In When Helping Hurts, Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, two experts in finance and poverty alleviation working at the Chalmers Center, a Christian non-profit, explain how poverty relief efforts can reinforce the recipients’ sense of powerlessness, especially when administered in a spirit of paternalism. When this happens, it undermines the program’s effectiveness because the sense of powerlessness is an even more fundamental component of poverty than a lack of physical resources.
In this guide, we’ll first discuss the authors’ exposition of the problems with common methods of poverty alleviation. Then we’ll consider the solutions they propose.
Most of Corbett and Fikkert’s observations come from Christian ministries to the poor, and the authors also have a background in evangelical Christianity. The book’s original target audience was North American Christians, and especially church leaders who might be involved in planning short-term missions or other programs to help the poor. While we’ve preserved the authors’ advice to church leaders in this guide, we’ll also explore the implications of their advice for people outside of Christianity.
Corbett and Fikkert identify a number of problems that commonly affect short-term missions and poverty alleviation efforts. Combining a few of the more closely related ones, we can present them as three basic mistakes: providing aid with the wrong mentality, providing the wrong kind of aid, and having the wrong people administer it.
Corbett and Fikkert assert that thinking of poverty in strictly material terms is problematic because it leads us to provide assistance in ways that actually make the root of the problem worse.
(Shortform note: Other authors have applied the principle that trying to solve a problem before you correctly define its root cause can be counterproductive to a variety of problems other than poverty. For example, in Principles: Life and Work, Ray Dalio discusses the importance of identifying root causes when solving business problems.)
The authors cite extensive studies showing that when poor people are asked what it means to be poor, they tend to define poverty in terms that are more psychological than physical. From this, they deduce that poverty is fundamentally a mental state of shame and powerlessness more than a physical lack of money or other resources.
There is still a connection between material and psychological poverty: Not having the resources to take care of yourself and your family tends to produce a mental state of shame and powerlessness. And this mental state saps your initiative, which hinders your efforts to earn money or accumulate wealth, creating a vicious cycle.
Corbett and Fikkert trace the root cause of poverty even deeper, arguing that the psychological state of poverty is caused by the broken relationships that resulted from the Fall of Man, as recorded in the Bible. They argue that when the first humans fell into sin, it damaged their relationships with God, each other, the rest of creation, and even with themselves.
When these relationships were broken, people were no longer able to fulfill their God-given role as masters of God’s creation, managing earth’s resources in a way that would allow them to support themselves, benefit society, and glorify God. Because we fail to live up to the role that we were created for, we experience the psychological state of poverty: feelings of shame and powerlessness.
Corbett and Fikkert note that since everyone suffers the effects of the Fall, everyone is “poor” in a spiritual sense. Nevertheless, they stress that material poverty is particularly difficult to get out of because of the vicious cycle we discussed above.
Secular Perspective on the Root Cause of Poverty
In Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, T. Harv Eker similarly argues that the root cause of poverty (and wealth) is psychological rather than physical, but he arrives at this conclusion based on a different line of reasoning and develops it in a secular context. Let’s briefly compare and contrast Eker’s perspective with Corbett and Fikkert’s.
Eker asserts that material poverty is caused by a mental state of powerlessness and low self-esteem, which leads to poor money management. This mirrors Corbett and Fikkert’s definition of poverty.
But whereas Corbett and Fikkert trace these feelings of shame and powerlessness back to the fall of Adam and Eve, Eker only traces it back to the childhood of the poor person in question. He says the feelings and beliefs that determine your financial success or failure are conditioned by your upbringing, creating a threshold of wealth that you’re not likely to exceed. He refers to this threshold as your “financial setpoint.” At a subconscious level, you’re not comfortable managing more money than your financial setpoint, leading you to make mistakes that sabotage your efforts to make more money.
These two perspectives aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive: The bad experiences that might affect a person’s ability to manage money generally involve broken relationships and “fallen” human nature.
According to Corbett and Fikkert, when people fail to understand the psychological nature of poverty and its spiritual roots, it makes their poverty alleviation efforts counterproductive. This is because, if we assume poverty is just a lack of material resources, the obvious solution to poverty seems to be to give poor people more resources. But stepping in and giving people things they can’t get for themselves or doing things for them that they can’t do for themselves highlights and reinforces their sense of powerlessness, actually making their poverty worse.
The authors also warn that all too often, when we take this approach of giving things to people or doing things for them, we do it with an attitude of superiority: We think we can save them from poverty by taking charge of their lives, telling them what to do, and doing it for them when they don’t immediately comply. We may not intend to make them feel inferior, but our sense of superiority comes across in our actions. Again, this tends to reinforce their sense of shame and powerlessness.
Giving Without Hurting the Recipient
Some people disagree with Corbett and Fikkert’s assertion that giving people money only makes their poverty worse by emphasizing their helplessness.
In principle, a poor person could also interpret a monetary gift as a vote of confidence, as if the giver were saying, “I know that you’re capable of improving your situation and that you’ll put any resources at your disposal to good use, so I’m giving you enough resources to make a quantum leap forward.”
Studies have found that, at least in certain countries, poor people who receive cash transfers do use the money efficiently to improve their situation. This could be taken to imply that at least some poor people interpret cash transfers positively in practice.
So it appears that the key to giving poor people money without hurting them is to figure out who to give it to—to identify which people would benefit from a gift and which might be injured by it. As we’ll discuss later, Corbett and Fikkert emphasize the importance of getting to know the people you want to help. So this fits with their overall approach to poverty alleviation, even though it implies that there may be more opportunities to help the poor with cash donations than they identify.
Even if you understand the psychological nature of poverty, applying the wrong approach to poverty alleviation can still do more harm than good. Before we discuss how the wrong type of aid can do more harm than good, we need to go over the basic types of aid that disaster victims and impoverished people may need.
According to Corbett and Fikkert, there are three basic types of aid:
For example, imagine your neighbor's house was destroyed by a tornado. Letting him stay in your guest bedroom free of charge for a while is relief. Lending a hand as he rebuilds his house is rehabilitation. Spending time strategizing with him about how you can both be better prepared for the next tornado season is development.
Systems of Classifying Aid
Corbett and Fikkert are often credited with classifying aid into relief, rehabilitation, and development. While this system of classifying aid is widely used, some organizations, such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) use different systems with different definitions for similar terms, making it important to know what system you’re using. Under the USAID system:
Relief is the first stage of crisis response and consists of providing food, medical attention, and transitional shelter to disaster victims, as well as helping them salvage what they can and get infrastructure that can readily be restored to working order functioning again. This definition of “relief” is similar to Corbett and Fikkert’s but slightly broader.
Development is the second stage of crisis response in the USAID system. It consists of restoring and rebuilding infrastructure and homes to the point where they are livable again after the disaster. Since “development,” as defined by USAID, is still part of the process to get back to pre-crisis infrastructure, Corbett and Fikkert would consider this work part of rehabilitation, not development.
Institutionalization is the final stage of the USAID system and involves moving away from direct involvement in reconstruction toward letting the locals finish rebuilding on their own. It may consist of training locals in construction management, providing financial services, or other indirect forms of assistance. Corbett and Fikkert consider some of these training activities part of development in their system, and the emphasis on increased responsibility of the locals for their own success at the institutionalization phase resembles their description of development. But in USAID’s system, the purpose of institutionalization is still primarily to get the community back to where it was before the crisis, so in Corbett and Fikkert’s system, “institutionalization” would still consist mostly of rehabilitation.
Corbett and Fikkert advise that it’s important to consider which of the three types of aid the community you’re trying to help needs and to provide the right type of aid. They observe that many churches default to providing relief, but most poor people need development, not relief.
At any given time, only a small percentage of the poor people in the world need immediate relief: victims of recent natural disasters, for example. Even in the case of a natural disaster, the authors observe that by the time a church has heard about the disaster on the news, planned a charitable mission to help the victims, raised funding to support the mission, and sent a missionary team to the affected area, the need for relief is typically over. By that time the victims need rehabilitation or development.
As we discussed above, giving things to poor people or doing things for them can make their psychological poverty worse, but giving people things to meet their immediate needs is an integral component of relief. As such, the authors emphasize that you should provide relief sparingly and only as an immediate response to a real crisis.
The Rising Need for Relief
Some sources might contest Corbett and Fikkert’s assertion that efforts to help the poor need to shift away from relief toward rehabilitation and development on the grounds that the increasing frequency of natural disasters is increasing the demand for relief.
This perspective exists in both secular and Christian circles, although secular sources generally attribute the increasing frequency of natural disasters to human-caused climate change, while Christian sources often attribute it to the impending end of the world, as Christ prophesied in Matthew 24:3-8.
However, the increased need for relief doesn’t lessen the importance of providing the right kind of aid in any given situation, nor does it reduce the global demand for rehabilitation and development.
Even if you understand the nature of poverty and correctly identify the type of aid that a person or group needs, Corbett and Fikkert argue that, depending on the situation, you may not be the right person to provide that aid.
By way of illustration, imagine that your friend is suffering from appendicitis. He needs an appendectomy. Should you try to remove his appendix? Unless you’re a trained surgeon with suitable facilities available for performing an operation, probably not. It would be much better to let a doctor who has the right training and equipment perform the appendectomy.
Similarly, Corbett and Fikkert argue that the best people and organizations to provide aid are usually the ones closest (both geographically and culturally) to the people who are in need. Local churches (or other organizations) in poor communities are in a much better position to engage members of their own community effectively because they have a better understanding of their situation. And they’re better able to help them improve their situation over the long term because their close proximity makes it easier to maintain long-term relationships.
Business Perspective on the Wrong People for the Job
We can draw additional insight on the issue of selecting the right person for a task—in this case, poverty alleviation—from other authors who discuss the same problem in the context of business management. For example, in Traction, business consultant Gino Wickman advises that for your company to be successful, you have to have the right people in the right positions.
On the one hand, someone who wholeheartedly embraces your company’s mission but doesn’t have the right technical or interpersonal skills to do a certain job can’t thrive in that position and may end up causing problems for the company. You need to move this person into a position that matches her skill set, if there is one, or let her go if there isn’t.
On the other hand, Wickman says someone who has the right technical skills to function in a certain position but doesn’t share your company’s culture and vision will also do more harm than good for the company. You need to let this person go before he stirs up dissension within the company.
Based on Corbett and Fikkert’s discussion of problems with aid and missions work, we can apply Wickman’s advice to poverty alleviation as well: Someone who doesn't have the right mindset (for example, someone who suffers from a superiority complex or just wants to make a show of helping the poor for the sake of building his own reputation) isn’t ready to take part in the ministry at all. Someone who has a genuine desire to help but isn’t qualified for front-line ministry because of cultural or logistical barriers may still be able to play a supporting role, as we’ll discuss later.
Now that you understand how traditional methods of helping the poor like giving them things or building infrastructure for them can end up doing more harm than good, what can you do to help? We’ve condensed Corbett and Fikkert’s advice down to a three-step solution.
