Moving forward well means understanding what’s behind us. With more than twenty-five years to build on, we feel that the Lord is calling us to embark on a new season, one in which poverty alleviation meets deeper conversations, new ideas, and broader community.
At the Chalmers Center, we believe the root of poverty is broken relationships: with God, self, others, and creation. And this brokenness touches all of us. Only when we recognize our own relational poverty can we begin the restorative work so desperately needed in our homes, communities, and our nation.
Through partnership with Resonate Global Mission and Oasis International, Chalmers released Helping Without Hurting in Africa in 2021. Coauthors Anthony Sytsma and Jonny Kabiswa Kyazze crafted a unique training manual for ministry leaders walking alongside those in material poverty across the African continent.
The church is absolutely central to God’s work of restoration in the world and to our work of addressing material poverty. It reminds us what story we’re living in, who God has created us to be, and—in ways that are as incredible as they are mysterious—connects us to the life and power of the Trinity.
Last week, we talked about how good intentions aren’t enough—how we can actually harm people in poverty when we try to help.
It turns out that how well we walk into serving our neighbors actually depends on how we answer two key questions:
Why did Jesus come to earth?
What is the gospel?
How we diagnose the problem of poverty directly impacts how we will seek to address it. If we treat only the symptoms or if we misdiagnose the underlying problem, we will not improve the situation—and we might actually make the lives of the materially poor worse in the long run.
If you’re involved in outreach or mercy ministry, you might wonder how to go about finding, equipping, encouraging and retaining volunteers to assist in this long term ministry.
The work of fighting poverty is a long and difficult road. For every joy and story of transformation, we can all think of sorrows and stories of loss and failure. Walking alongside people through the brokenness of the world is often a one-step-forward-three-steps-back process. It is easy for ministry practitioners and volunteers to grow weary and ministry participants to grow discouraged. Real hope for people and systems in a fallen world seems elusive, and anxiety is poor fuel for sustainable ministry.
Since 2022, Chalmers has been cultivating a network of Ambassadors—men & women who are deeply rooted practitioners of holistic, effective poverty alleviation ministry across North America and beyond. Each of them has been deeply trained by Chalmers to apply a biblical framework for understanding and addressing poverty to local ministry contexts and help others build toward healthy church and community ministry in ways that help without hurting.
My father gave me one of John Perkin’s books to read when I was a freshman in high school. Dad, the pastor of Presbyterian church in rural Wisconsin, had been trying to understand how Bible believing Christians should respond to America’s racial disparities.