Parachurch relief efforts Religious congregations often coordinate their relief programs with those offered by parachurch or interfaith relief organizations. Parachurch relief agencies often retain centralized records concerning relief disbursement and recipient information. Consequently, these agencies can reinforce social distance between the privileged churchgoer and disadvantaged relief recipient. Distant missions of relief provision Several churches offer short term mission trips to disadvantaged populations situated in distant locales. These relief missions can transform the perceptions of privileged congregants by exposing them directly and intensively to the plight of the poor for a period of time.
Mission trips vary in destination and duration.
They typically range from several days for regional trips to several weeks for international missions. In some cases, these pilgrimages offer the sojourner long term empathy for the poor and a heightened awareness of poverty. Several faith communities utilize a combination of these aid provision strategies simultaneously, though congregations typically develop pronounced preferences for specific means of relief provision while eschewing other varieties. Table 1 contains the percentages of sampled religious congregations that provide various types of faith-based aid to disadvantaged persons. Table 2 reveals that the overwhelming majority of pastors in our non-random sample both black and white were familiar with Charitable Choice.