The first step is to adopt a mindset that will enable you to plan and execute effective aid. Recognizing that we all share the same basic spiritual problem that, for some people, results in material poverty can help us repent of any feelings of superiority. It also makes it easier to relate to poor people, which we’ll discuss more in Step 3.
Furthermore, we need to accept the solution to spiritual poverty ourselves before we can help others solve their problems with poverty, whether spiritual, material, or both. Given their assessment of the root cause of poverty, Corbett and Fikkert assert that Christ provides us with the solution to spiritual poverty by restoring our relationship with God when we accept Christianity.
Controversy and Original Sin
In a secular context, the idea that the first step to poverty alleviation is accepting Christ’s atonement ourselves (so that we can then teach it to the poor) is one of Corbett and Fikkert’s most controversial assertions. Some even make the opposite claim, asserting that a Christian worldview may perpetuate poverty by helping poor people find meaning in their suffering rather than seeking material solutions to their problems.
But in the context of Corbett and Fikkert’s Christian background, their assertion makes sense, because it is simply a specific application of the Christian doctrine that human suffering (including poverty) is ultimately the result of sin (either the particular sins of the person who suffers, or the sins of someone else who may be causing him to suffer, or just the original sin of Adam and Eve that made human suffering possible).
In Christian theology, sin is the problem and the ultimate cause of all other problems. Christ’s atonement—his ability to forgive sins because he voluntarily suffered the penalty for everyone’s sins—is the solution to the problem of sin, and thus, ultimately the solution to all problems.
Corbett and Fikkert point out that humility enables you to more objectively assess what role you (or your church) should play in helping the poor. Particularly when it comes to alleviating poverty in faraway places, indigenous organizations are usually in a better position to have a lasting positive impact. So, rather than running the show yourself, connect with local churches or other organizations that are already ministering to the poor in their own communities.
Start a dialogue with them to learn more about the situation and determine how you can best support their efforts. The authors discuss a number of possible ways to help, such as providing or subsidizing training for indigenous missionaries and ministers, or donating funds to facilitate their work.
(Shortform note: To help quantify the effectiveness of collaborating with members of the indigenous church, it’s worth considering the case of Wycliffe Bible Translators, a non-profit that facilitates Bible translations into local languages around the world. In the 2010s, Wycliffe transitioned from having a missionary first learn a language and then translate the Bible into it to hosting workshops to help native speakers translate the Bible into their own languages, typically from regional trade languages that already had Bible translations. This new approach allowed for better quality translations to be completed in about a tenth of the time.)
In the case of donations, the authors caution that you generally shouldn’t pay the whole cost of anything (such as a training program or a minister’s salary). That could create dependency or even undermine their credibility in the local community by implying that they can’t do anything without foreign aid. Instead, Corbett and Fikkert recommend letting the locals pay whatever portion of the costs they can and donating just enough to make up the difference, enabling them to do more than they could with only their own resources.
That said, the authors also warn you not to be stingy with donations. They observe that efforts to economize on aid by standardizing the approach have generally proved counterproductive. Each impoverished individual and community faces unique challenges and requires a unique solution. Finding that solution hinges on developing long-term relationships with the individuals in question, which in turn drives up the cost of the project by increasing the time and attention that the aid workers must invest in it. But the greater investment is worth it because it produces a better outcome.
What Business Startups Can Teach Us About Funding Ministries
In Crossing the Chasm, business consultant Geoffrey Moore offers advice for start-up companies making the transition from the small early market to the mainstream market. While Moore doesn’t discuss poverty or philanthropy, his advice on business finance runs sufficiently parallel to Corbett and Fikkert’s advice on financing poverty alleviation efforts to provide a corroborating perspective and some additional insight on the issue.
Moore explains that in the early market, most startup companies are dependent on venture capital for their daily operations. At this stage, profits serve mostly to reassure the company’s financial backers that they’re making a good investment. But Moore advises start-ups to become self-sustaining on profits as early as possible, warning that running too long on venture capital can create a “welfare mentality” within the company. This mentality can cause the startup to stall by decreasing workers’ sense of focus and urgency.
By the same token, Corbett and Fikkert would likely agree that providing limited resources to a poverty alleviation ministry may actually increase its chances of success, because it forces those involved to focus on what’s most important.
At the same time, Moore also echoes Corbett and Fikkert’s praise of custom solutions and elaborates on it in a business context. He explains that mainstream customers usually prefer to buy from the companies with the largest market share, making it hard for start-ups to break into the market. But if you identify a specific niche application and design your product to solve that particular niche customer’s problems in a way that no generic product can, then this allows you to gain a foothold in the market and establish your credibility.
If we generalize Moore’s approach, this principle could apply to poverty alleviation as well: If you try to come up with a standard solution that solves everybody’s problems, you’ll probably end up with a product, service, or program that doesn’t really solve anybody’s problems. But if you focus on one specific scenario, you (or the people you’re backing) are more likely to come up with a compelling solution.
So, combining these two principles, we infer that there’s an optimal level of funding for any project: enough to develop a complete and compelling solution to the problem in question but also little enough to keep the solution narrowly focused.
Corbett and Fikkert point out that poor people often benefit from programs that enable them to accumulate savings or allow them to borrow money that they can use to improve their situation.
Again, these programs are usually best administered at the local level. The local church can directly establish a savings and credit association—a group of people who pool their savings, make small loans to each other, and collect interest on the loans, which helps build their savings. Or the local church may, in turn, collaborate with a microfinance company—basically a bank that’s willing to handle smaller loans than traditional financial institutions.
Corbett and Fikkert note that if the indigenous ministry isn’t already using savings and loan programs, you can bring these options to their attention or even provide training on how they work. Depending on the situation, it may or may not be appropriate to donate additional capital to the savings association or microfinance company. One case the authors endorse is donating funds to the microfinance company to cover the cost of teaching their loan recipients about the Christian perspective on managing money.
Criticism of Microfinance
Some sources argue that microfinance institutions are actually not as effective at helping the poor as Corbett and Fikkert suggest. In Poor Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo discuss a number of factors that limit the usefulness of microfinance loans.
For one thing, they note that microfinance companies typically prefer to make a loan to a group of people rather than to an individual. Relative to making individual loans, this reduces administrative costs (because there are fewer loans to track). Moreover, it reduces the risk of non-payment, both because other people in the group must make up the difference if one person fails to repay his share of the loan and because this possibility motivates the members of the group to verify each other’s integrity before taking out the loan. However, shifting more of the liability and credit verification to the loan recipients also makes loans less attractive to poor people.
Both Corbett and Fikkert and Banerjee and Duflo also note that microfinance companies were created to provide poor people with a more helpful alternative to predatory lenders (lenders that charge exorbitant interest rates to cover the risk of loaning money to people with no credit). But some sources report that in recent years the distinction between predatory lenders and microfinance institutions has become blurred, leading poor people to borrow money at high interest rates and become trapped in debt.
In some cases, you may not need to go beyond Step 2, but what if you find that there isn’t another church or organization that’s positioned better than yours to assist a particular impoverished community? Corbett and Fikkert point out that there are unmet needs and opportunities to make a difference in poor neighborhoods throughout the United States. If your church is the local church, you may very well be the best people to help the poor in your own community.
As we’ve discussed, Corbett and Fikkert emphasize the importance of getting to know the people you are trying to help through your program. This is because to help them find effective solutions to their problems, you need to understand their unique situation. However, they don’t recommend asking people to discuss their problems up front, because focusing too much attention on their problems may only make them worse by amplifying their sense of shame.
Instead, the authors recommend starting off any relationship with a poor person by asking him about his strengths, skills, or other unique assets. You need this information because the most effective solution to his problems will involve leveraging his strengths. But more importantly, asking him to list his strengths reminds him that he has valuable qualities, helping him regain a measure of dignity and confidence. This in itself begins to alleviate his psychological poverty, and it starts the relationship off on a positive note. You can discuss his problems later, after you’ve gotten to know him and gained his trust.
Why You Should Help the Poor Develop Their Strengths
Just as Corbett and Fikkert recommend focusing on poor people’s assets when you’re trying to help them, in Strengths Finder 2.0, Tom Rath argues that the best way to advance your career is to focus on cultivating your strengths, rather than on fixing your weaknesses. Since poor people generally need career development, Rath’s discussion provides some additional insight on how understanding a person’s strengths could allow you to coach her through career advancement.
For one thing, Rath asserts that it’s just not possible to fix all your weaknesses. No matter how much time and energy you devote to self-improvement, you’ll always have weaknesses, so you might as well accept that. Moreover, even if you spend a lot of time and energy improving your abilities in an area of weakness, chances are you’ll still only end up with average ability in that area. But if you spend the same amount of time and energy honing an ability that comes naturally to you, you’ll end up far above average. Exceptional ability in certain areas is more useful for advancing your career than average ability across the board. For a poor person, career advancement is especially important because it's empowering, both psychologically and materially.
Rath also points out that many human traits are not intrinsically either strengths or weaknesses, but rather can be perceived as either one, depending on the context. So trying to eliminate a trait that’s a weakness in one context may only hold you back from excelling in a context where it’s a strength. For example, maybe you’re a perfectionist. At a job where you need to finish tasks quickly, and there’s a generous margin for error, perfectionism is a weakness. But at a job that’s slower-paced and requires careful attention to detail, perfectionism is a strength.
In the case of poverty alleviation, this underscores the importance of getting to know the people you’re trying to help and understanding their unique abilities, so you can help them find jobs where their abilities will be strengths rather than weaknesses.
Corbett and Fikkert also offer some advice on the organizational structure of your poverty intervention program. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. The optimal program might involve meeting with poor people one-on-one, meeting in groups, holding classes, or some combination thereof. The classes you offer could teach them biblical principles for teamwork, problem-solving, money management, work ethic, or other “soft skills” that could help them find jobs, mend relationships, or otherwise improve their situation.
The authors do advise that each poor person should have contact with at least two and preferably about five different aid workers. This has several advantages: It spreads out the workload over more aid workers, helping to keep individual workloads manageable and preventing volunteers from burning out. It also helps to ensure that if the poor person has an urgent concern come up, at least one of the people she knows in the program will be available to talk with her about it. And it lets the poor person network with more people, which is beneficial for finding job opportunities.
(Shortform note: Typically, church members helping with a poverty alleviation program are volunteers, not paid employees of the church. Based on other sources, ideally you should structure your program so that each volunteer’s time commitment is about 100 hours per year. In Give and Take, Adam Grant points out that people who volunteer between 100 and 800 hours of their time per year get the most satisfaction from their volunteer work. He also reports that volunteering up to 100 hours per year correlates with a measurable improvement in health, but the improvement plateaus above 100 hours.)
Comparing When Helping Hurts to Development as Freedom
In Development as Freedom, Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen discusses the problem of poverty and possible solutions. Sen approaches poverty—and poverty alleviation—from a more theoretical and systemic perspective, while Corbett and Fikkert focus more on practical advice, specifically for churches looking to help the poor. Yet there are enough parallels in their reasoning that their respective viewpoints reinforce each other to some extent.
