lived with us and now we've launched him. He's up in New York City. 

Darrell Bock: 

Wow. Okay. From the Ukraine, what was next? 

David Hoehner: 

Okay, so I'll maybe unpack that a little bit. As we were in Ukraine, through my teaching and some of my writing, I started becoming just more and more interested in the full orb dimension of the gospel that moved beyond just private spiritual relationship with God to more impact in terms of our place in public life and how it impacts or should impact communities of faith in terms of their social, economic, and political understanding, and how they interact in the world. I began to teach to that a little bit more, try to wrestle with what is the place of the gospel in the public sphere. 

At the same time, I was experiencing a country that was post-Soviet, and a lot of the post-Soviet republics really struggled with corruption. A lot of the same players who were in power during the Soviet Union remained in power after the Soviet Union. They used those levers of power for self-enrichment and to gain further power. 

At the time, Ukraine was in the bottom quartile of most corrupt nations in the world. We just saw the extent to which that deeply corrupted people's lives, deeply deformed people's lives, how they couldn't run successful businesses. We had one friend who tried to make a go at a business, took the initiative, took the risk, then was squashed by a mafia-like organization, and just gave up. I had another friend who confided that he was planning to immigrate with his family to the west, and he said, "I love my country. I love being here, but I want a place where I can earn money honestly, and my kids can earn money honestly." That broke my heart, and that parallel developments made me start thinking about what place is there for a Christian to work in the public sphere. 

I started learning a little bit more about the field of international development, and how governments and multilateral organizations really invest in other countries in developing their political, social, and economic systems. We made a hard decision. I was on the route to go on for a PhD, similar to my father, and had reached out to programs. In the end, decided that as much as I treasured that and I had really enjoyable time in the life of the academy there, that I wanted to try to work on these problems from the inside. Went back to get a master's degree at Johns Hopkins University, focused on international development in politics and governance. 

Darrell Bock: 

You were in the DC area during that time? 

David Hoehner: 

Yeah, we came back in 2006. We moved back for two years in 2006, and have not left other than where my work has taken me. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay. You say where your work has taken you. You've been to a lot of places, so I guess tick through the list. 

David Hoehner: 

Okay. I mean, I've been to places where my work took me. When I graduated, I joined a company called Louis Berger at the time. It eventually got bought by another company called WSP. It's a for-profit company. Both of those are principally planning and engineering companies, but Louis Berger had always worked a lot in the developing world. They had a whole portfolio of projects that worked with donors like USAID, the US Agency for International Development. 

My first work with them for the first four years was mostly in Afghanistan. Although I was based in DC, I was about 50% of my time in Afghanistan supporting a variety of projects we were doing over there. That's the reason we ended up staying in DC. These weren't places where they generally encouraged or even allowed you to take your family. To do work there required actually being there and working individually without my family. Afghanistan is where I cut my teeth in the field of development, and then I moved into other areas. Our company did a lot of work in Iraq. I supported those in a little bit more of a limited way compared to what we were doing. 

Then quite a bit of work in the Philippines. In the last few years, it was really El Salvador, Honduras, a little bit Nepal, so kind of a spectrum of countries. Then most recently, until some changes in April 2024, I joined USAID itself where I was working more on the policy and program design. That took me in support of countries really all over the world: Africa, Asia, Europe. 

Darrell Bock: 

Let's talk about the kind of thing that you were doing when you're in Afghanistan or Iraq or El Salvador. What kinds of projects are you… I mean if you're working for an engineering company, I imagine it has to do with infrastructure development and some of those kinds of things. Am I right about that or wrong? 

David Hoehner: 

It started out that. Our company got into these projects because they were doing engineering projects, and my work in Afghanistan was centered around those kinds of projects. But developments wider than that includes things like health, education, governance, that is strengthening government systems, which became my focus, business and economic development. Initially, my interest in going into this was really governance. It was how do you strengthen government systems so they more effectively deliver services to citizens? How they do that in an accountable way, transparent way, so that money is used to their intended ends and in a way that is participatory, that allows citizens involved in that. 

