Mandate eNewsletter, 2009 - Issue No. 1

When Helping Hurts

The Chalmers Center is pleased to announce the release of the book When Helping Hurts:  How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert of the Chalmers Center with a foreword by John Perkins (Moody Publishers). 

Corbett and Fikkert argue that North American churches and individual Christians typically have faulty assumptions about the causes of poverty, resulting in the use of strategies that do considerable harm to poor people and to themselves. When Helping Hurts directly addresses these assumptions, providing foundational concepts, clearly articulated general principles, and relevant applications.

The book is designed for those who want to minister to poor people more effectively, including pastors, missionaries, deacon boards, lay leaders, home and foreign missions committees, mercy ministry teams, and donors. It is appropriate for an individual or for a group such as a Sunday school class, a ministry team, or a small group Bible study.

When Helping Hurts in Rwanda
One of the many ways that North American churches can do harm in the process of trying to help is by creating dependency on the part of our sister churches in such places as Rwanda. Click on the link below to hear an interview of Daniel Ryumugabe, Transformation Coordinator for URWEGO Opportunity Bank (www.uomb.org) of Rwanda, about how the North American churches have created such dependency in the churches in Rwanda.

What Others Are Saying

I can honestly report that When Helping Hurts is the single best book I’ve seen on this topic. Although this book will make many readers uncomfortable, it quickly offers hope in the form of understandable, feasible new strategies that better grasp the dignity and promise of the materially poor.  It deserves a #1 spot on the reading list of every Christian who wants to follow Jesus in genuine, mutually transforming love of neighbor.

Amy L. Sherman, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Director, Sagamore Institute Center on Faith in Communities and author of Restorers of Hope

A clarion call to rethink how we apply the Gospel to a broken world.  This book will transform our good intentions into genuine, lasting change.

Stephan J. Baumann, Senior Vice President of Programs, World Relief

For more information about the Chalmers Center, visit us at www.chalmers.org.

6/10/09