To begin with, Sen defines poverty as a lack of freedom or a lack of opportunity, rather than a lack of material resources. As we discussed earlier, Corbett and Fikkert define poverty as a mental state of shame and powerlessness. These two definitions may have some subtly different implications, but they both equate poverty with powerlessness, which is the antithesis of freedom. Consequently, their respective solutions focus on finding ways to empower the poor.
Sen focuses on empowering the poor by guaranteeing them various rights, including the right to participate in government, the right to engage in commerce, and the right to basic services like education and healthcare.
Corbett and Fikkert suggest ways that your church can empower local poor individuals: Helping them identify their assets and strengths is psychologically empowering. Offering classes or other training can empower students by teaching them new skills or making them aware of opportunities that they didn’t know about. Letting them network with several volunteers also gives them more opportunities, especially for job placement and career advancement.
When Helping Hurts encourages Christians to take an honest look at the way they approach poverty alleviation at home and overseas to determine whether their efforts are causing more harm than good. The authors explain how poverty relief efforts can reinforce the recipients’ sense of powerlessness, especially when administered in a spirit of paternalism. This undermines their effectiveness because the sense of powerlessness is an even more fundamental component of poverty than the lack of material resources. After exploring this problem, the authors recommend ways to improve our poverty alleviation strategies so that we can genuinely help impoverished communities.
Brian Fikkert
Brian Fikkert is a Professor of Economics and Community Development and the Founder and President of the Chalmers Center. Prior to becoming a professor at Covenant College in 1997, he was a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park and a research fellow at the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS), which is recognized internationally for its research and expertise on economic growth and governance issues in developing countries. Fikkert has also been a consultant to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development, and he holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University, an M.Phil. from Yale University, and a B.A. in Mathematics from Dordt College.
In addition to co-authoring When Helping Hurts, he has co-authored a series of related books, including Helping Without Hurting in Short-Term Missions, Helping Without Hurting in Church Benevolence, When Helping Hurts: The Small Group Experience, and From Dependence to Dignity, as well as numerous articles in both academic and popular journals.
Steve Corbett
Steve Corbett is an Assistant Professor of Community Development and Community Development Specialist for the Chalmers Center at Covenant College. He also previously served as the center’s Director of Field Operations and Training. Before coming to Covenant College, Corbett was Food for the Hungry International’s (FHI) Regional Director for Central and South America for two years and Director of Staff Training for nine. He holds an M.Ed. in Adult Education from the University of Georgia and a B.A. from Covenant College.
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When Helping Hurts was originally published in 2009 by Moody Publishers but was updated in 2014 after the authors became concerned that readers were misinterpreting their message. Specifically, after reading the book, many people concluded it was best not to help the poor for fear of causing harm—the exact opposite of what the authors intended to communicate. Therefore, they revised the first version by making small changes to the original chapters as well as adding a fourth part intended to inspire readers to take action by summarizing the principles, resources, and steps they need to get started. We cover this latest updated version in our guide.
When Helping Hurts was published following the dramatic growth of short-term mission trips in the 1980s and 1990s. Although they received substantial positive press, they also spurred debate among church leaders and the greater public. Whereas proponents insisted that short-term missions expanded the reach of Christianity and brought much-needed assistance and resources to people in need, critics argued that they undermined the efforts of local communities and pulled the focus away from serious, long-term engagement.
In response to this debate, the authors wrote When Helping Hurts, which both acknowledges the harms of short-term missions and other common poverty alleviation approaches and offers strategies to improve them.
When Helping Hurts was one of several books on the topic of poverty that were published around the same period. However, When Helping Hurts is unique in that it discusses poverty within the context of Christianity. Instead of separating their faith from the subject matter, the authors see these as intertwined. They emphasize the role of God and the Bible in poverty alleviation and insist that the poor cannot escape poverty without receiving the word of God.
When Helping Hurts also stands apart from its contemporaries by discussing poverty alleviation from a uniquely actionable angle. Before Corbett and Fikkert’s publication, books on poverty tended to discuss the topic from two perspectives. On the one hand, some authors chose to illustrate the experiences of the poor to help the non-poor better understand the severity of the problem. For example, in The International Bank of Bob: Connecting Our Worlds One $25 Kiva Loan at a Time, author Bob Harris describes his travels to impoverished countries to show Americans the difficulties of day-to-day life for poor people across the world.
On the other hand, other authors focused on proposing strategies for alleviating poverty on a big-picture, systemic level. For instance, in The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives, author Sasha Abramsky explores income inequality and suggests ways to create a more equitable system, such as better housing policies, wage protections, and affordable higher education.
Rather than describe the poor’s hardships or propose systemic changes, When Helping Hurts explores the strategies that Christian churches and individuals can use to alleviate poverty at home and abroad. In this way, it differs from the other books by providing action steps that the average person can immediately implement in any context. It also takes a controversial stance by emphasizing the harm that the non-poor have caused in poor communities around the world by trying to help in the wrong ways. This is an issue that hasn’t been discussed at length by other authors.
When Helping Hurts created a paradigm shift within the Christian community with regard to poverty alleviation and ministry. This is evidenced not only by the number of copies printed—over 450,000—but also the frequency with which the Christian community has cited the book as a must-read for those looking to serve poor communities at home and around the world.
Overall, When Helping Hurts was well-received, especially within the Christian community. Positive reviews praise the book’s organization, which they say progresses logically from theory to application. Readers also applaud the book for offering a clear, holistic view of poverty and applicable strategies for alleviating poverty. Moreover, they appreciate that the authors include real-life examples that encourage self-reflection.
Negative reviews primarily criticized the book for its narrow appeal: The authors’ solutions to poverty alleviation are so intertwined with Christian theology that its actionability for non-Christians is limited. Some reviewers also felt that the authors unfairly blame North American Christians for causing and exacerbating global poverty.
Overall, the authors effectively support the main argument of the book, which is that Christians’ efforts to alleviate poverty are well-intentioned but harmful. They not only provide examples detailing the specific strategies that are problematic but also offer recommendations for how to fix them.
In many cases, the ideas that the authors present in When Helping Hurts are clearly developed and backed by credible sources. For example, in Chapter 8, the authors discuss the different factors involved in local poverty in North America and recommend specific strategies for addressing those issues. They include relevant research and examples that serve to both substantiate and explain their recommendations.
However, particularly in the early theoretical chapters, the authors’ logic is not always easy to follow, especially for readers who may not be well-versed in Christian theology. At times, the content of the book is also somewhat redundant.
As an example of both these issues, throughout the book, the authors repeatedly assert that humans’ purpose in life is to glorify God by using the abilities God has given them to support themselves and their families through productive labor. They don’t provide a detailed explanation or defense of this assertion, although they do make reference to a few passages from the Bible and the Westminster Catechism that collectively support it.
The authors arrange the book’s chapters to progress from theory to practice. Part 1 begins with foundational concepts such as what it means to be poor and what the Bible has to say about poverty. Part 2 progresses to a discussion of the general principles that should underlie all alleviation efforts. Part 3 builds on those principles by detailing specific strategies that churches can use at home and abroad. Finally, Part 4 offers summarizing thoughts to help churches begin applying what they’ve learned.
The benefit of this organization is that it helps readers develop an understanding of important concepts before being introduced to practical strategies based on those fundamental ideas. This ensures they’re more successful when trying to implement them. However, the repetitive nature of the authors’ writing somewhat detracts from the effectiveness of this approach because it makes readers feel as if the book is less organized than it actually is.
Although the book’s organization is logical and effective, we chose to arrange the authors’ ideas differently to eliminate repetition. Ultimately, this resulted in combining parts of different chapters and rearranging the order in which the authors originally presented their ideas.
Whereas the book contains 12 chapters divided among four parts, our guide forgoes chapters entirely and contains parts (with subparts when necessary). In Part 1 we’ll lay a philosophical foundation for our discussion by examining the fundamental nature of poverty. These philosophical underpinnings are drawn mostly from chapter 2 of the book.
Then, in Parts 2 and 3 we’ll cover the problems with current poverty alleviation methods and the things that need to change, respectively. This content comes from the first six chapters of the book. After clarifying the problem in Parts 2 and 3, we’ll present the solution in Part 4, which is based on chapters 7-9 of the book. This guide doesn’t explicitly address chapters 10 through 12 of the book because they served primarily to recap information from earlier chapters.
Since the book was written mainly for Christians, and especially church leaders, we’ll provide additional background from other sources to make Corbett and Fikkert’s ideas accessible to those who may be less familiar with Christian beliefs. We’ll also consider the implications of their advice for a broader audience, including those of other faiths and those with a strictly secular perspective.
When Helping Hurts encourages Christians to take an honest look at the way they approach poverty alleviation at home and overseas to determine whether their efforts are causing more harm than good.
Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, two experts in finance and poverty alleviation working at Christian non-profit the Chalmers Center, explain how poverty relief efforts can reinforce the recipients’ sense of powerlessness, especially when administered in a spirit of paternalism. When this happens, it undermines the program’s effectiveness because the sense of powerlessness is an even more fundamental component of poverty than lack of physical resources.
After exploring this problem, Corbett and Fikkert discuss ways to improve our poverty alleviation strategies so that we can genuinely help impoverished communities. In this guide, we’ll present their concerns and their proposed solutions, with additional perspectives from other authorities on poverty such as Amartya Sen.
Further, because the book’s original target audience is North American Christians and especially church leaders, we’ll also explore the implications of their advice for people outside of Christianity to some extent.
We’ll spend Part 1 of this guide detailing how Corbett and Fikkert define poverty and the root causes of poverty that they identify, because misunderstanding the nature of poverty is one of the main reasons for inappropriate poverty alleviation efforts: Sometimes churches' attempts to help the poor do more harm than good because they’re trying to solve the wrong problem. Corbett and Fikkert point out that you need a clear understanding of the problem of poverty before you can implement an effective solution.
(Shortform note: The principle that it’s counterproductive to try solving a problem before you correctly define its root cause applies to most problems, not just poverty. For example, in Principles: Life and Work, Ray Dalio discusses the importance of identifying root causes when solving business problems.)
Corbett and Fikkert observe it’s not easy to define “poverty” because poverty is a complex issue, as evidenced by the diversity of ways that different people define and describe it. They observe that middle- to upper-class white North American Christians often describe poverty as a lack of material things like water, food, money, medicine, and housing.
(Shortform note: This tendency to define poverty in terms of material goods shouldn’t be surprising, considering that it aligns with most official definitions. For example, Webster’s dictionary defines poverty as a state of “lacking the usual or socially acceptable amount of money,” while the US Census bureau defines poverty as having less than a certain level of household income.)
But when poor people are asked to describe what poverty is, they tend to focus on psychological problems more than material shortages. In a survey of 60,000 poor people from 60 different low-income countries, most respondents named feelings such as shame, powerlessness, fear, hopelessness, depression, voicelessness, and isolation as the essence of poverty. Corbett and Fikkert affirm that this is the correct definition of poverty—after all, nobody knows what it means to be poor better than the people who are poor.