But I came into the company as an economist, and so I initially supported these huge infrastructure projects that America funded as a part of its development in the aftermath of our invasion there. Our company built around, I think, 1500, maybe 1200 miles of highways. I did initially some analysis on the economic and social impacts of that work. 

Then as they build all these assets, huge infrastructure systems, and we did energy giving a couple 24/7 energy for the first time in decades, providing cheaper energy across the country, they did some water infrastructure. As we build these sorts of assets, we take it for granted in the United States, but if you don't take care of those assets, actually they don't last that long. Potholes appear in streets, roads fall apart, water lines break. 

For about two years, I was really working with their Ministry of Public Works, helping to support creating better government systems to make sure that those roads were repaired, that they had ways to finance those roads. That's my work in Afghanistan, a little bit in the Philippines was in the infrastructure space. 

But then I expanded beyond that to looking at economic development issues. Then my really area of specialty the last 10 years was how you strengthen government systems from a national level government in terms of how it taxes and uses money accountably. Then my sweet spot was really local government systems, how you help municipalities and cities plan, budget, and deliver services that citizens want, and that allows citizens to be involved in those. 

Darrell Bock: 

How many different organizations did you rotate through in the midst of doing this, because it sounds like you're moving around a little bit? 

David Hoehner: 

It's project-based work. Actually, most of my career in international development was with one company. Now, that company got bought, but it was essentially the same team and company I worked with. Essentially, the way the US government and other donor governments worked is they would have their own teams inside the countries, and they would say, "You know what? We're seeing that local governments aren't really working in a way that leads to people to flourish. That there's potholes in the roads, the street lights are out, so it's dangerous. We'd like to have a project that helps governments improve those systems and make them sustainable financially." They'll send out what was called a request for proposals and say, "This is what we want done," and you, as a company, propose into that. You put what you're going to do in your budget for it, how are you going to do it, who your team members, what your staff's going to be. 

If you win that, then usually it was about five years to implement it. You're doing a project over the course of five years that tries to deliver against what the donor, and mostly in my case, USAID, decided what needed to be done. You're reporting against that and showing them how you're meeting the metrics that they wanted out of it. 

It was really all the same company for me. There's dozens of companies and nonprofit organizations that worked in that space that competed for the work. But when I was an implementer, what they call an implementing partner, it was really with that one company. 

Darrell Bock: 

You mentioned USAID a couple of times. What is USAID? 

David Hoehner: 

Great question. USAID is the US Agency for International Development. It was started in 1961. It was very much an institution that was created in the Cold War era. It was really America's soft power. It's the way we projected diplomatic strength through doing economic development projects, strengthening governments, helping with health, helping with education, agriculture, a number of sectors. It was very much our counter to the communist attempts to promote their ideology around the world. 

It was to show that there are ways to organize society that allow for political freedom, respect human rights, that encourage human enterprise through businesses, that provide ecosystems through better regulation, banks, financing that allows people to thrive. That was really the counterweight through soft power that we had for those years. 

Obviously, when communism largely fell, at least in the Soviet space, AID reinvented itself or continued to do economic development projects as a form of soft power. Then there's been a couple different pivots since then. That's generally what it does. It tries to create American influence in some ways for American self-interest, but in a mutually beneficial way, people are strengthened politically. They have better economic opportunity, they have access to schools and health. Good for them. But so doing, it also yields and generates goodwill towards the United States and sometimes trading partners. South Korea is the poster child for that, where we did development aid for decades, and now one of our main trading partners. 

Where there were other pivots is in the aftermath of 9/11, there was much more resources and development directed towards unstable and fragile countries, with the idea that if you can create better political and economic systems, you create less draw to extremist forces. Then I would say the last 10, 15 years, the pivot by both Democrat and Republican administrations in addition to that has also been how do you counter China's influence as it invests billions of dollars around the world, not just to do development. They've done some good things. I don't want to discount it completely. But also, that's their attempt to exert power, influence, and loyalty around the world too. There's been a lot of that. 

