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Posts in “Helping without Hurting”
Giving Well at Year-End
As the holiday season approaches, opportunities for volunteering and drives for giving to local charitable organizations and church programs start to pop up regularly.
Using Your Social Capital To Benefit Others
One of the key messages of our book When Helping Hurts and the rest of our trainings and resources at the Chalmers Center is that how we give matters most. This means that we often need to give more, but not just money. Long-term, transformative ministry is highly relational, and that means giving of our time, energy, and networks—in short, our social capital.
Map Your Community
When local churches try to engage in ministry that allows their members to be more present in the community around them—outreach, evangelism, or mercy and benevolence work—they often recognize that connecting with others is much more complex than they expect. Leaders and volunteers can end up feeling disconnected from the more natural pathways to connection and relationship-building that seem to work in other areas of their lives.
Measuring Impact in God’s Story—Part 2
As we wrap up our series on Generosity in God’s kingdom story, we’ve shared about the importance of giving in ways that lead to flourishing for both givers and receivers, and the challenges of measuring the impact of our work according to God’s story, and not just outputs of our ministry efforts.
Measuring Impact in God’s Story—Part 1
As we’ve been writing this month around the theme of Generosity in God’s kingdom story, we’ve shared about the importance of giving in ways that lead to flourishing for both givers and receivers. God calls us to live into God’s story of change: pursuing His goals but also His way of achieving those goals. This raises the question of effectiveness, though. How do we know that we’re giving well?
The Gift of Generosity: Lessons I’ve Learned From Our Partners
There’s a joy in walking alongside generous people. Over the years, I’ve come to see our gift partners not merely as supporters of Chalmers’ mission, but as fellow pilgrims on the journey of faith. Their generosity, wisdom, and trust in God’s provision have not only funded this work, but they’ve also shaped the soul of our organization. And they have taught me much.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Hope Exchange in Jackson, Mississippi: From Crisis Relief to Long-Term Development
Levi and Kateri Gill met while serving with a jobs training program that created employment opportunities through a wood shop and a local coffee shop. This work not only set the course of their personal lives, it also deepened their commitment to serving their community.
Beyond Food Distribution: Daily Bread’s Holistic Approach to Ministry
In 1996, Seth Kuehn owned a food vending business at the same time that he was building relationships with pastors from low-income communities around San Antonio, Texas. Seth was struck by how food vendors were regularly disposing of food while these pastors were serving under resourced communities that were hungry.
People and Processes Over Projects and Products
The goal of poverty alleviation is to see people restored to being who God created them to be. We want to see people understand that they are created in the image of God with the gifts, abilities, and capacity to make decisions and to effect change in the world around them. We want to see people steward their lives, communities, resources, and relationships in order to bring glory to God. In short, we want to see them become people who enjoy flourishing in their relationships with God, self, others, and creation. These changes tend to happen in highly relational, process-focused ministries more than in impersonal, product-focused ministries.