(Shortform note: In Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, T. Harv Eker takes this concept even further, arguing that psychological issues are the cause of poverty. He explains that when people think negatively, they reinforce the belief that they’re powerless when it comes to money. This results in the failure to take actions to improve their circumstances. And because the poor often suffer from low self-esteem, they feel unworthy of more money and unconsciously sabotage opportunities to improve their finances.)
Despite poverty’s complexity, Corbett and Fikkert argue that we can trace all of its components back to one source: a breakdown in a person’s relationships with God, self, others, and the rest of creation.
According to Corbett and Fikkert, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, it damaged all humans’ relationships with Him, themselves, the people around them, and the rest of creation. As a result of these broken relationships, humans have developed a series of harmful worldviews, which make them poor by causing them to make poor decisions:
Negative view of God: Instead of serving and praising God, people may lack faith in Him, not believe in Him, or even believe in other gods. This may lead them to squander resources trying to curry the favor of false gods through offerings or expensive rituals.
And even if it doesn’t, it facilitates other negative worldviews: Without a correct view of God, people can’t readily form correct views of themselves, others, or their role in creation. They can’t understand themselves or each other without knowing God because God made humans in his own image. And they can’t understand their place in managing creation without knowing what role God gave them. As such, Corbett and Fikkert emphasize that teaching the Christian worldview (that is, a correct view of God) is a crucial element of liberating people from poverty.
Negative view of self: Instead of recognizing their inherent value and superiority to the rest of creation (for example, animals), they lack self-confidence and self-worth. This contributes to their sense of powerlessness and holds them back from pursuing the opportunities that are available to them.
Negative view of others: Instead of knowing, loving, and encouraging others to use their unique gifts, people become self-centered, treating others with hostility or indifference, and exploiting or manipulating them when given the opportunity. This contributes to their poverty by driving others away, making them feel more isolated, and exacerbating their powerlessness because they lack empowering social or professional connections.
Negative view of creation: Instead of managing, protecting, and engaging with the rest of creation, people disconnect from the world around them and in some cases believe that life is entirely outside of human control.
Background and Controversy on Broken Relationships
Corbett and Fikkert’s assertion that poverty results from the four relationships that were broken when Adam and Eve sinned isn’t so much an original idea as a specific application of the Christian doctrine that human suffering (including poverty) is ultimately the result of sin. Christian theology holds that when Adam and Eve sinned, their sin corrupted all of creation, making human suffering and death possible. Adam and Eve’s original sin was also passed down to their offspring as a propensity to commit more sin.
Consequently, sin can cause suffering in three ways: A person may suffer as a direct consequence of his own sins (for example, poverty caused by bad decisions or expensive idol worship). A person may also suffer as a consequence of someone else’s sin (for example, someone who’s poor because predatory lenders take all his money for exorbitant interest payments). And a person may suffer simply because of the collateral effects of Adam and Eve’s original sin on creation (for example, someone who’s poor because of an illness that prevents him from holding a job).
In Christian theology, sin is the problem—and the ultimate cause of all other problems—and Christ is the solution, because Christ is able to forgive sin. Thus, in a Christian context, the idea that mending your relationship with God by receiving God’s forgiveness is the first step to solving any problem, including poverty, is relatively intuitive and non-controversial.
But in a secular context, the idea that teaching people a Christian worldview (or “how to mend their relationship with God”) should be central to poverty alleviation is one of Corbett and Fikkert’s most controversial assertions. Some even make the opposite claim, asserting that a Christian worldview may perpetuate poverty by helping poor people find meaning in their suffering rather than seeking material solutions to their problems.
Nevertheless, even secular sources tend to agree that the other three relationships Corbett and Fikkert identify are important for overcoming poverty, or succeeding at anything for that matter. For example, in The Success Principles, motivational speaker and self-help author Jack Canfield emphasizes the importance of a positive self-image for achieving your goals, which corroborates Corbett and Fikkert’s concept of mending your relationship with yourself.
In Never Eat Alone, entrepreneur Keith Ferrazzi emphasizes the importance of building mutually beneficial relationships with other people to succeed in your career. And in The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy emphasizes the importance of taking control of your environment in order to be successful in your endeavors.
Furthermore, according to Corbett and Fikkert, humans’ broken relationships with God, self, each other, and creation result in broken social, political, economic, and religious systems, since these systems are made up of humans. Broken systems tend to reinforce negative worldviews, creating a vicious cycle. And the poor are the most vulnerable to this vicious cycle because they have the least influence over the systems under which they live.
For example, suppose a homeless man goes to a church looking for help. This particular church doesn’t know much about helping the homeless (a broken religious system), so they refer him to a government program that puts him in run-down public housing in an impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhood (a broken social and political system). From this experience, the homeless man infers that God doesn’t care about him (since the church just sent him to the government) and other people don’t care about him (since the government sent him to live in a hostile neighborhood). These conclusions further damage his views of God and other people.
(Shortform note: While Corbett and Fikkert acknowledge the influence of broken systems, their focus is primarily on poverty alleviation by churches, which don’t typically have much influence over political or economic systems. Other books, such as Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom, discuss the subject of poverty more from the point of view of systemic reform. Like Corbett and Fikkert, Sen identifies powerlessness as the essence of poverty. He suggests empowering the poor by guaranteeing them various political rights, including the right to participate in government, the right to engage in commerce, and the right to basic services like education and healthcare.)
If broken relationships are at the root of poverty, and everyone has them, why isn’t everyone poor? According to Corbett and Fikkert, there is a sense in which everyone is poor: The essence of poverty is more psychological than physical. Someone with a lot of money can still feel isolated, depressed, or hopeless due to broken relationships.
That said, the authors also stress that material poverty is particularly difficult to overcome because, as we noted in the section above, the people with the least resources and influence are the most vulnerable to getting trapped in a vicious cycle: Their negative worldview leads to poor decisions. Their poor decisions have negative consequences, which are often exacerbated by broken systems. And the negative consequences reinforce their negative worldviews.
In some cases, individuals become so deeply trapped in a web of factors like insufficient assets, oppression, vulnerability, powerlessness, and isolation, that each time they try to escape, they end up even more tightly confined. With so much holding them back, they resign themselves to simply staying where they are.
Material Poverty Is Material Powerlessness
In Development as Freedom, Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen discusses the problem of poverty and possible solutions. Comparing Sen’s definition of poverty to Corbett and Fikkert’s definition provides some additional insight as to why material poverty is particularly difficult to escape from.
Sen defines poverty as a lack of freedom or a lack of opportunity, not a lack of material resources, per se. As we discussed earlier, Corbett and Fikkert define poverty as a mental state of shame and powerlessness. These two definitions may have some subtly different implications, but they both equate poverty with powerlessness, which is the antithesis of freedom.
And yet money (or material assets, which have monetary value) is arguably also a form of power: The less money and fewer material assets a person has, the less power she has over her situation, and the easier it is for her to feel powerless. As such, someone who is only spiritually poor by Corbett and Fikkert’s definition may feel ashamed and powerless, but someone who is materially poor is also materially powerless, or at least has fewer options for improving her situation.
This material powerlessness is both an obstacle in itself, which is what Sen primarily discusses, and a catalyst for the feeling of powerlessness, which is what Corbett and Fikkert’s definition of poverty focuses on.
Reflect on your views on God, yourself, others, and creation, and consider how negative feelings and opinions about them might limit your potential.
Reflect on your views on God, yourself, others (family, friends, humans in general), and creation (the planet, with its ecosystems and natural resources). Identify at least two negative feelings you’ve recently had about each of them. (For example, have you been irritated with anyone lately?)
For each instance you wrote down, identify an opinion or perspective you formed as a result of that negative feeling. (For example, if you’ve been irritated with anyone lately, how did that sense of irritation affect your opinion of them as a person?)
Now, consider how those perspectives may have negatively affected your life. (For example, if you’ve been avoiding contact with someone because you have a negative opinion of them, how might that limit your—or their—opportunities for success in any area of life?)
Finally, what could you do to mend each of the relationships you’ve identified?
As we saw in Part 1, many people misunderstand the nature of poverty, thinking it’s just a lack of resources, when in reality it’s a psychological state of shame and powerlessness. Corbett and Fikkert further observe that this misunderstanding is frequently compounded by a deep-seated and often subconscious belief that we’re better than the people we’re trying to help. We’ll refer to this unhelpful mindset as a “superiority complex.” In Part 2, we’ll first consider their general advice on developing the right mindset, and then look at the specific superiority complexes that they say you need to repent of.
Corbett and Fikkert point out that superiority complexes get in the way of building relationships, which is crucial in poverty alleviation because, as we discussed in Part 1, the root cause of poverty is broken relationships with God, oneself, others, and creation. As such, they say the key to cultivating the right mindset for effective poverty alleviation is to see the poor as equals—fellow humans that you want to work with for mutual good, not inferior beings that you need to save from themselves.
(Shortform note: In High Performance Habits, Brendon Burchard observes that top performers in any field tend to develop superiority complexes because they are better at something than their peers. But he also warns that this becomes self-defeating, because nobody likes to work with someone who sees them as inferior, and nobody can deliver their best performance without support from their colleagues. While Burchard doesn’t consider the field of poverty alleviation particularly, this principle may still apply because, as Corbett and Fikkert point out, the people who go on short-term missions to help the poor are typically at the top of their financial game, at least compared to the poor people that they’re trying to help.)
The first step to seeing the poor as equals is to acknowledge your own brokenness. As we mentioned earlier, the sins of Adam and Eve caused all of creation to become broken—not just the relationships of the materially poor. So we all have broken relationships that need mending. The authors explain that this involves praying that God would give us discernment and humility to recognize and correct any misconceptions we harbor about God, ourselves, others, or creation and reality in general.
This especially includes misconceptions like superiority complexes that hinder our relationships with the poor. As God helps us repent of our superiority and mend these relationships, we’ll begin to recognize that people, no matter how poor, are all uniquely gifted and valuable. And our recognition of their unique value contributes to helping the poor by allowing us to combat their feelings of shame and helplessness.
(Shortform note: In addition to the positive effects that the authors describe, seeing poor people as equals with valuable talents may improve the success rate of your poverty alleviation efforts through the “pygmalion effect”: the principle that expecting students to succeed actually makes them more likely to succeed. Studies indicate that in educational settings, if the teacher has higher expectations of a particular student, that student will tend to rise to her expectations. In this case, the more you recognize a poor person’s value and talents, the higher your expectations of him will naturally be, improving his chances of success in whatever program of poverty alleviation you’re running.)
Let’s now look at how the authors identify and classify different superiority complexes to provide a sort of checklist for the process of self-examination. Corbett and Fikkert identify two main superiority complexes that we need to repent of to minister effectively to the poor, especially in cross-cultural missions: cultural superiority and paternalism.
The authors point out that every culture has a system of values that govern people’s behavior within that culture. A cultural superiority complex consists of failing to respect another culture’s value system when you interact with people of that culture. Whether you disregard the other culture’s values because you consciously view them as inferior and unimportant or you’re just oblivious to the differences, such disregard will cause misunderstandings and hinder relationships.
