How Pastor Marty Stayed in Ministry

Pastor Marty

When Pastor Marty transitioned from a bi-vocational pastor to full-time ministry, he wasn’t confident he could live in a financially sustainable way. He wanted to live a life pleasing to God, but he didn’t know how to provide for his family and his church.

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Work and Poverty Alleviation

Work and Poverty Alleviation

Enabling people in material poverty to engage in work that pays a living wage is the most sustainable way for them to no longer be materially poor. But work is so much more than just a means to gaining income that provides for our material needs. It lies close to the heart of what it means to be human.

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The Ministry of Writing Checks

Ministry of writing checks

There’s an idea out there that giving money to a poverty alleviation ministry is a cop out to being personally engaged in the ministry. But those directly involved in on-the-ground development ministries have a different view—that the most relational thing many people can do to help end poverty is actually writing checks to organizations that do effective, asset based, participatory development.

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A Framework for Effective Benevolence

A Framework for Effective Benevolence

One of the most important questions that we should ask as we engage in any kind of poverty alleviation work is “What is poverty?” Because the way that we diagnose the problem determines the solutions that we used to alleviate the problem.

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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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What Story Is Your Ministry Telling?

The Role of Story in Poverty Alleviation

Unfortunately, several common but misguided stories of change are shaping our lives, including our approaches to poverty alleviation. Our poverty alleviation efforts often do harm because we have unknowingly and unconsciously—yet deeply and destructively—absorbed misguided stories of change from our culture.

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The Five Causes of Poverty—Part 4: Broken Systems

5 Causes of Poverty - Broken Systems

Adapted from A Field Guide to Becoming Whole, 119-124. In this series, our most recent post focused on addressing individual brokenness—the factors within a person, including personal choices and beliefs, that can contribute to material poverty. But as we’ve been saying throughout the series, there are both internal and external causes of relational and material…

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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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Watch Now: Improvising the Kingdom

Innovation-Webinar-Graphic

  Chalmers’ Founder and President Brian Fikkert and Director of Innovation Tabitha Kapic hosted a conversation on February 16 around how to apply a biblical framework for poverty alleviation to improvise God’s kingdom and foster real change in your community. — Want to learn more? Unleash your church or nonprofit to create a new or…

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Collaborating for the Kingdom

Someone writing a check

Donors, ministries, and materially poor people are often very different and may live thousands of miles apart. It sure doesn’t feel like much of a community, and sadly, it often doesn’t function like one. How can we better practice kingdom community in the space of poverty alleviation?

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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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