The story with USAID, unfortunately, just ended. We don't need to get into politics of it, but the current administration decided that's not really the way they wanted to do it anymore, and so USAID closed its doors this past July, early July. 

Darrell Bock: 

When that happened what goes? 

David Hoehner: 

In terms of US… 

Darrell Bock: 

In terms of international development. What is the impact on that and international development to have had that happen? 

David Hoehner: 

Well, it is tremendous. Again, I want to be careful because I know different people have different perceptions on it, so I'll give my take on it. The US committed around $50 billion in funding throughout the world. Some of that apparently will be done through the state department. It's not clear whether this will be kept. I think some of the health interventions and some emergency response interventions will be kept. Anything I touch in terms of governance is gone so far as I can see. I think pretty much all of our education work is gone. A lot of our work on economic development is gone. 

USAID, by far, was the largest bilateral donor, bilateral meaning country to other country. You still have institutions like the World Bank and other kinds of development banks like the Asian Development Bank working in these spaces. You have other actors acting, bit USAID was a leader in this. Anywhere in the world you went, even other donors looked and got cues from USAID often. My last trip was to Moldova, sat around a table with eight or nine other donors, and helped facilitate a meeting where we were discussing some work there. 

Clearly, even though USAID, in some cases, wasn't the biggest donor in this particular space, USAID played an outsized role in leadership. I think we lose leadership, we lose a lot of the investments in the areas where we are investing in things like education, governance, economic development, but there's also a tremendous means of soft power. While USAID staff was 10,000 people, about 3000 of those were foreign nationals. We had people working El Salvador and Nepal, Cambodia, all over the world. Local nationals who served USAID often had worked their 10, 20, 30 years were just a Rolodex. If someone came to a country, even like a congressman or a business leader, and they wanted to meet with the Chamber of Commerce, they wanted to meet with this NGO, or they wanted to meet with this mayor, these people had the Rolodex to open that up to people as they came. 

Again, trying to be careful. I think it's a tremendous loss, not in terms of just the benefits across the world but also to American influence diplomatically. But I mean, to give some of the more stark statistics, and I don't have these, but just to understand USAID's impact in some very macro areas, the whole Green Revolution in India and the broader global south was really funded and largely pioneered by USAID. That's credited with literally saving billions of people's lives in terms of giving better pest-resistant seeds and allowing India to become an exporter of food rather than an importer in other parts of the world. 

Then really the other signature program that's hailed really internationally as one of the best development programs ever was the PEPFAR program under George W. Bush where he saw the need in terms of caring for HIV-AIDS infected. That's credited with saving over 25 million lives in the last 25 years. There's some sense in which that program may continue, but it's not completely clear to what extent it will. 

Darrell Bock: 

The impact of this, just so people understand what international development is and its impact, is that not only are the localities benefiting from the expertise that comes in or came in, but it also builds a lot of goodwill between the people who are helped and the fact that our government was there helping them. 

David Hoehner: 

No, absolutely. I think that's underappreciated. Many parts of the world in the most remote parts, in the poorest part of the world, what people know of the United States is really what they did through USAID, that everything is branded. Every bag of grain, every computer that we donate to an organization has the USAID label on it, maybe almost to the extent that the American flag, that label was recognized as a generator of goodwill. How the US did it was actually really looked out for the interest of the recipients in ways that sometimes I'd say other donors, I would name China as one of those, doesn't do in an equal way. 

Darrell Bock: 

There's a vacuum. Into that vacuum steps who? 

David Hoehner: 

It's not clear, and I think we're all searching to figure that out. There was some hope that maybe other donors would do so. Other bilaterals though, because of American leadership, have actually retracted too, and not just because of what's happened here. It's almost given permission for them to do that as they face their own fiscal demands. Several of the European donors, like the British equivalent of USAID, EU, and others, have contracted in their spending this year, in part because of their fiscal situations, and also are pressure to increase defense spending, which is a need as well. They've contracted in their spending. 

