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When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor. . .and Ourselves |  | Authors: Brian Fikkert, Steve Corbett
Creator: John Perkins
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $14.99
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Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 667
Media: Paperback
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0802457053
Dewey Decimal Number: 261.8325
EAN: 9780802457059
ASIN: 0802457053
Publication Date: July 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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 themselves. When Helping Hurts provides foundational concepts, clearly articulated general principles and relevant applications. The result is an effective and holistic ministry to the poor, not a truncated gospel.
A situation is assessed for whether relief, rehabilitation, or development is the best response to a situation. Efforts are characterized by an "assest based" approach rather than a "needs based" approach. Short term mission efforts are addressed and microenterprise development (MED) is explored.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Asks great questions September 3, 2010
T. Taber
"When Helping Hurts" was actually recommended to me by our ministry partner in Uganda. After working in Gulu for the past five years it is good to see a fresh perspective on helping the poor, it has given us a great opportunity to pause and look and what we are doing to make sure we are actually helping the people we want to help. Some things are right on track, other things need a bit of tweaking, still other need a complete over haul. This book is not just for overseas, it has great examples for serving in America. There are great stories or success and failure in trying to help world wide.
Helping without Hurting July 5, 2010
Laurence E. Thrasher
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Because of my participation with Africa Renewal ministries, I have read several books on this subject. This one is the best and we have adopted it to become our Ministry Philosophy.
 Challenging July 5, 2010
Roy W. Stephens (New Zealand)
I found the book very challenging and food for thought. It's a book that needs to be read by everyone involved in charity work or social work.
Fantastic Tool for Missionary Work June 26, 2010
Lee K
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I attend Covenant College where these two authors are professors. There is a class called Theory of Community Development and this book is the textbook. Of course the authors of this book are the professors, but it is a great book to read if you are planning on doing missionary work any where in the world. This book also allows you to learn where your heart should be while helping the poor and how to help them for the long run, not hurt them more. I highly recommend this to anyone who has a desire to help those in poverty.
A Real Eye-Opener June 7, 2010
John Gardner (Cookeville, TN)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
There is so much brokenness in this world. Even here in America, we can see that things are not as they should be. Marriages end. Children are abused. Crimes go unpunished and the innocent often suffer. Babies are aborted by the millions.
When we leave our borders, this brokenness becomes even more magnified as we encounter billions of people living in abject poverty, without access to the basic needs for human survival. Every day, people die by the thousands due to starvation and preventable disease. While many look away, choosing to remain ignorant of these problems, most people -- Christian and non-Christians alike -- are stirred to compassion when confronted with human suffering. We want to help in any way we can.
But is it possible that our helping might really be hurting?
Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert say that it often does. Due to "poverty-alleviation strategies that are grounded in unbiblical assumptions about the nature of poverty," many churches and relief organizations actually contribute to the poverty problem through their well-meaning attempts to minister to the poor. This book aims to point out and correct these assumptions, and to offer a more effective model for poverty alleviation.
To minister effectively to those afflicted with poverty, we must have a firmly biblical worldview, and be able to communicate it to the poor. This means having a right understanding of who Jesus is, why He came, why He cares so much for the poor, and why Christians, as part of Christ's body, are to love and care for the poor as well.
We must also have a better definition of "poverty". Too often, we narrowly define it as a lack of material possessions, but the authors define poverty in light of the Fall. God created the world and declared it "good", but when Adam sinned, everything changed. Pain, shame, and death entered the world. The ground was cursed. Worst of all, the perfect fellowship that Adam and Eve had shared with God was broken.
