Recently, my boss at Mission Resource, Dave, got all excited about a book on the topic of effective ministry among the poor: Becoming Whole<\/i> by Brian Fikkert and Kelly Kapic.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The subtitle is Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn’t the American Dream<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n\n
Fikkert is best known as the co-author with Steve Corbett of When Helping Hurts<\/i>, a book that I found frustrating.<\/p>\n\n\n
At least in the first edition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I felt that When Helping Hurts<\/i> made beneficial ministry among the poor seem so complicated, and well-intentioned-yet-harmful actions so unpredictable, that many readers would give up trying to help at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
So I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about Dave’s recommendation of the newer book.<\/p>\n\n\n
But it turned out to be an incredibly pleasant surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n
Becoming Whole<\/i> doesn’t just shine light on basic pitfalls in charitable work. It traces those failings back to a weak foundation within American Evangelicalism itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And I think Fikkert and Kapic nail it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Of course, it could just be a case of confirmation bias on my part – they conclude the Church struggles with poverty ministry based on her own impoverished understanding of the gospel: a give-your-heart-to-Jesus-then-wait-to-go-to-heaven message instead of a full-bodied exploration of redeemed humans operating here and now as restored Image Bearers in the growing Kingdom of God.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Exactly.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Not only will the book help us clarify best practices within Mission Resource, it has also given me fuel for my dissertation work.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
That’s a real win-win.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, my boss at Mission Resource, Dave, got all excited about a book on the topic of effective ministry among the poor: Becoming Whole by Brian Fikkert and Kelly Kapic.\u00a0 The subtitle is Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn’t the American Dream. Fikkert is best known as the co-author with Steve Corbett of When Helping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,43,40,41,42,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-becoming-whole","category-evangelicalism","category-fikkert","category-poverty","category-the-poor","category-when-helping-hurts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3211,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210\/revisions\/3211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}