There are obviously big foundations, like the Bill Gates Foundation, that I've heard are trying to explore ways to fill some of the gaps. But there's no way, even what I think is the largest foundation in the world, can step into that big of a gap. Hopefully, others will step out. In some cases, hopefully, the governments themselves will step up. We've heard of stories of that. I believe Nigeria was mentioned as one where one health sector program we did was pulled back, and they decided to allocate some money to that. That maybe is not all bad. 

But the more direct answer, there will be a lot of places that we funded that will no longer be funded. Not to be dramatic, I do think there will be suffering because of that in not just thousands and tens of thousands, but potentially hundreds of thousands of lives. We worked in places like HIV-AIDS response, we worked in things like early child vaccinations, did a lot in malarial treatment that saved millions of lives. If that vacuum is not filled or even partially filled, it will result in lost lives and then certainly lost economic life. 

Darrell Bock: 

Do these nations turn to other people who may be willing to help? In other words, if it contracts in Europe, if it contracts the United States, and if it contracts with the other people who normally are there, won't they look for help from elsewhere, wherever they can get it? 

David Hoehner: 

Yeah, and they always have done that, but this just opens a vacuum for that. There are anecdotally several stories where the day a USAID program was closed, China stepped in and said, "Okay, we'll fund that." Some of that may be good. I don't impugn that completely. But China does do things differently, and they often do things that lead to deeper indebtedness by that country to China itself. They often don't really care about, if you build a road, whether it's done transparently, and there's not money given to government leaders. The same kinds of environmental concerns and other things that would go into a USAID project or European donor project often isn't included in those projects either. 

Absolutely, with that vacuum, it does open up places for China to step in, opens places in part for even Russia to step in as they try to expand their influence around the world. There's always already, like I say, stories of that happening. 

Darrell Bock: 

Now, this may sound like a strange question, but my analogy, I was thinking about this in thinking about this podcast, is one of the things that happened to us, we had our kids in public schools, were very involved in the PTA, kept very, very close to the elementary school, junior high, and high school that our kids went through, and tried to be as supportive as we could as Christians. We inevitably found that there were many Christians working in these spaces. The moment they found out we were Christian, they let us know in a second, said this was their ministry, this is how they viewed what they were doing. It's where God had called them, and they had a sense of calling for what they were doing. There was a lot of Christian work in the public schools that you normally don't hear about. 

I'm assuming that in these areas, international development, and it's certainly true with many NGOs, there's a heavy Christian presence in the work that gets done. Is that true or am I misreading it? 

David Hoehner: 

Yeah, there are. I mean, I think it's largely a reflection of the society we live in, and so certainly, USAID had a lot of Christians working in there. Where you saw it actually, I think, even more so is even on our foreign service nationals, so USAID workers that were Cambodian or Salvadoran or Ukrainian, a very large representation of Christians in those areas. 

Then some of your biggest NGOs receiving aid were groups like World Vision and World Relief. I think World Vision had about 40% of their funding from USAID. Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Relief Services I think they were called, so a lot of Christian organizations. 

A lot of the HIV-AIDS programs that I mentioned weren't just these macro-level US institutions delivering it. It was small to medium-sized African NGOs that were delivering that. Faith-based organizations played an incredible role in delivery of aid, and were hailed and recognized in the developed world as being critical to the success of that program. 

I wouldn't say it was like 60% Christian. I think it was still probably a minority across the board. But yeah, absolutely in this field, I think by its nature, wanting to care for the poor and the broken, I think it had a real draw to Christians to serve in that area. Like I say, I think World Vision, it's either the largest or one of the largest NGOs working in this space. Then with these cuts, a lot of those organizations have had to retrench and really lay off a lot of their staff. 

Darrell Bock: 

I take it that these organizations that you're talking about, like World Vision, et cetera, are partnering and get funding for some of their work, were getting it from funds that were provided before by the US government as part of the partnership. Am I reading that right? 

