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Posts by The Chalmers Center
How When Helping Hurts Influenced Water Mission
When Helping Hurts has had a lasting influence on Water Mission. In fact, the organization requires all new staff to read it, from their leadership team to those working directly in the field. It’s critical that every team member, not just program staff, understand these principles and recognize that they do not have all of the answers to “solve” poverty.
How Pastor Marty Stayed in Ministry
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.
God’s Story of Change: The Fitch Family
From the doctor’s office to the dinner table.
See how Chalmers principles have become woven into the fabric of the Fitch family’s everyday life.
The Complexities of Unemployment and Underemployment
What happens when someone wants work but can’t find it? What happens when “the one who has been stealing” wants to do “something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need” (Eph. 4:28), but can’t get a job? What happens when they find work, but it is so temporary, unsteady, or poorly paid that they can’t even get off government assistance, much less have something left over to share?
Why Being “Pro Work” Is An Economic Development Best Practice
But how does work, work, when it comes to poverty alleviation? What makes helping people find and keep good jobs such a crucial piece of long-term economic development efforts?
Let’s start with a question: Why do you work? What difference does work make in your life? In your family? What would you do without work?
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.
The 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.
Now that You’re Home: Building on a Short-Term Mission Trip
What we do when we return home from a short-term mission trip is an important part of healthy short-term ministry.
Putting Policy into Practice: A Case Study
The past couple of weeks, we’ve shared some of the keys to starting an effective benevolence ministry through your church or ministry. Often, however, the process of creating or redeveloping a benevolence ministry isn’t linear.
Building a Transformational Benevolence Ministry
One of the most important factors in a sustainable ministry model is creating a system for how you handle new requests. We call this an intake process. Having a plan that everyone follows takes the stress out of benevolence, for deacons or staff, for volunteers, and for applicants.
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.
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.
Equipping Faithful Volunteers
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.
Becoming Whole Devotional
Free 7-Day Becoming Whole Devotional Series Explore what Scripture has to say about the root causes of human brokenness, why our attempts at change often fail, and how God’s story of change leads to flourishing. Get the Devotional Sign up to receive the devotional series. "*" indicates required fields Name* First Last Church or Organization…
What Story Is Your Ministry Telling?
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.
Taking the First Step in Poverty Alleviation
As followers of Jesus, when we see material poverty in the world around us, our first instinct is often to do something about it. But where should we start? What’s the first step in poverty alleviation?
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…
Designing Ministries That Help without Hurting
Since publishing the book, When Helping Hurts in 2009, the Chalmers Center has received countless questions from people who want to know how to create a ministry that helps without hurting.