But what standards of discernment do evangelical outreach workers and volunteers rely on to assess the accountability of potential aid recipients in the first place? When I discussed this with Paul Genero, he admitted it is a difficult learning process. He said the best thing to do is “get lots of advice, pray a lot, and always err on the side of too much compassion.” Still, evangelicals are cautious not to waste God’s resources by allowing irresponsible, manipulative, or obdurate people to get by with a false sense of entitlement. Some churches and faith-based organizations deal with this problem by developing formal protocols for need assessment. For example, the Samaritans of Knoxville assisted in the creation of a database for church staff to consult when they need to verify requests from “walk-ins”—people who walk into churches looking for handouts, such as grocery store vouchers or money for rent or utility bills. Churches that receive walk-ins do not want to turn away anyone in need, but they are wary of those who “work the system,” those who solicit one church or social service agency after another and never make the effort to become self-sufficient or personally responsible. The database, which streamlines information about specific individuals gathered from local service agencies, is accessible through a hotline that church staff can call whenever they encounter walk-ins who appear suspicious, unpleasant, or disreputable. Churches identify aid seekers who have been flagged as manipulators, miscreants, or addicts and choose either to refuse their requests or to initiate some kind of productive intervention.The guiding assumption for such character assessments (which remain highly susceptible to prejudice despite their “objectivity”) is that, all else being equal, God helps those who are willing—which is to say, those who appear willing—to help themselves. However, all else is rarely equal. The relationship that exists between suburban churchgoers and “the people we serve” takes shape within an established structure of social inequality, and evangelical standards of accountability reflect ever-present power dynamics. If the practical implications of compassionate social outreach include taking risks, breaking cultural barriers, and “loving the unlovable,” the imperative of accountability reinforces benign suspicion as a privilege of power and affluence. Ennobled by their class status (which, at the same time, is a source of ethical concern), suburban churchgoers project middle-class norms onto others, which affects the way they assess accountability in the context of social outreach. Temperance, humility, contrition, and gratitude (among other markers of gentility) are held up as moral premiums that “the people we serve” are expected to display in return for gifts of charity and compassion.

MORAL AMBITIONS OF GRACE: The Paradox of Compassion and Accountability in Evangelical Faith-Based Activism  Journal of Cultural Anthropology

Omri Elisha spent 15 months doing fieldwork among evangelicals in Knoxville Tennessee. 
He looks at the policy and practise of faith-based initiatives suburban evangelicals are beginning to implement. The dilemmas and expectations are complex.

The power imbalance strikes me in this piece, the conscious and unconscious us/them paradigms he observed, the interplay of romanticizing compassion and altruism, sincerity need, burnout, limits and accountability.

By examining the central trope of “hope” in evangelical outreach we can begin to get a sense of the blurring of the lines between service and salvation. Proponents of social outreach often speak of a felt desire to plant “seeds of hope” in the lives of those who may be so deprived. Whether or not someone professes to be a Christian (as did the woman in Raymond’s account), conditions of poverty and distress are generally interpreted by evangelicals as evidence of spiritual as well as material deprivation. Possessed of economic and cultural capital, suburban churchgoers view themselves as equally well possessed of the gospel and, by extension, a capacity for moral decision making superior to that of chronically struggling people who worsen their circumstances by making bad choices. If charity recipients show signs of persistent irresponsibility or obduracy, then evangelicals are even more inclined to rationalize their interventions in evangelistic terms.

via: The Revealer