BOOK: When Helping Hurts

By Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert | Amazon.com | 288 pages
Published in February of 2014

SUMMARY: According to MissionDiscovery.org over two million Americans participate in short-term domestic and international mission trips each year. Unfortunately, even those with the best intentions can wreak havoc, many times unintentionally, on the community they intend to help. In When Helping Hurts Brian Fikkertt and Steve Corbett provide a Biblical framework for those who want to go on, and those who have gone on, short-term mission trips by asking the reader to interrogate their motivations and assumptions for wanting to serve in addition to evaluating their own attitudes and beliefs about poverty.

Although Fikkertt and Corbett critique many short-term mission trip tactics, the authors make it abundantly clear that they are not calling for Christians to disengage. The authors, by appealing to Scripture, make the case that the church and Christians should be at the forefront of poverty alleviation. Jesus relentlessly ministered to the poor and the vulnerable. As a result, Christians, and the church, should do the same.

“Simply stated, Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom in word and in deed, so the church must do the same…Jesus particularly delighted in spreading the good news among the hurting, the weak, and the poor,” the duo write. “When people look at the church, they should see the very embodiment of Jesus! When people look at the church, they should see the One who declared–in word and in deed to the leper, the lame, and the poor–that His kingdom is bringing healing to every speck of the universe.”

Fikkert and Corbett say that humans were created to have four foundational relationships: first with God, the primary relationship from which all others flow, second with self (God made us in his image and therefore we have inherent dignity and self-worth), third with others (God created us to live with others), and fourth with the rest of creation (God give us a mandate to be stewards of the earth). When one, or more, of these relationships are fractured it results in economic, political, social, and/or religious poverty.

“Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection to put all things into right relationship again,” Fikkert says.

This recognition that we all have broken relationships, or what the authors call “mutual poverty,” breeds humility and empathy with those we are serving with. This humility assists in examining our motivations for going on a short-term missions trip.

“One of the major premises of this book is that until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work with low-income people is likely to do far more harm than good,” the pair write.

Once our heart is correctly oriented, a person may move to poverty alleviation. Poverty alleviation consists of three phases: relief, rehabilitation, or development. Relief is temporary and used for scenarios where immediate suffering needs to be reduced. Rehabilitation “seek(s) to restore people and their communities to the positive elements of their pre-crisis conditions.” Development is “a process of ongoing change that moves all the people involved — both the ‘helpers’ and the ‘helped’ — closer to being in right relationship with God, self, others, and the rest of creation…Development is not done to people or for people but with people.”

Not recognizing the differences between the three phases is where many short-term mission trips go wrong, and many do so with good intentions. Instead of pivoting to rehabilitation or development, a team continues to provide relief where money and/or material resources are thrown at a problem (think of homeless in America). Oftentimes, this harms the community a mission’s team is attempting to help.

“The failure to distinguish among these situations is one of the most common reasons that poverty-alleviation efforts often do harm,” Fikkert pens. “Pouring in outside resources is not sustainable and only exacerbates the feelings of helplessness and inferiority that limit low-income people from being better stewards of their God-given talents and resources.”

To help with identifying how to help a community the duo advocate for an asset-based community development (ABCD) approach to poverty alleviation “rooted in the brokenness of the (four) foundational relationships.” The focus is to “restor(e) both low-income people and ourselves to living in right relationship with God, self, others, and the rest of creation.”

ABCD consists of four key tenets:

1. Identify and mobilize the capabilities, skills, and resources of the individual or community
2. Look for resources and solutions that come from within the individual or community, not from the outside
3. Seek to build and rebuild relationships among local individuals, associations, churches, businesses, etc.
4. Only bring in outside resources when local resources are insufficient to solve pressing needs

These fundamentals assist in changing the mindset of an outsider from doing “something to or for the economically poor individual or community but to seek(ing) solutions together with them.”

The second half of the book is intended to be read and discussed in a community as it gets into the weeds about how a church or Christian non-profit can properly implement poverty alleviation efforts. The information (particularly chapter 11) would be excellent for a church board or congregation to go through before engaging in poverty alleviation efforts but is not applicable to most individual readers.

The big takeaway is that poverty alleviation takes time. Generally speaking, churches don’t need more resources, but need “supportive and humble people who are willing, ready, and able to engage in lasting and empowering relationships with materially poor people.”

For those who have been involved in short-term mission trips, When Helping Hurts may be jarring. In fact, you may have participated in a short-term mission trip that did more harm than good, but that is okay. Pause, pray, reflect, and know that God is in control.

“Having the attitude of a humble learner throughout the process is far more important than having comprehensive knowledge at the start of it,” the authors write.

KEY QUOTE: “A helpful first step in thinking about working with the poor is any context is to discern whether the situation calls for relief, rehabilitation, or development. In fact, the failure to distinguish among these situations is one of the most common reasons that poverty-alleviation efforts often do harm.”

---

BONUS: Don’t have time to read the book? Listen to Fikkert discuss his book on Theology in the Raw.

BONUS II: If you prefer to learn by video, Lupton Center has a series of videos for small group or individual use.

RECOMMENDATION: If you liked When Helping Hurts, check out Toxic Charity – our top recommended book for those involved with a charity/non-profit or those going on or have gone on a short-term mission trip.

DID YOU KNOW? Sunday to Saturday has a Good Reads page where we post all of the books we have read – even the ones that didn’t make the cut.

---

---