Short-Term Missions that Avoid Long-Term Harm—Part 1

Short-Term Missions that Avoid Long-Term Harm—Part 1

Adapted from Helping Without Hurting in Short-Term Missions: Leaders’ Guide, 29-31. Much international travel, particularly to and from countries with limited healthcare infrastructure, has been on hold for the past 2 years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As short-term trips begin to become a possibility again, it’s important to remember some best practices for short-term…

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Why Use Stories to Teach?

God’s work in the world unfolds to us in the big story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation, and in the individual stories told in Scripture. From the Garden to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David to the promise of the Messiah to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the church to the New Creation, we are so often given God’s truths in narrative, not only in didactic lessons or abstract categories.

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Practicing What We Teach

Kelly Kapic

When we try to help people who are materially poor, we often focus on the habits we think they need to change. But what about our own habits? How do our daily practices affect our ministry with the materially poor?

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Economics in Jesus’ Kingdom

Economics in Jesus’ Kingdom

God is bringing a kingdom far more real than any earthly power or authority we experience today. That kingdom calls Christians to embrace a whole life of economic discipleship by which we learn to live as economic citizens of God’s kingdom.

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The Church, the Parachurch, and Poverty Alleviation

The Church, the Parachurch, and Poverty Alleviation

One way that the church’s responsibility to care for the poor is carried out in complex modern societies is through a wide range of parachurch ministries. While the parachurch should never undertake tasks that are exclusively given to the church, there is much that these ministries can do very effectively to care for the materially poor.

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God’s Kingdom Has a Startling Economic System

Woman working in a restaurant

Every earthly kingdom has its own way of doing things, its own customs and policies regarding food, sex, family, and religion. And every kingdom has an economic policy. But when Jesus welcomes us into his alternate kingdom, something strange happens. We discover a whole new world. And we soon discover that Jesus’s kingdom looks different…

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Designing Innovative Solutions to Problems

Designing innovative solutions to problems

Have you ever been working on solving a complex problem and felt stuck? You knew there had to be a way forward but you just couldn’t see it? That’s how designing a poverty alleviation ministry can feel. Take the issue of food insecurity as an example. Most people are familiar with a “soup kitchen” model…

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Holistic Approaches to Development

Material poverty is complex, and not reducible to a single cause. Healthy, sustainable poverty alleviation ministries need to address all five root causes of material poverty—Individual brokenness, Systemic brokenness, false stories of change, broken and destructive formative practices, and demonic forces. Over the last few weeks, we’ve looked at Ministry Design Principles that contribute to the kingdom community and to God’s story of change, and today we continue examining principles that equip us to replace destructive formative practices. We seek to evaluate and replace our existing practices in favor of those that empower and equip our communities.

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Hope, Restoration, and Chess in Rural South Africa

Chess, Hope, and Poverty in Rural South Africa

Over a decade ago, Ruan and his family moved from Cape Town to the village of Zithulele in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, just miles away from the place Nelson Mandela was raised. His wife had secured a job as a physician at a local hospital and he was looking forward to working in youth ministry.

He read When Helping Hurts soon after his arrival, but over the next five years, he made many of the mistakes he read about. Despite hosting many Bible studies, outreach teams, and events – all of the things he brought with him from westernized Cape Town – they still weren’t seeing transformation in their rural village.

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The Stories We Tell

Illustration of a woman

At Chalmers, we want to be story-driven whenever possible. What makes a good story? One that reflects God’s story, and demonstrates how Jesus brings lasting change in the life of a person, family, or community.

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Agents of Reconciliation

agents of reconciliation

The New Testament consistently describes Jesus’ work on the cross as “reconciliation” (Col. 1:20. etc.), which means putting things back into right relationship again. The Apostle Paul also teaches that we also have a role in reconciliation.

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The Five Causes of Poverty—Part 3: Individual Brokenness

The Five Causes of Poverty: Individual Brokenness

Adapted from A Field Guide to Becoming Whole, 125-134. We’ve been exploring the five causes of poverty in this series of posts, and it’s important to remember that any one of us can be impacted by all five causes—false stories, destructive practices, individual brokenness, systemic brokenness, and demonic forces. These factors are so intertwined it’s…

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Mapping Your Church’s Assets

Local churches that have been engaged with a biblical framework for addressing poverty or have used various tools and trainings from the Chalmers Center know that one of the biggest keys in a healthy ministry is taking an asset-based, rather than a needs-based approach. An asset-based approach helps us see that all people, both those who are materially poor and those with material wealth, can contribute to poverty alleviation efforts.

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Doing All Things Well

Doing All Things Well

The right approaches to poverty alleviation are not quick fixes, but often decades-long processes that you can’t control. That’s why it’s so important to focus on being formed into people who can walk the long road of mutual transformation by the power of Christ.

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Combating False Gods and False Stories in Ministry Design

We’ve been sharing Ministry Design Principles in a series of posts (you can read last week’s here). All these principles can, in some sense, be bundled under 6 aspects of holistic poverty alleviation—1) Forming the kingdom community, 2) addressing false stories of change, 3) addressing broken practices, 4) addressing broken individuals, 5) addressing broken systems, and 6) addressing demonic forces.

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