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Opening Doors to Hope: Tonka’s Story and the Power of Work Life
In a world where “getting a job” is both vital to survival and difficult to achieve, job readiness programs often feel transactional. This is exactly where Chalmers’ Work Life program stands apart. It weaves faith, character, and community into every lesson–offering more than just skills but also hope.
Benevolence As a Posture, Not Just a Ministry
When Chalmers published When Helping Hurts in 2009, our team had already been thinking about, teaching, and practicing a theology of poverty and poverty alleviation for a long time.
Finding Hope in the City: The Challenges and Opportunities of Urban Ministry in the Majority World
Discover how ministries in African cities are finding hope and building community through Christ-centered savings groups, even in the midst of challenges.
Local Churches, Local Resources, Lasting Change
Microfinance can be a powerful tool for helping people escape extreme poverty. When we shift our thinking, it can be even more powerful. How can we make the most of the opportunities microfinance provides?
Savings and Business: Empowering Communities Through Skills and Growth
Training savings group members in business skills contributes to economic growth and job creation in communities
Building Stronger Communities and Creating Opportunities
Across East and Southern Africa, churches foster safe communities of people whose stories were once silenced by HIV/AIDS. Many Untold clients, upon revealing their HIV status, were cast out of their ancestral homes, abandoned by family, and stripped of their land. With nowhere to go, they found themselves utterly isolated, cut off from relatives, community, and any sense of belonging.
Resting in Resurrection
Jesus’ resurrection isn’t merely a reminder of our hope that death is not the end. His resurrection empowers us for ministry because the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is at work in us (Rom. 8:11). All our work is from Him, for Him, to Him, and through Him. In life and in death and in the constant interplay between them, we live and work in Christ.
Financial Literacy: More than Just the Facts
April is recognized as National Financial Literacy Month. Here’s a question to ponder: why don’t more Americans make better decisions in managing their finances? Is it simply that they need better information?
Exchange Models Done Well: Eight Ways to Empower Without Exploiting
or most able-bodied adults, paid employment is essential to the long-term path out of poverty. To effect that outcome, many churches and ministry organizations use a partial-exchange, intermediate-steps model that teaches the skills necessary to succeed in the marketplace.
Innovation is Looking for Shalom
In a video recorded as part of our Innovate:Online training, Director of Innovation, Tabitha Kapic shares that seeking Shalom is at the heart of innovation. Shalom refers to a sense of completeness, including the flourishing of creation and perfect relational peace. Shalom is the goal of poverty alleviation. As you watch, consider how you might use innovation to foster Shalom, both for yourself and those you seek to serve.
The Poison of Paternalism: Adapted from 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘏𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘴
Having a clear understanding of the different ways to help people in material poverty is essential to recognizing why choosing the right approach matters. To illustrate this, consider the consequences of misunderstanding and unintentionally applying it in ways that cause greater long-term harm, leading to dependency, wasted resources, and even the erosion of local capacities that are crucial for sustainable progress.
Remembering Why We Give: Incarnational Presence
Last month, we highlighted U.S. federal funding cuts and their impact on our ministry partners and global relief and development efforts. We urged you to respond by giving generously, encouraging affected organizations, and praying fervently—with a promise of next steps in the coming weeks.
Applying the Right Response—Relief, Rehabilitation, and Development
Our goal in walking alongside any community in poverty should be working to help people move from a less stable to a more stable position. However, it is important to always keep in mind that poverty can come in many different forms, each requiring a different approach. Thus, our understanding of these different conditions is key to ensuring we respond to communities with the right kinds of help.
– Jonathan Wiles, Chief Operating Officer, Living Water International
“What Can We Learn?” – Living Water International’s New Approach to Short-Term Missions
“We used to send teams into communities asking, ‘How can we help?’ Now, influenced by the Chalmers Center’s insights, we enter with a different question: ‘What can we learn?’ That shift has been profound, allowing us to engage in ways that honor the dignity, strengths, and leadership of the communities we serve.”
– Jonathan Wiles, Chief Operating Officer, Living Water International
A Time to Pray, a Time to Give Generously
It is a consistent theme of Scripture that those blessed with power and wealth have a special responsibility to administer justice and mercy for those who are in danger or in need. Leaders should use their influence so that the least among us—the fatherless, the widow, the sojourner, and the poor—have a faithful advocate in the halls of power.
Going Beyond the Four Walls of the Church: The Impact of Community Ministry
Local churches often make a significant mistake when it comes to helping those in poverty. They sometimes create divisions in their efforts that aren’t really necessary, according to Scripture. When we split up the act of spreading the message of God’s transformative power (evangelism) and the act of serving others or providing practical life skills (service or technical programming), we give the wrong impression that the world is fragmented. We make it seem like God’s work is separate from helping people in need.
Recognizing What People In Poverty Need
It’s easy for most of us to conceptualize a fairly simplistic picture of what poverty looks like. In turn, that overview can generate equally simplistic solutions or treatments. For many, we may have an image in our minds of a destitute population lacking necessary materials for survival. On paper, it seems as though simply providing people in poverty with what they seem to need will solve the problem. While this may provide temporary relief to those in need, it is often only a small adjustment to a much larger problem.
The Exponential Power of Partnership
During the past 25 years, in addition to publishing books about poverty alleviation, Chalmers has been creating training for use in both the U.S. and the Majority World (of Africa, Asia, and Latin America). These field-tested programs are built on God’s story of change and community development best practices to help you put a biblical framework for addressing poverty into practice.