The book focuses on the Fall's manifestations in four types of broken relationships, which result in four types of poverty. The first is Man's relationship to himself, which leads to a "poverty of being." Rather than having a right view of himself, Man thinks either too much of himself (a "god-complex") or too little (low self-esteem). The second is Man's relationship with others, which leads to a "poverty of community." People become self-centered, exploiting and abusing others. The third is Man's relationship with Creation, which leads to a "poverty of stewardship." Without a proper understanding of work (which existed before the Fall and is therefore "good") and of Man's God-given responsibility to exercise dominion over all the earth (Genesis 1:26-28), this sort of poverty manifests itself in laziness (and in "workaholics"), materialism, misuse of resources, and a lost sense of purpose. Finally, Man's relationship with God is broken, which leads to a "poverty of spiritual intimacy." The "default mode" for humanity is separation from God, so many worship false gods and idols, while others deny God's existence and authority.
Furthermore, all of these broken relationships together lead to four broken world systems, which affect everyone in the world, and lie largely out of the control of the individual. These are the economic system, the political system, the religious system, and the social system. All of these broken relationships and broken systems contribute to the vast problem of material poverty; it is a much more complex problem that at first it appears. At its root, though, is sin, which is why Christians are the only ones truly able to alleviate poverty. Jesus Christ is the great Reconciler of these broken relationships, and He has given to us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18).
This view of poverty begs the need for a holistic method of poverty-alleviation. We must find a way to help meet the needs of the materially poor without contributing to their poverties of being, community, stewardship, and spiritual intimacy. When we merely provide material things for the poor, we are actually making things worse for them and for ourselves if we do not address the root causes of their -- and our-- poverty.
The greatest mistake that most Christians and relief organizations make is a failure to identify the best way to help. The authors describe three types of aid: Relief, Rehabilitation, and Development. Relief is "the urgent and temporary provision of aid to reduce immediate suffering from a natural or man-made crisis." Rehabilitation "seeks to restore people and their communities to the positive elements of their precrisis conditions." Development is "a process of ongoing change that moves all people involved -- both the `helpers' and the `helped' -- closer to being in a right relationship with God, self, others, and the rest of Creation."
Most poverty-alleviation efforts concentrate on providing Relief, which is actually the least-commonly needed type of aid. What is most needed, and most effective for producing long-term improvement in the conditions of the materially poor, is Development. This is also the most difficult and costly, requiring years of dedication and relationship-building.
The focus is on a participatory approach, in which those providing aid work with the poor, rather than doing things to them or for them. In addition to helping to equip the poor with the skills and resources to care for themselves, this approach - by including the poor in the decision-making process and in every step of the work to be done - grants them a sense of dignity, as opposed to when the materially non-poor fly in to "save the day", implicitly engendering a sense of superiority/inferiority in both the poor and the helper.
The authors identify several problems inherent in "Short-Term Mission Trips", which have become exceedingly popular in the last 20 years (for instance, in 2006 alone, over 2.2 million Americans went on STM's, spending in excess of $1.6 billion on these trips). Too often, these trips become a "right of passage" for young Christians; something we check off our list of things good Christians do. Sometimes, STM's are marketed for their opportunities for sightseeing, or as a way to give students a taste of what poverty looks like. In other words, the focus is more often on the missionary than on the people supposedly being served.
A better approach to STM's (which are not all harmful) is when Christians travel to work as part of a team with those who are working in long-term or vocational missions with the people. Furthermore, mission-minded Christians should look first of all to meeting needs in their own vicinity, rather than looking first at foreign missions. Yes, foreign missions are valuable and necessary, but we must not ignore the need in our own neighborhoods. As the authors state, "while all Christians have a responsibility to help the poor, there is enormous diversity in the ways that each Christian is to fulfill this biblical mandate." STM's are rarely the best way to do so.
This is a book that will challenge every reader, and will make many uncomfortable. It cuts right to the heart of many things we have believed in our churches for a long time that may not actually be true. It is a must-read for anyone who has ever participated in short-term missions, or has a desire to do so in the future. My own personal assumptions were put to the test, and I have learned that I have much to re-think in terms of what real Christian "missions" look like.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors of Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ~ 2 Corinthians 5:17-21
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