What is the main thing about being a Christian? What is the main thing in ministry? This is a crucial question, because once we have answered this question, we are prepared to make the main the main thing in everything that we do.
The answer that Mark Greene gives in his upcoming (Zondervan, Oct 09) book [...]
Archive for the ‘Book notes’ Category
18 Sep
It’s About Relationships!
17 Sep
When Helping Hurts (9)
In the last chapter of When Helping Hurts, Corbett and Fikkert address and evaluate various approaches to micro-finance (MF) economic development that seeks to help the poor around the world. The various approaches include:
The MF Provider model: an outside organization provides loans to poor individuals and families (think Grameen Bank). The authors point out that [...]
16 Sep
When Helping Hurts (8)
Poverty is everywhere. Yes, in the suburbs too. In chapter 8 of When Helping Hurts, Corbett and Fikkert remind us that poverty is our own backyard, and it’s growing in the suburbs. “The suburban poor tend to be less densely concentrated and are scattered about in older apartment complexes, pockets of mobile homes, subdivisions of [...]
15 Sep
When Helping Hurts (7): Short-term missions
If you have been tracking with these posts so far, you will probably guess some of the ways in which short-term missions (STM) can hurt rather than help the poor. Throughout chapter 7 of When Helping Hurts, Fikker and Corbett identify several ways in which STM can hurt rather than help:
When resting on a belief [...]
14 Sep
When Helping Hurts (6)
Chapter 6 of When Helping Hurts is replete with wisdom about working with the poor. First, Fikkert and Corbett assess the failure of McDevelopment in alleviating poverty, rolling out a blueprint of how to alleviate poverty and applying around the world. The major critique of this approach is that it ignores local knowledge and initiative, [...]
13 Sep
Creating Space
What does it mean to create common space as a community? This is something that we learned a lot about from Armonia. But it was also something that we had been thinking about prior to going as well, so I think we were ripe for the learning. How does a church create its space, use [...]
12 Sep
When Helping Helps (5): Learning our ABCDs
The last chapter of When Helping Hurts dealt with knowing how to distinguish between relief, rehabilitation, and development. Once this has been determined, Corbett and Fikkert suggest in chapter 5 that we need to start with learning our ABCDs: asset-based community development. Rather than identity the needs of the community, the best way to begin [...]
11 Sep
When Helping Hurts (4)
In chapter 4 of When Helping Hurts, I have identified three main points, all of which deserve a full-length post.
First, Corbett and Fikkert explain how poverty alleviation takes on three main forms: relief, rehabilitation, and development.
Relief: “urgent and temporary provision of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering.”
Rehabilitation: “restoring people and their communities to the positive [...]
10 Sep
When Helping Hurts (3)
How should the church go about alleviating poverty? If we only believe that poverty is a lack of material things, then we will give out handouts. But if we believe that poverty is a result of broken relationships between God, self, other, and creation, then poverty alleviation, as defined by Corbett and Fikkert in chapter [...]
9 Sep
When Helping Hurts (2)
Equipped with a full and comprehensive understanding of the gospel, Corbett and Fikkert set out in chapter 2 of Helping Hurts to explore the meaning of poverty. They stress that our response to poverty with match our overall understanding of poverty, and therefore if our understanding is inadequate, our action will be inadequate.
Our understanding of [...]
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