I just finished reading Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (and How to Reverse It) by Robert D. Lupton. According to the blurb on the back of the book, “Robert D. Lupton is the founder and president of FCS Urban Ministries (Focus Community Strategies) and the author of Theirs is the Kingdom: Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life; and the widely circulated ‘Urban Perspectives.’” He is a longtime member of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and I had the opportunity to hear him speak at the PC(USA) Big Tent Event last week in Louisville.
The overall gist of Mr. Lupton’s work and of this book is that “hand out” type of ministries should be reserved for emergency responses. Whenever a need is identified as chronic, rather than emergency, churches and other organizations need to respond differently. Communities must find ways to help people to help themselves. Continual “hand outs” result in dependence and a loss of dignity for the recipients. Mr. Lupton has discovered this and lived this out for decades by moving into impoverished inner city neighborhoods that would scare off most of us. He writes, “Little affirms human dignity more than honest work. One of the surest ways to destroy self-worth is subsidizing the idleness of able-bodied people. Work is a gift, a calling, a human responsibility. And the creation of productive, meaningful employment fulfills one of the Creator’s highest designs. Because of that, it should be a central goal to our service.” Also, at the lunch in Louisville he talked about how much money we waste on mission trips going to do things for people. Instead, he says, we should take the money we would spend going and use it to provide paid work for locals to do what we would have done on the trip. He also says that we should never go on mission trips with bags full of gifts to give to people when we get there. Instead, we should take wallets full of money to buy what they have to sell, whether goods or services. We should participate in their economies. That’s how we can help them.
At the lunch, one person asked Mr. Lupton if he was really preaching American capitalism instead of biblical Jesus-centered ethics. It was a good question. I felt that Mr. Lupton’s answer was equally good. He spoke about how we are all created in the image of God, who is a creator God, and how God gave us work to do (Genesis 1:26-31). He said that he believes that unfortunately very often charity is more about the giver than the recipient. Mr. Lupton expressed that many well-meaning church folks are very upset by his observations and claims because they realize that to actually work toward community development instead of toward a continual type of “hand out” charity takes much more investment, work, time, and a willingness to trust the poor to come up with the solutions to their own problems (albeit with the support of those of us who have access to more resources than they do). Giving things away makes the giver feel good. People are hesitant to give that up. I really like what Robert Lupton has to say. I’m just not sure how to actually implement it. A big part of it is actually building relationships with the folks we are serving now and finding out from them what the real needs are. Who would know better than they?
I don’t have the answers for Washington Court House and I'm not sure that Mr. Lupton does either, but I think he has some very interesting ideas. I have no trouble giving food to retired folks, children, single moms, and our neighbors who are mentally and physically handicapped (although I like the co-op idea). But in my mind, the men should be working. But that begs the question of where? What blue collar jobs are there in this town? There are so many root causes: lack of blue collar jobs, drugs, teen pregnancy, and school dropout rates to name a few. Those are all connected. If we don’t deal with those root causes we’ll be handing out food to more and more people and we’ll be doing it into eternity. Robert Lupton would say that until we start empowering people to deal with those issues themselves with the help of our resources then we’re just spinning our wheels. Again, I think he’s right; I just don’t know how to deal with the root causes.
Toxic Charity is a very valuable read. It will challenge you. It will make you angry. It will convict you. It will make you ask questions. That's what a good nonfiction book does. Another book in the same genre is When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett.
Pray for our town. We need it.
I hope you have a blessed week.
Pastor Everett