Cultural superiority complexes can be a problem any time Christians minister cross-culturally. The authors observe that the effect is greatest on mission trips to countries with very different cultures, but even different ethnic groups or neighborhoods within the same city sometimes have sufficiently different cultures to cause misunderstanding and friction.
Addressing Allegations of Hypocrisy
As we showed in Part 1, Corbett and Fikkert affirm that the Christian worldview is objectively superior to other worldviews and that teaching the Christian worldview is a crucial part of alleviating poverty because of the advantages that the Christian worldview provides. Does this mean that they have a cultural worldview superiority complex? And since they themselves point out the problems that superiority complexes can cause, does this make their position hypocritical?
Not necessarily. Although they don’t take time to explicitly refute this concern in the book, we can infer that they don’t see any hypocrisy in condemning cultural superiority complexes while maintaining the superiority of a Christian worldview because they believe Christianity (and thus a Christian worldview) can flourish in a wide range of cultures. They thus distinguish religion from culture: No culture is above another, but Christianity is above all religions.
As we’ll discuss more in the later parts of this guide, the authors assert that collaborating effectively with local, indigenous churches is a key element of ministering effectively to the poor. And to drive this point home, they emphasize that if you want to help a particular group or community, you should start by learning how and where God is already working in that community, not by assuming that you need to bring God to that community. This approach stands in contrast to approaching a community with a cultural superiority complex.
Thus, while the question of whether the authors’ faith in the superiority of the Christian worldview constitutes a superiority complex could probably be argued both ways, their views are at least self-consistent.
Corbett and Fikkert identify four key values and the spectrum of perspectives that different cultures take on them. Let’s consider each of them in turn and the ways that a cultural superiority complex can be counterproductive to building relationships between the missionary and the poor of another culture (which is a prerequisite for helping to heal the poor person’s relationships with God, others, self, and creation).
Cultural perspective on power over circumstances: The authors observe that Western cultures tend to postulate that people control their own destiny, but people of some other cultures view the circumstances of life as being largely beyond human control. This can lead a Westerner with a superiority complex to regard others as apathetic and undeserving of assistance.
Cultural perception of authority: The authors note that Western culture tends to value giving all individuals equal social status, while some other cultures value certain hierarchies of social status. A Westerner with a superiority complex may ignore the social hierarchy of another culture, insulting people at the top of the hierarchy and asking others to do things that aren’t culturally acceptable in that context.
Cultural perception of time: Corbett and Fikkert explain that Western culture is strongly “monochronic,” meaning that Westerners view time as a limited resource. Meanwhile, the authors describe many other cultures as “polychronic,” meaning that they view time as an unlimited resource. A Westerner with a monochronic mindset and a superiority complex may become impatient or even offended when people show up late to meetings, fall behind schedule, and don’t seem to respect their time.
Cultural perspective on individuality: Corbett and Fikkert point out that Western culture is individualistic, emphasizing the unique value of each person and her contributions to a group or cause. By contrast, collectivist cultures emphasize the value of membership in a group and commitment to that group. A Westerner with a superiority complex may fail to grasp the significance of organizations such as the local church in a collectivist culture or the depth of relationships that people in that culture require for establishing trust.
The authors point out that the Western culture from which most North American missionaries come tends to land at one extreme on most of these issues. Coming from an “extreme” culture exacerbates the effect of a cultural superiority complex when dealing with people from cultures that lie toward the middle or near the opposite end of the spectrum.
The Spectrum of Cultural Perspectives Within the Christian Worldview
We noted before how, in the authors’ view, believing a Christian worldview is superior is not a superiority complex because the Christian worldview deals with universal truths that are applicable in any culture. To further illustrate this point, let’s consider how the cultural differences that the authors describe are all present within Christianity.
For a Christian ministering cross-culturally, understanding how these differences play out within Christian theology could provide a starting point for breaking out of cultural superiority complexes and connecting with fellow believers of other cultures.
Power over circumstances: There is a long-standing debate in Christian circles about how much free agency God gives humans. As Corbett and Fikkert point out, today it is commonplace for Western Christians to believe that they have considerable control over their circumstances, and, of course, over their actions. But this has not always been the case. For example, in the 1500s, John Calvin argued that God’s omnipotence and man’s fallen nature implied that humans have no power to choose to accept God’s forgiveness—rather, it is God who chooses to enlighten and empower people, enabling (and compelling) them to follow him and receive forgiveness of sins.
For a time, this “Calvinist” perspective was the majority view in Western protestant Christianity. Some people even extrapolated Calvin’s logic from salvation to the rest of life and argued that all human actions are predetermined by God: Free will is an illusion and humans have no control over themselves, let alone their circumstances. This extreme view is known as “hyper-Calvinism'' or “Christian Fatalism.” While hyper-Calvinism has never been a majority view, it illustrates how Christian theology can span the entire spectrum of perspectives on how much control you have over your life, simply depending on how you interpret issues like the omnipotence of God.
Perception of authority: Consistent with the idea of individual equality, many evangelical protestant churches have a very flat hierarchy: Individual believers are accountable directly to God and only to God—the pastor and any other church officials serve more as advisors to teach individuals about God and provide wise counsel than as leaders of a coherent group. But Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches tend to have a much more hierarchical structure, with priests having authority over lay believers, bishops having authority over priests, and so on.
Perception of time: On one hand, the Bible does mention the importance of using time wisely, but it also teaches the availability of eternal life and even equates eternal life to having a relationship with God. So both monochronic and polychronic themes are reflected in scripture. Specifically, as Corbett and Fikkert point out, the New Testament makes a few references to “redeeming the time.” Arguably a better biblical reference would have been Psalm 90, where Moses reflects on the brevity of human life and prays that God would teach us to “number our days.” Meanwhile, in John 17:3, the Bible equates knowing God with eternal life, and the availability of eternal life is a major theme throughout the New Testament.
Perspective on individuality: Biblical passages like Romans 12:4-8 and 1 Corinthians 12:13-27 compare the church to a human body composed of many body parts, each with a unique function. Again, this seems to encompass the entire spectrum of cultural perspectives, emphasizing both the unique value of each individual (as individualism does) and the unity of the church as a whole (as collectivism does).
The second type of superiority complex is paternalism. Paternalism consists of treating other people like children: deciding what’s best for them, providing for their needs, sometimes overruling their decisions for “their own good,” and so forth.
(Shortform note: Strictly speaking, paternalism is not always a bad thing. There are situations where it’s appropriate to treat people like children, such as when they are children—especially if they're your children. That said, even when you’re raising children, it’s important not to be excessively paternalistic, so that they have space to develop problem-solving and decision-making skills.)
Corbett and Fikkert observe that when we treat the poor paternalistically because we feel superior to them, this tends to inhibit forming working relationships with them and often leads to relief efforts that do more harm than good.
They define five specific variations of the paternalism superiority complex, which we’ll recount below. To show how each variant can negatively impact poverty alleviation, we’ll consider them each in turn for a hypothetical situation where a church sends a short-term missionary team to build a new house for a local family in an impoverished community where some of the houses are deteriorating to the point of being unlivable.
1. Resource Paternalism: Giving the poor resources such as food, clothing, or money. In the case of this hypothetical mission, the missionaries bring their own construction materials along or make their own arrangements to purchase them. This not only reinforces the locals’ sense of helplessness by insinuating that they are incapable of providing or selecting the materials themselves, but it also hurts the local economy since now there’s no reason for the family to buy building materials from local suppliers.
2. Labor Paternalism: Doing work on behalf of the poor. In this case, the missionaries do all the work constructing the house. Again, this not only insinuates that the locals are incapable of doing the work, reinforcing their sense of helplessness, but it also deprives them of an opportunity to put their skills to use (if they have them), learn new skills on the job (if they don’t already have them), or stimulate the local economy by hiring a local contractor to do the work (if others in the community have the necessary skills).
3. Managerial Paternalism: Making plans and decisions on behalf of the poor. In this case, the missionary team designs the house or uses a standard floor plan that they brought with them, with little or no input from the family they’re building the house for. Once again, this reinforces the poor family’s impression that they have no control over their situation.
4. Knowledge Paternalism: Failing to adequately solicit input from the poor or assuming you know better than they do. Even if you genuinely have more education or technical expertise than anyone in a group of poor people, they still have a better understanding of their situation than you do. In our example of building a house, this feeds into managerial paternalism. It also may result in poor decisions: The missionary team designs the house to use natural gas heat because it's efficient and cost-effective, but they don’t realize that the community doesn’t have a natural gas line to hook up to.
5. Spiritual Paternalism: Assuming a leadership role in church services or other religious functions conducted for the poor. As with knowledge paternalism, it’s true that the typical affluent Western Christian has more academic knowledge about Christianity than the typical poor person. But academic knowledge does not necessarily equate to spiritual maturity.
In the authors’ experience, poor people often know better how to apply biblical principles to their situation than outsiders do. Moreover, poor people often have stronger faith in God than affluent people do because the poor actually rely on God for things that the wealthy can rely on their own resources for.
For example, suppose an upper-middle-class American and a poor African both get sick. The American goes to a doctor for treatment and relies on her medical insurance to pay for the incident. If she recovers without any complications, the episode probably has no effect on her faith in God or lack thereof. The African can’t afford to go to a doctor, so he prays that God will heal him. If he recovers, his faith in God is strengthened.
Finally, the authors point out that just as other forms of paternalism can undermine the local economy, spiritual paternalism can undermine the local church. They observe, for example, that when affluent missionaries host a children’s Bible camp in a poor area, local children abandon the local Bible studies that they’ve been attending to go to the camp and then don’t come back after the missionaries leave because the local studies aren’t as entertaining and don’t give out free stuff like the missionary program did.
Service Without Paternalism
It’s worth noting that the five types of paternalism Corbett and Fikkert discuss are arguably examples of actions that may be motivated by a paternalistic superiority complex but may also be motivated by an entirely different mentality. And when done in the right spirit, some of them may actually be helpful instead of harmful. In this light, let’s reconsider each of the authors’ five types of paternalism in turn.
1. Resource Paternalism: Corbett and Fikkert point out that giving people money or other resources can come across as an assertion that they are incapable of providing for their own needs. And indeed, monetary gifts can give this impression—especially when the giver has a superiority complex.
But in principle, a poor person could also interpret a monetary gift as a vote of confidence. It could be as if the giver were saying, “I know that you’re capable of improving your situation and that you’ll put any resources at your disposal to good use, so I’m giving you enough resources to make a quantum leap forward.” Studies have found that, at least in certain countries, poor people who receive cash transfers do indeed use the money efficiently to improve their situation. This could be taken to imply that at least some poor people interpret cash transfers positively in practice.
2. Labor Paternalism: Similarly, doing work on someone’s behalf can imply that she’s incapable of doing the work, but it doesn’t have to. As a parent, you do things for your child that your child can’t do for herself. As an employee, you also do things for your boss that (hopefully) your boss could do for herself, but chooses to delegate to you.
