Our last post (Extreme Poverty, Income Inequality, and the 1%) pointed out that
Here’s the rest of the story...
Throughout Scripture, we learn that God has a special heart for the poor, the vulnerable, the oppressed... a concern that He expects His people to share. In Leviticus, God instructs them on how they can act on this concern: a wonderfully clear, simple prescription for how His people can show intentional, compassionate generosity towards the desperately poor.
Many Christian writers have recently taken the Church to task for its anemic response to the problem of extreme poverty. (Anemic? …Yes, less than 2% of the average American church’s budgetContinue reading
Timothy 4:3 – For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. That is, a gospel with a hole in it – Continue reading
Dollar spending on short-term mission trips in the U.S. has grown 20-fold in the last 20 years; for 2006, this figure stood at $1.6 billion (1). A key question arises when church missions and service projects are viewed through the lens of helping well: Where the goal is transforming communities by empowering them for self-sufficiency, how do church-based short term missions measure up? The answer depends on the extent to which best practices for helping well are utilized. Continue reading
Why is this book so important?
Why have church leaders around the country chosen this book for sermon series', for small group work, for whole-congregation book studies?
Why have so many readers -- individuals and churches -- called it transforming?