David Hoehner: 

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's underappreciated. Don't quote me on this, but I believe World Vision's funding before the dismantlement of USAID was around 40% from government funding. World Relief also had a lot of government funding. Samaritan's Purse also did government-supported projects as well. Some of these had different funding models. World Vision, obviously, has its child sponsorships, church-based funding, and other things, so it wasn't wholly funded by the government, but it was substantially funded by the government. 

Darrell Bock: 

These organizations and the relief work that they do in the various forms that it takes are impacted by this as well. 

David Hoehner: 

Oh, absolutely. They've had to cut down hundreds of programs all over the world and fire thousands, if not tens of thousands, of staff, just because funding and their positions were related to the programming they were doing. 

Darrell Bock: 

Many of the people that would've been fired wouldn't necessarily be Americans, but be some of the indigenous workers within the country that were supporting the work that was getting done? 

David Hoehner: 

Absolutely, both, thousands of Americans working here in offices supporting those projects, then the staff, which were often local staff. That's something maybe even neglected to say in our projects. When we were funding these projects, most of the staff on these projects were local citizens. We occasionally have one expat leading it, but it is more and more moving to complete ownership and operation by local staff. 

Darrell Bock: 

Where does international development stand now? A lot of what I'm hearing you say is that it's kind of having to reconfigure, for lack of a better description, the way in which it works because I take it that the US and Europe were major players in the space. 

David Hoehner: 

They are. Europe is still active in that space. Like I say, I think there is some commitments by this administration, at least to the state department, to continue some of this programming. From what I've heard, that's in about the 10 to 17% range of what they'll fund compared to what they funded before, so it'll be there in skeletal form. There are other what's called multilateral banks, like World Bank or the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, that continue in that space. They have a little bit different model of how they do it. And there are NGOs, like the Christian ones we mentioned or your Save the Childrens or Mercy Corps, that have their own funding sources that will be able to continue that work apart from the government funding they received. I think what it will be just a much diminished level of programming for a while. 

I think the golden question is what comes next? Does philanthropy, foundations, and maybe private citizens help fill the void? Probably, in part. I'm skeptical that it will fill more than 10 to 20% of that void, just because I don't think there's money appearing in most of our pockets that will allow us to contribute more. At least it hasn't happened in my case. But then, yeah, I just think it will be diminished programming. 

Again, not to get into the politics of it, development generally had pretty strong bipartisan support. It might surprise many to know that even Republicans were some of the biggest ardent supporters of development. I do get a sense that I think as this washes out, there will probably be some return to what was maybe, not the same institutional framework, but I do think and hope that I think the US government at some point will get back in the game a little bit 

Darrell Bock: 

Because your point underneath this is this work is really important, provides opportunity, and in some cases is restorative to the life of many people when it takes place. 

David Hoehner: 

No, absolutely. Like anything, when you do programming this size, I don't want to over-claim. There have been plenty of development programs that didn't achieve the results they were after and that found frustration, just much like government policies here that were well-intended but didn't have the effect that people wanted. But absolutely, this was a vital place for really helping strengthen economic resilience, promote private industry, promote better and more accountable governments, help farmers know how to farm in ways that increase productivity, increase their incomes, provide more food for their communities. 

Darrell Bock: 

Another element that's important in this area, because you've mentioned education, I mean, in some of these countries, the role of education is significant for people being able to change the direction of where their families have been for generations. 

David Hoehner: 

AID was a big player in that. I didn't touch that space so much, but yeah, we did tons of projects and helping curriculum development and promoting literacy, promoting numeracy programs for people who didn't make it through school and dropped out. Alternative schooling for those who are 18, 19, 20, have aged out of schools, but helping them to develop numeracy and literacy and/or vocational training. We ran a project in Pakistan and Nepal actually working with the private sector to help create skills-based programming to help people meet market demands in terms of what was needed. Yeah, USAID was a very big player in the education space. 

Darrell Bock: 

What are you doing these days? Where's this left you? 

David Hoehner: 

Well, it left me without a job. March 5th was my last day with USAID, and so the last few months have been just a lot of prayer and discernment, to put it blankly. It wasn't just a loss of a job, it was really a loss of my field. I did a lot of feeling around to figure out in other spaces in the donor world, are there opportunities? The answer was potentially, but as they're contracting, they have a whole labor force that also is now out of work. 