If you’re an aid worker helping a poor person, your relationship to the person you’re trying to help would probably fall somewhere in between these two extremes. As you get to know the person, you may find things you can do for him that are genuinely helpful and not insulting. As we’ll discuss later in this guide, Corbett and Fikkert emphasize the importance of getting to know the people you’re trying to help as a prerequisite to providing effective aid.
3. Managerial Paternalism: It’s more difficult to envision a situation where making decisions for a poor person wouldn’t be paternalistic, because making a decision on someone’s behalf generally implies that you have some kind of authority over him, especially if you make the decision without his input or consent. As such, making decisions for people may be more closely connected with a paternalistic superiority complex than most of the other actions that Corbett and Fikkert discuss.
4. Knowledge Paternalism: In Corbett and Fikkert’s discussion, knowledge paternalism seems to be closely related to managerial paternalism, because failing to solicit input would usually happen in the context of making plans or decisions. By definition, you should always seek adequate input from the people you’re trying to help. But, as Corbett and Fikkert discuss later, sharing your knowledge with the poor through education and training can be an effective form of aid. You may indeed have superior knowledge in certain areas, and that can be beneficial for your aid efforts. But assuming you have superior knowledge in every relevant area is problematic and—as the authors point out—usually incorrect.
5. Spiritual Paternalism: Is it ever helpful for a missionary to assume a position of leadership over a local church? If so, at what point, if ever, should the missionary step down and hand over leadership to the locals? These questions have been debated throughout Christian history, and different churches endorse different answers, as reflected in their organizational structure.
Some churches (the Episcopal church, for example) have a centralized structure: A central organization decides where to build local churches and sends pastors to lead them. When a church with this structure establishes a mission church in a new locality, they typically appoint a full-time missionary to lead it. As the local church grows, the central organization may appoint a new pastor for the church and send the missionary to a new mission. In the case of cross-cultural missions, they might eventually appoint an indigenous pastor but probably only after he had graduated from a seminary endorsed by the central organization.
Other churches (the Southern Baptist church, for example) have a decentralized structure: Local believers organize their own churches and select or hire a pastor. If any organization above the local church exists, it is made up of delegates sent from the local churches. When a church with this organizational structure sends missionaries to a new area, their goal is typically to make enough converts for an indigenous church to form, independent of the church that sent the missionaries. Sometimes the missionaries do play an active role in founding an indigenous church, but even in this case, they ideally hand over leadership to the locals as soon as the locals can take on the task.
Some might argue that the decentralized approach is superior because it is less susceptible to spiritual paternalism. But proponents of the centralized approach contend that, assuming the leaders sent from the central organization are well qualified to teach Christianity, their leadership will be empowering rather than disempowering because they can help new believers get up to speed in their faith faster. While this may be true in some cases, Corbett and Fikkert’s observation that locals often have stronger faith, despite having less academic knowledge of Christianity, partially counters this perspective.
Examine your cultural values and how they influence your attitude toward people of other cultures.
Think about contact you’ve had with someone from another culture. This could be anything from a long-term relationship to a single interaction. Describe the person as well as the extent of your contact with them.
Now, consider the differences between you and this person, focusing on the cultural characteristics mentioned by the authors: perceived power over circumstances, and perceptions of authority, time, and the individual. Identify at least two ways in which you’re different.
How do these differences make you feel? In particular, can you recognize any feelings of frustration or judgment? Describe them.
Keeping in mind the spectrum of perspectives that the authors describe, how can you reframe these cultural differences from the perspective of that person’s culture instead of your own?
Moving forward, how can you modify your expectations of how the person will behave now that you have a better understanding of that person’s cultural perspective?
In Part 2 we discussed Corbett and Fikkert’s advice on the importance of doing poverty alleviation with the right mindset and the various superiority complexes that you need to guard against in order to cultivate the right mindset. In Part 3, we’ll discuss their advice on how to practically approach poverty alleviation, including some common problems they've observed with current approaches and how to design more effective interventions.
Corbett and Fikkert advise that sometimes other people or other organizations are in a better position to minister to a given community than you or your church are. If that’s the case, you should let the people who are most qualified to do the project take charge of it and either humbly ask them what you can do to help or turn your attention to a different need that you’re better equipped to meet.
The authors pose three questions to ask yourself before taking on any poverty alleviation project. If you can’t confidently answer “yes” to all three questions, don’t take the project.
1. Do you fully understand the situation, including relevant local customs and culture? If not, don’t take charge of the project yourself. Instead, let a local church in the affected area or someone else who fully understands the situation take charge, and look for ways to support them on the project, such as by donating money.
2. Are local organizations incapable of meeting the need? If they’re able to meet the need themselves, don’t intervene. The goal is to empower people to take charge of their own lives and communities. Trying to help when it’s not necessary ultimately undermines their agency—which causes harm.
(Shortform note: As we’ve discussed, Corbett and Fikkert point out that intervening—rather than letting local organizations handle a crisis—can harm aid recipients psychologically and take customers away from local businesses. Others point out that it can also harm their social and political systems by making the government less accountable to the people. This is because when an outside agency steps in to meet a need, it takes pressure off the local government to address problems that may have created or contributed to creating the need.)
3. Are you actually capable of meeting the need? In situations where outside help is warranted because the local organizations don’t have the resources or qualifications to adequately address the situation, outside help is only beneficial when the outsiders have the necessary training, qualifications, and resources. If you try to help when you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll just get in the way.
Are You the Right Person for the Job?
Corbett and Fikkert’s assertion that you need to understand the situation and culture and need to be objectively capable of meeting the need before you intervene mirrors business consultant Gino Wickman’s advice about personnel management in business. Considering his advice provides some additional insight on this subject.
In Traction, Wickman advises that for your company to be successful, you have to have the right people in the right positions. According to Wickman, the “right people” are those who are on board with your company’s culture and mission, while the “right positions” means matching job tasks to workers’ skill sets. Problems come up when either of these factors is off.
On the one hand, Wickman says someone could be the right person in the wrong position: She wholeheartedly embraces your company’s culture and mission, but she doesn’t have the right technical or interpersonal skills for the position. If that’s the case, she can’t thrive in that position and may end up causing problems for the company. Wickman says you need to move her into a position that matches her skill set, if there is one, or let her go if there isn’t.
Let’s apply this concept to aid work: If you answered “yes” to Corbett and Fikkert’s question about understanding the situation but “no” to their question about your ability to meet the need, that would make you the “right person in the wrong position” for that intervention. Applying Wickman’s advice, you should look for a different need that you’re better able to meet.
On the other hand, Wickman says someone could be the wrong person in the right position: He has the right technical skills to excel in his current position, but he doesn’t understand your company’s culture or doesn’t believe in the value of your product. In this case, Wickman says you need to let him go before he stirs up dissension within the company.
Similarly, if you answered “no” to Corbett and Fikkert’s question about understanding the situation but “yes” to their question about your ability to meet the need, that would make you the “wrong person in the right position” for that intervention. And this is even more of a problem in cross-cultural poverty alleviation than it is in business because the cultural differences are likely to be greater than the cultural difference between two companies. So, following Wickman’s advice, you don’t belong in that role. Instead, you need to find a role where you understand the culture and have the ability to make a difference.
Let’s suppose you’ve found a poverty alleviation project where you can answer “yes” to all three of Corbett and Fikkert’s questions above. As you prepare for the project, one of the first things you need to decide is what kind of aid to provide. The authors explain that there are three basic types of aid:
Relief consists of providing immediate assistance to people in a time of crisis, such as when their homes have been demolished by an earthquake, or they’ve had to flee their homes because of war. When correctly applied, relief temporarily provides outside resources to prevent a bad situation from getting worse.
Rehabilitation consists of helping people to recover from a crisis. According to Corbett and Fikkert, rehabilitation should take the place of relief as soon as the victims of the crisis no longer need urgent material assistance to prevent their situation from worsening. A key distinction between relief and rehabilitation is that relief is characterized by giving things to people, whereas rehabilitation involves working with people to help them recover. Rehabilitation efforts should end when recovery is complete, that is, when the crisis victim has recovered to where they were before the crisis struck.
Development consists of empowering people to improve their situation beyond what it’s been in the past. Development picks up where rehabilitation leaves off. The authors assert that development should involve a two-way relationship where both the provider and receiver help each other mend their broken relationships with God, self, others, and creation.
For example, suppose your neighbor's house was destroyed by a tornado. Letting him stay in your guest bedroom, free of charge, for a while is relief. Lending a hand as he rebuilds his house is rehabilitation. Spending time strategizing with him about how you can both be better prepared for the next tornado season is development.
Systems of Classifying Aid
Corbett and Fikkert are often credited with originating the classification of aid into relief, rehabilitation, and development. While this system of classifying aid is widely used, some organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), use a slightly different and more complex system. It’s important to clearly distinguish which system a given source is using because different systems use some of the same terms to mean different things.
Instead of dividing aid into relief, rehabilitation, and development, the USAID system divides aid into relief, development, and institutionalization, and further subdivides each of these categories. Under this system:
Relief is the first stage of crisis response, and consists of three consecutive parts: First, “emergency response” consists of providing food, clothing, medical attention, and so forth to disaster victims. Second, “transitional shelter” consists of providing some kind of temporary lodging to protect victims from the elements. This could mean putting them up in hotels or public housing, if available, or it could mean giving them tents or similar temporary shelters. Third, “repair” consists of helping them salvage what can be salvaged in the aftermath of the disaster and restore infrastructure that was damaged but can readily be restored to working order.
This definition of “relief” is similar to Corbett and Fikkert’s, but slightly broader. They would probably consider the “repair” stage to be rehabilitation rather than relief.
Development is the second stage of crisis response in the USAID system. The first substage of development is “rehabilitation,” which in this system consists of getting essential local services (like water distribution) back up and running. The second substage of development is “rebuilding,” which encompasses the whole process of working with the locals to rebuild homes and infrastructure to the point where they are livable again after the disaster. The system identifies “reconstruction” as a subpart of “rebuilding” that focuses on the actual construction activities, while other aspects of “rebuilding” include assessing the damage, planning, and training the locals in construction skills.
Since “development,” as defined by USAID, is still part of the process to get back to pre-crisis infrastructure, Corbett and Fikkert would consider this work part of rehabilitation, not development. The only exception might be the training that the locals receive, if it has the potential to help them progress beyond their pre-crisis state.
Institutionalization involves moving away from direct involvement in reconstruction toward indirect involvement, like providing financial services to local construction agencies and training locals in finance and construction management.
Again, Corbett and Fikkert consider some of these training activities part of “development” in their system, and the emphasis on increased responsibility of the locals for their own success at the institutionalization phase also resembles their description of “development.” But in USAID’s system, the purpose of institutionalization is still primarily to get the community back to where it was before the crisis, so in Corbett and Fikkert’s system, “institutionalization” would still consist mostly of rehabilitation.
Corbett and Fikkert advise that it’s important to consider which of the three types of aid the community you’re trying to help actually needs and provide the right type of aid. They observe that many churches default to providing relief, but most poor people need development, not relief.
