When Helping Hurts Archives - The Chalmers Center

Why Does Poverty Exist and Persist? Part 2—Broken Systems Contribute to Poverty, too.

By The Chalmers Center | July 30, 2024

Although we need God to transform the ways we see and interpret material poverty in the world around us , this transformation alone is often insufficient to alleviate poverty.

Why Does Poverty Exist and Persist? Part 1—How We See the World Matters

By The Chalmers Center | July 22, 2024

Are people trapped in material poverty due to their own personal failures or due to the effects of broken systems on their lives? This long-standing debate tends to divide people into camps (and approaches to addressing poverty) that take one or the other view, and more or less reject its opposite.

People and Processes Over Projects and Products

By The Chalmers Center | July 10, 2024

The goal of poverty alleviation is to see people restored to being who God created them to be. We want to see people understand that they are created in the image of God with the gifts, abilities, and capacity to make decisions and to effect change in the world around them. We want to see people steward their lives, communities, resources, and relationships in order to bring glory to God. In short, we want to see them become people who enjoy flourishing in their relationships with God, self, others, and creation. These changes tend to happen in highly relational, process-focused ministries more than in impersonal, product-focused ministries.

Praying for Transformation Together

By The Chalmers Center | July 2, 2024

Because all of us are suffering from brokenness in our foundational relationships with God, self, others, and creation, we all need “poverty alleviation,”—just in different ways. As men and women engaged in the work of poverty alleviation, our relationship to those in material poverty should be one in which we recognize that all of us are broken and that all of us need the blessing of reconciliation. Our perspective should be less about how we are going to “fix” those in material poverty and more about how we can walk together, asking God to bring healing to us all.

Seeking the Welfare of Augusta

By The Chalmers Center | April 17, 2024

How do we reach the whole of our city? Jesus is redeeming all things, so how do we lean into that and build relationships in every sector?

Agents of Reconciliation

By The Chalmers Center | March 6, 2024

The New Testament consistently describes Jesus’ work on the cross as “reconciliation” (Col. 1:20. etc.), which means putting things back into right relationship again. The Apostle Paul also teaches that we also have a role in reconciliation.

Understanding Our Vision for Poverty Alleviation

By The Chalmers Center | February 7, 2024

If we want to see an end to material poverty, we need a clear vision of what this looks like. Just as our diagnosis of the causes of poverty shapes the remedies we pursue, so too does our idea of the ultimate goal of poverty alleviation.

Repenting of the Health-and-Wealth Gospel: Lessons from Kibera

By The Chalmers Center | February 1, 2024

In the heart of Nairobi, Kenya, lies one of Africa’s largest slums—Kibera. Conditions there are harsh. People live in makeshift structures, surrounded by open ditches filled with human and animal waste. Opportunities for jobs and education are severely limited, as is access to healthcare, food, and clean water.

Chess, Hope, and Poverty in Rural South Africa

Hope, Restoration, and Chess in Rural South Africa

By The Chalmers Center | January 25, 2024

Over a decade ago, Ruan and his family moved from Cape Town to the village of Zithulele in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, just miles away from the place Nelson Mandela was raised. His wife had secured a job as a physician at a local hospital and he was looking forward to working in youth ministry.

He read When Helping Hurts soon after his arrival, but over the next five years, he made many of the mistakes he read about. Despite hosting many Bible studies, outreach teams, and events – all of the things he brought with him from westernized Cape Town – they still weren’t seeing transformation in their rural village.

Flourishing through Holistic Healthcare

By The Chalmers Center | November 30, 2023

Inspired by our book, When Helping Hurts, Watermark Health, a nonprofit affiliated with Watermark Church, has designed its three clinics to instill value and promote dignity among their patients. The majority of their patients are uninsured and from marginalized communities who otherwise lack access to adequate medical resources. Located near a large refugee resettlement area, their original clinic has had patients from 123 countries.

biblical framework four key relationships

A Biblical Framework for Poverty: The Four Key Relationships

By The Chalmers Center | October 4, 2023

Bryant Myers, a leading Christian development thinker, argues in Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development that in order to effectively address material poverty, we need to consider the fundamental nature of reality, starting with our triune God as the Creator of that reality. God, eternally existing as three-in-one, is inherently relational, and as beings made in His image, we too are inherently relational.

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Posts in “When Helping Hurts”

Why Does Poverty Exist and Persist? Part 2—Broken Systems Contribute to Poverty, too.

Why Does Poverty Exist and Persist? Part 1—How We See the World Matters

People and Processes Over Projects and Products

Praying for Transformation Together

Seeking the Welfare of Augusta

Agents of Reconciliation

Understanding Our Vision for Poverty Alleviation

Repenting of the Health-and-Wealth Gospel: Lessons from Kibera

Hope, Restoration, and Chess in Rural South Africa

Flourishing through Holistic Healthcare

A Biblical Framework for Poverty: The Four Key Relationships