I've worked and looked in the broader foundation of philanthropy space, made some inroads into a couple organizations, got pretty close to the altar, but never quite said I do. I think as that went on, I started wrestling with, "Well, maybe I need to look at a wider pivot, and how I can use skills that I've gotten through development elsewhere." Most of the last particularly 17 to 18 years, I've regularly got on planes, left my family, and been overseas quite a bit. In a spirit of openness, while I was still pursuing these other jobs, said, "Well, what about just buying a local business and maybe digging roots in a little bit deeper here, finding ways to deliver services to people, and provide employment?" 

It's still in process, but got a bid accepted to buy a local commercial and residential painting business. It was never part of the David Hoehner life plan, but as I've looked at it, it has excited me. We promoted private enterprise in these projects. We promoted how you run a business, get financing, and set policies with your employees. Maybe put my money where my mouth is and actually try it myself. In this particular business, you're dealing a lot with the Latino community and finding a way to give jobs and dignity to a community that often struggles here. In the process of doing that right now. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, we wish you well in that pursuit for sure. David, I just want to thank you for helping us understand a world that probably my guess is most Christians have very little clue about, and helping us think through that. I'll ask a question I often get asked when I'm being interviewed about topic, and that is, is there anything that we haven't raised that I should have raised that you would like to say about the area that is worth people hearing about? 

David Hoehner: 

Yeah, I think one thing to think through that I think I found… Well, maybe go back to my draw to development and things I found. One of the things that interested me about development back in the early 2000s was in a world where our intellectual currents really don't want any one universal system of justice, development, by its nature, has almost an implicit Christian or, let's say, broadly western understanding of the world. That is that there are ways to organize society politically, economically, and socially that lead to more human flourishing. 

To me, this resonated deeply with our understanding of humans created in the image of God. It's not to say there's one formula exists, and we don't have to have the American constitution everywhere. It's just saying where there's human freedom, where there are places that respect human rights and the dignity of humans, where there's free enterprise, where people can venture out and risk, and where there are social access of your sex or your religion or your caste doesn't determine your place in society, that those tend to lead to human flourishing. 

To me, that was very comforting, that here's a field that recognizes that there is some sense of a universal order of justice. When you organize societies that way, they actually flourish. That's, to me, an inheritance of really a Christian vision of the world. 

It was curious to me as I got into development, the development sector itself often does not recognize that. Development, for them, starts in the 1940s with the creation of the World Bank and all the histories start there. But when you look at the history of Christianity and really the missions movement, wherever missionaries went, there were hospitals, schools, there were places to care for the widow and the orphan, there were places to care for the sick. That it is really standing on the shoulders of what Christians have done for millennia. 

It's a secular version of that. It's the government entering into that space. But I see that as something that I think often goes unrecognized. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, you've done a great job of walking us through a space, like I say, many of us are not familiar with. Certainly, I wasn't. Appreciate you taking the time with us, and appreciate really the expression of Christian concern that drove you into the space and that allowed you to serve in so many ways, in some cases, some sacrifice, obviously, spending so much time away from your family, et cetera. I really appreciate the gift that you've given us in sharing your story about an area that a lot of people have and still work in that actually does a lot of, I'll say, unseen good around the world and that is of value to so many people in very basic ways that often, like I say, goes unappreciated. Thank you. 

David Hoehner: 

Yeah. Well, thank you for this opportunity. I hope it shed a little light. I hope for people, it also shows that there's a lot to be proud of in terms of what America's done in the world. It's been a genuine force for good for decades through this kind of work. 

Darrell Bock: 

I mean, the ability to have a soft skill and soft power is oftentimes what it's called, and what it yields is actually pretty important. Sometimes we underestimate the value that it gives to the reputation and understanding of a people, so thank you. 

David Hoehner: 

All right, thank you. 

Darrell Bock: 

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