At any given time, only a small percentage of the poor people in the world need immediate relief: victims of recent natural disasters, for example. But even in the case of a natural disaster, the authors observe that by the time a church has heard about the disaster on the news, planned a charitable mission to help the victims, raised funding to support the mission, and sent a missionary team to the affected area, the need for relief is typically over. By that time the victims need rehabilitation or development.
The Rising Need for Relief
Some sources might contest Corbett and Fikkert’s assertion that efforts to help the poor need to shift away from relief toward rehabilitation and development on the grounds that the increasing frequency of natural disasters is increasing the demand for relief.
This perspective exists in both secular and Christian circles, although secular sources generally attribute the increasing frequency of natural disasters to human-caused climate change, while Christian sources often attribute it to the impending end of the world, as Christ prophesied in Matthew 24:3-8.
However, the increased need for relief doesn’t lessen the importance of providing the right kind of aid in any given situation, nor does it reduce the global demand for rehabilitation and development.
Moreover, as the authors explain, providing relief to people who really need rehabilitation or development may only delay their progress. If they receive short-term relief but never get the rehabilitation and development that they need, then when the relief ends, their situation may become worse than ever.
(Shortform note: Some medical analysts have brought a similar argument against the US medical industry: They say that current medical institutions focus too much on reactive treatments for medical conditions that rise to the level of a crisis for the patient, instead of helping people develop the healthy lifestyles that could prevent many health crises from occurring in the first place. And, like short-term relief measures that temporarily help a poor person but leave them even worse off when the relief ends, reactive medical treatments may temporarily resolve a medical crisis, but ultimately leave the patient more vulnerable to relapse or other complications.)
Beyond providing the wrong type of aid, the other problematic approach to poverty alleviation that Corbett and Fikkert observe is when aid providers start by assessing the needs of the poor community and pairing them with outside resources to develop solutions. This approach often stems from a paternalistic superiority complex, as it comes down to telling the poor: “Tell us your problems, and we’ll provide a solution.”
This approach also implicitly assumes that the poor community’s problems cannot be solved without outside resources and focuses outside attention solely on their problems. As such, it reinforces their sense of shame, inferiority, and powerlessness, making their poverty worse.
To avoid these problems, Corbett and Fikkert advise taking a different approach that involves assessing the community’s assets before their needs, as we’ll discuss next.
The Weakness-Based Approach in Business
Just as Corbett and Fikkert critique the practice of focusing first on problems when trying to help the poor, business experts at the Gallup Press argue that the common practice of focusing on employees’ weaknesses when trying to improve their performance is fundamentally flawed.
They observe that there is a popular belief that anyone can do or become proficient in just about anything if they identify and fix the weaknesses that are holding them back from success. They point out a number of problems with this view:
If everyone has unlimited potential, then nobody really has a unique identity. As such, the practice of trying to help people advance by identifying and fixing all their weaknesses is ultimately dehumanizing.
The idea that people can fix their weaknesses with hard work and perseverance conflicts with the reality that many people struggle for years to overcome certain weaknesses and never seem to make any headway. Furthermore, this idea implies that when this happens, it must be their fault for not trying hard enough, which is demoralizing to them.
Focusing exclusively on correcting your weaknesses leads you to neglect using or developing your strengths, which is, at best, an inefficient use of time and effort.
These observations from the realm of business reinforce Corbett and Fikkert’s assertions and provide additional insight into why the needs-based approach tends to be demoralizing, dehumanizing, and generally counterproductive—both in poverty alleviation and employee development.
Corbett and Fikkert recommend an approach called asset-based community development (ABCD). This approach focuses on the poor’s assets, including individuals’ unique skills and talents, as well as the community’s existing resources.
(Shortform note: ABCD was originally developed by an urban research center at Northwestern University when they recognized a gap in their researchers’ approach to studying neighborhoods: Research consistently identified community members’ needs and problems but not their capacities, strengths, and achievements. This realization inspired them to begin a new four-year effort to study neighborhoods’ assets, and their research later became a global movement.)
Corbett and Fikkert discuss a number of advantages of the asset-based approach. First, whereas a needs-based approach emphasizes what’s “wrong,” an asset-based approach emphasizes what’s “right,” which is more encouraging for all involved.
Second, an asset-based approach focuses on local resources first, thereby empowering the community and reducing the risk of developing dependence. Only when the community’s assets aren’t sufficient do outsiders offer additional resources.
Finally, using an asset-based approach can help the non-poor overcome feelings of superiority. This is because it emphasizes everything the poor have to offer, which combats the tendency to see them as helpless people.
Focusing on the Positive
We could generalize the principle of assessing assets before needs as focusing on the positive to make changes for the better. Whereas Corbett and Fikkert present this as a strategic principle for poverty intervention, others have advocated it as a way to succeed in business or overcome obstacles in life. Since climbing out of poverty typically involves career development and overcoming a variety of obstacles, these other sources provide additional insight that’s relevant to poverty alleviation.
Arguably the first notable proponent of focusing on the positive side was Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote The Power of Positive Thinking. Like Corbett and Fikkert, Peale approached the subject from a Christian perspective. He argued that you can overcome any difficulty in life if you just believe that you can, pray for God’s assistance, and don’t let negative thoughts discourage your belief.
More recently, Shawn Achor presented a similar argument from a purely secular perspective in The Happiness Advantage. Achor asserts that a positive mindset enhances your productivity, enabling you to succeed in your endeavors. As such, Peale and Achor agree that cultivating a positive mindset leads to success. The difference is that Peale ultimately attributes your success to divine assistance, while Achor attributes it to your own efforts.
Finally, in Strengths Finder 2.0, Tom Rath argues that the best way to advance your career is to focus on cultivating your strengths, rather than on fixing your weaknesses. He asserts that it’s just not possible to fix all your weaknesses. And even if it was, it would be a wasteful use of resources: You can spend a lot of time and energy improving your abilities in an area of weakness, but chances are you’ll still only end up with average ability in that area. But if you spend the same amount of time and energy honing an ability that comes naturally to you, you’ll end up far above average.
Ask yourself if you’re the right person to intervene in an impoverished community by answering Corbett and Fikkert’s three questions about your suitability.
Think of an impoverished community that you’ve recently heard about on the news or otherwise come in contact with. Describe the situation in as much detail as you can. How completely do you think you understand the culture of that community and the situation its people face?
What are the people or organizations in the community you described above already doing to remedy their situation? Do you think they can resolve their problems on their own?
Given the situation and the local resources, what training, qualifications, or knowledge do you bring that might directly help the community? How would you use these assets in service of the local population?
Now that you’ve answered the questions above, would it be appropriate for you, personally, to intervene in that situation or community? Why or why not?
In Part 3, we discussed how we have to change our approach for our poverty alleviation efforts to be effective. In Part 4, we’ll explore specific strategies to provide aid.
The authors point out that churches are often best equipped to help the poor in their own communities. And while missions to alleviate poverty in developing nations may get more press, there are still poor people and poor communities in North America. So in Part 4.1, we’ll start with a discussion of the poverty intervention programs that North American churches can most readily implement in their own neighborhoods.
But before we address the programs that Corbett and Fikkert say your church can use to help the poor in your local area, we need a clear picture of what poverty looks like in the contemporary United States (the “local” context of Corbett and Fikkert’s original audience).
As we discussed earlier, broken relationships give rise to broken systems, and broken systems can trap people in poverty. Corbett and Fikkert identify five broken systems that trap the poor in poverty in the United States.
Inadequate Employment Opportunities: The authors observe that job opportunities in the US for people without special skills are limited, and many low-skilled jobs don’t pay enough to live on. They attribute this partially to the shift from manufacturing to a service economy, noting that workers on an assembly line typically earn more than unskilled service workers, such as grocery checkers.
Lack of Education: Low quality of public education is often a persistent problem in poorer communities. Perhaps this is because most public schools depend on local tax levies for their funding, and thus schools in poorer communities have less funding. Also, when the quality of education is poor, members of the community tend to place less value on it, and communities that don’t value education aren’t likely to invest in improving it.
Financial Instability: Poor people are particularly vulnerable to recessions or other economic instabilities because any financial setback (such as losing a job) can be devastating to people who have no savings to draw from, and it’s challenging for poor people to accumulate savings.
Lack of Affordable Housing: Almost half of low-income households in the US spend more than half of their income on housing. This financial burden amplifies their other financial woes.
Lack of Affordable Healthcare: The authors also cite the high cost of healthcare in the US as a systemic problem, especially for the poor. They say more than a third of poor people in the US forgo medical treatment that they need because they cannot afford health insurance, nor can they afford to pay for treatment out of pocket.
Corroborating Analysis and Additional Factors
Most secular sources that seek to characterize poverty in the United States describe the problems facing the American poor similarly to Corbett and Fikkert, although each source adds its share of nuances. For example, one article echoes their perspective on education, omits any explicit discussion of employment, housing, or wealth accumulation, and elaborates on the healthcare problem.
Specifically, the article adds statistics to the discussion of healthcare that illustrate the consequences of inadequate healthcare, including shorter life expectancy, increased risk of chronic disease, and higher infant mortality rate.
The article adds two more factors to the list of problems entrapping the poor: malnutrition and crime. Corbett and Fikkert may have overlooked malnutrition because it’s less severe and less visible in the US than in less developed countries. But in many parts of the world, a lack of nutrients leads to health issues, growth issues, and cognitive issues that make it difficult for the poor to escape their circumstances.
The solutions that Corbett and Fikkert present for local poverty alleviation focus primarily on helping the poor improve their employment prospects and financial security. This is because, while they affirm that unemployment, education, finance, housing, and healthcare are all significant problems for the American poor, they believe that most churches are better positioned to help in these areas than they are to solve the problems with the educational system, the housing market, or the cost of healthcare.
They outline three specific intervention tactics for your church to consider as you contemplate ways to help the poor in your area: job preparation, financial education, and opportunities for wealth accumulation. Let’s discuss each in turn.
According to Corbett and Fikkert, one of the most effective interventions churches can offer is job preparedness programs, which serve to address the poor’s lack of education and training. They advise that an effective job preparedness program has several components:
First, it should train participants in soft skills such as teamwork and problem solving from a biblical viewpoint. Second, it should address important job preparation skills like work ethic, punctuality, and appropriate dress.
Third, there should be a group of mentors who engage with participants one-on-one to encourage them, get to know them, and help them solve problems as they come up. Ideally, your mentoring team should be large enough that each participant can meet alternately with about five different mentors. This spreads out the mentoring workload so that individual mentors are less likely to feel overwhelmed.
(Shortform note: Typically, church members helping with a poverty alleviation program are volunteers, not paid employees of the church. Based on other sources, ideally you should structure your program so that each volunteer’s time commitment is about 100 hours per year. In Give and Take, Adam Grant points out that people who volunteer between 100 and 800 hours of their time per year get the most satisfaction from their volunteer work. He also reports that volunteering up to 100 hours per year correlates with a measurable improvement in health, but the improvement plateaus above 100 hours.)
