It's an interesting moral question, something I would hope the church leaders very strongly consider. What difference does it make where a person lives, if they are suffering? Put another (utilitarian) way - if you can spend $100 to help 10 people across the globe not die of starvation, versus $100 to help a non-starving but down on their luck local, which gives more heaven credit?

The nature of our evolved brain prioritizes those proximate; I'm unclear of an argument why helping these people is superior, especially when you can make a bigger difference, more cheaply, by helping people in poorer countries.

CS Lewis touched on this point in his Screwtape Letters. Perhaps modern economic theory that studies spherical cows in a vacuum, err, self-interested rational agents, is not the ultimate morally relevant lens.

> Do what you will there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient‘s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.

It’s surprising to me how this is when the whole point of a church is to serve the local community and those that want to help overseas have “missions” which some people malign as semi imperialistic.

My personal view is help your local people first (no matter where you are) and others next. If you want to do good somewhere else the best way to do it is not via feelgood “remittances” but by going there and putting in the hard work, hiring locals, teaching locals, etc., so they may become self sufficient and not need ‘charity’.

Having lived in both poor and rich countries, I never saw a fervor for helping far away lands in a poor country. The are simply not enough resources to mount effective overseas charity campaigns.

And they should not. They should help themselves before anyone else. Now, there are wealthy congregation is some places and surely they have enough funds to help locals in need as well as others -that’s fine, but do it in a helpful way, don’t just send money and call it a day, and also help your people in another state of province if the locals they’re in has all their needs met. Don’t just go for “exoticism”.

Sometimes I wonder if this is selective pressure. The impact of charity work overseas, if at all affordable, is much higher than the often thankless charity work at home. People gradually steer into the more impactful work, which happens to be overseas by simple economic reasons.