Pairing participants with multiple mentors also allows them to network with more people, which opens up more job opportunities: There’s a greater likelihood that one of a participant’s mentors knows someone who knows of a job opening that’s a good fit for the participant if the participant has several mentors than if he just has one.
Fourth, while your church may not have the resources to teach “hard” (technical) skills like welding or computer programming, you can help the poor pursue further education at vocational schools and community colleges. There they can learn “hard” skills and obtain degrees or certificates that will improve their employment options.
Finally, try to get local businesses to agree to interview everyone who graduates from your job preparedness program. This will improve their chances of job placement.
Getting Jobs Versus Getting Better Jobs
A 2015 study found that, in America at least, most poor people have jobs. They’re not poor because they’re unemployed, but rather because the jobs they have don’t adequately cover their expenses.
Prior to that study, poverty alleviation efforts in the United States had focused on reducing unemployment, often through job preparedness programs similar to what Corbett and Fikkert propose. Thus, it’s worth evaluating the authors’ job preparedness program principles to consider whether they’re useful for getting poor people better jobs or just for finding jobs for the unemployed.
Teamwork and Problem-Solving: These skills tend to be increasingly important the more responsibility (and compensation) a job entails. So this will likely still be effective for helping the poor get better jobs.
Work Ethic, Punctuality, and Dress: At a basic level, these are prerequisites for almost any job, so they’re geared more toward just getting a job. However, you might be able to modify this kind of soft-skills curriculum to help workers get better positions, because things like workplace culture and dress code are often different for higher-paying jobs, such as managerial positions, than they are for minimum-wage jobs.
Multiple Mentors: This advice remains important because networking is just as useful for career advancement as it is for getting a job in the first place.
Promoting Technical Training: This might take on proportionately greater importance if the goal is to help the working poor get better jobs because most higher-paying jobs require some kind of specialized knowledge. It might also change the focus of training because some skills and degrees are worth more than others to employers. For example, a radiology technician earns more than a graphic designer.
Local Business Involvement: As originally presented, this seems tailored more to helping people get jobs in the first place. In principle, it might still be effective, but the goal of helping people find better jobs instead of entry-level positions would likely change the types of businesses that you need to network with.
Corbett and Fikkert maintain that another effective intervention churches can offer is financial education. This enables the poor to make the best use of their limited financial resources by helping them develop better financial management skills. The authors recommend that financial education programs follow several guidelines.
First, programs should cover topics like Christian stewardship, budgeting, saving, debt reduction, taxes, banking, and managing credit, among others. Second, when choosing a curriculum for the program, take into consideration the target population’s needs, education level, and cultural background.
Third, regardless of the specific curriculum, instructors should teach content from a biblical perspective that’s sensitive to the particular culture of the population. Finally, a team of mentors should foster long-term development by building relationships with participants and holding them accountable.
In addition to these guidelines, Corbett and Fikkert say that churches can guide participants in leveraging the US government’s earned-income tax credit (EITC) to mitigate low income, if capable of doing so. They explain that although it’s the largest federal program providing assistance to low-income working families, 15–25% of those who qualify either don’t know it exists or don’t know how to access it.
(Shortform note: More detailed information on the EITC, who qualifies for it, and how to claim it is available from the IRS. Additionally, the IRS advises that people who qualify for the EITC may also qualify for other tax credits, such as the child and dependent care tax credit, the child tax credit, and the education tax credit. These tax credits provide tax relief to lessen the financial burden of raising children and pursuing higher education, respectively.)
Comparing Financial Education Curriculums
As Corbett and Fikkert mention, there are a variety of financial education curricula available, and different programs are tailored to different circumstances. Let’s briefly examine and compare a few options:
- Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University” is arguably the most popular financial education curriculum used by Christian churches in North America. It focuses more on helping middle-class or “vulnerable non-poor” people get out of debt, improve their financial security, and avoid slipping into poverty in the first place than it does on solutions for the lowest-income families.
- The Chalmers Institute provides training programs focused specifically on helping low-income adults make the best use of their limited financial resources. Corbett and Fikkert are associated with Chalmers and were involved in developing this curriculum. It’s targeted mostly at North Americans, but they also provide separate curricula designed to teach poor people in developing nations how to accumulate savings and manage home and business finances.
- There are also curricula designed to teach financial management skills to children. While the focus of the curriculum is not necessarily on escaping poverty, per se, the earlier in life people learn to handle money wisely, the less likely they are to be poor as adults.
A final way that Corbett and Fikkert suggest churches can address the issues of local poverty is by designing interventions that target wealth accumulation. The purpose of this type of intervention is to offer the poor a better chance to save and grow their money. They say that according to a four and half year study, the poor are capable of—and successful at—saving enough to build wealth when given the opportunity.
Corbett and Fikkert say that one proven way to help the poor accumulate wealth is through Individual Development Account (IDA) programs, which help low-income individuals save toward an asset to increase their financial independence. They recommend that churches follow the guidelines of existing models:
First, have a savings-match policy where your church’s IDA matches the monthly savings of participants (which could be anywhere from a 1-1 to 3-1 ratio). These funds would come from the church itself, donations, foundations, and financial institutions that support IDA programs, or in some cases government programs.
Second, have participants save money for a specified purpose, such as continuing their education or acquiring a house or car. Once their goal has been reached, release the funds directly to the vendor to ensure that the participant uses the savings as intended.
Finally, offer financial education alongside the savings program. If possible or applicable, include training related to managing the specific assets that participants are saving for.
The Effectiveness of Wealth Accumulation Initiatives
In addition to the research mentioned by Corbett and Fikkert, other studies corroborate their claim that the poor are capable of building wealth if given the chance to do so through saving subsidy programs like the authors propose. For example, one 13-year study found that the majority of low-income families not only accumulated assets but grew their net worth over the course of the study.
Part of the reason that savings programs are particularly effective over the long term is the compounding effect: If you save even a little bit of money each month and put it into an interest-bearing account, your savings will grow exponentially because the more money is in the account, the more interest it accumulates.
The compounding effect works with monetary savings, but it can also apply to other things. In his book The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy extrapolates it to habits and goals, arguing that continually making small positive changes to your habits will result in exponential growth and large successes.
This, in turn, provides additional insight into Corbett and Fikkert’s multi-faceted approach to poverty alleviation: As you help poor people make small improvements in their job situation, budgeting skills, and savings, all these changes compound each other, building up to life-changing results.
Consider the unique problems of your community and brainstorm possible solutions.
Think about some of the problems that people in your community face. If helpful, consider if any of the five systems the authors identify is broken in your community (employment opportunities, education, financial stability, affordable housing, affordable healthcare).
What skills would help the people that face these problems to overcome them? These can be the skills of job preparation, financial education, or opportunities for wealth accumulation the authors mention, or they can be entirely different skills.
How could you help people learn these skills? If you could train them yourself, briefly describe the training you would provide. If not, discuss who you would refer them to and what you could do to facilitate the training.
In Part 4.1, we explored specific solutions your church may be able to implement to help the poor in your area. In Part 4.2, we’ll shift our focus to short-term mission trips and discuss their history, risks, and the actions a church can take to prevent them from causing harm and make them more beneficial.
According to Corbett and Fikkert, short-term mission trips (STMs) have been a popular approach to poverty alleviation since 1989. STMs typically last two weeks or less, during which time a team of volunteers travels to a community in need to provide assistance. Historically, they’ve been fueled by positive press praising their impact, particularly the impact on the missionaries themselves.
However, Corbett and Fikkert argue that in reality, STMs frequently embody many of the issues we’ve already discussed regarding harmful approaches to poverty alleviation, such as paternalism, cultural superiority, the inappropriate application of relief, and need-based approaches. Volunteers participating in an STM don’t stay around long enough to see the long-term impact of their work, potentially making them oblivious to the harm that they can cause to the people they’re trying to help or to local ministries that are trying to help the same people.
Radical Short-Term Missions
The spirit of the STM movement is exemplified by pastor David Platt in his book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream, in which, among other things, he challenged Christians to spend at least two percent of their time in “another context,” such as an impoverished community overseas.
Platt argues that this experience is crucial for cultivating an understanding of the global church and for developing Christian compassion because once you start visiting people who are destitute, you can’t ignore the problem of poverty anymore. And two percent of your time is about one week per year, or one STM every one to two years.
Nevertheless, despite his insistence on the importance of regular participation in STMs, Platt acknowledges that Corbett and Fikkert are right about the risks and the solutions to mitigating the risks and alleviating poverty. The 2012 edition of When Helping Hurts included a foreword by David Platt, praising Corbett and Fikkert’s work.
To mitigate these risks, the authors insist that when planning or considering an STM, you should refrain from developing your own mission itinerary using limited information about the situation and culture in the destination area and instead prioritize assisting local ministries in the destination area. Generally, local communities already have ministries that are doing impactful work. And local ministries are in a much better position to plan, execute, and evaluate effective interventions due to their integration into the affected community.
Depending on the situation, this may mean forgoing the STM altogether, if a visiting team of volunteers is not what the local ministry needs. The authors advise against organizing an STM unless the local ministry organization specifically requests or invites you to send a team. So you might not get to experience helping with the intervention first-hand, but, as Corbett and Fikkert point out, the mission isn’t about you—it’s about helping people in need. Sometimes you can help them more by staying out of the way of those who can help them the most.
The Value of Local Expertise
As we’ve discussed, Corbett and Fikkert advise doing what you can to help or empower indigenous ministries and letting the locals take the lead because they are usually better qualified to minister in their own context than outsiders are. A case study of Wycliffe Bible Translators, a non-profit organization that facilitates Bible translations, can help to quantify the benefits of letting locals take the lead in missions work—even though Wycliffe’s focus is more on alleviating what Corbett and Fikkert call “spiritual poverty” rather than material poverty.
By way of context, Wycliffe was founded by Cameron Townsend, a missionary from California who tried to evangelize indigenous peoples in South America in the early 1900s. Townsend found that the locals weren’t interested in learning a foreign religion or studying the Bible in what, to them, was a foreign language. So Townsend translated the Bible into the local language. When the indigenous people could read the Bible for themselves, in their own language, some of them accepted its ideas and an indigenous Christian church began to form.
Further, by transitioning from a model in which Western missionaries were responsible for translation projects to a model in which locals were responsible for translating the Bible into their own language, they were able to reduce the time required for a translation project by more than a factor of 10.
At the time, Townsend’s approach to evangelism was revolutionary—most other missions founded churches that were run by Western missionaries, instead of giving the locals Bibles and letting them run their own churches. But it was so successful that Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators to apply the same method elsewhere.
From the mid-1900s to the early 2000s, Wycliffe sent missionaries to a number of indigenous peoples around the world. Typically, a missionary or mission team would spend a few decades learning the local language, translating the Bible into that language, and distributing Bibles after the translation was completed.
In the 2010s, Wycliffe changed its approach again: Instead of having a Western missionary first learn a foreign language and then translate the Bible into it, they started hosting workshops to help native speakers translate the Bible into their own languages (typically from regional trade languages that already had Bible translations). This cut the time required to produce a translation of the Bible from a few decades to just a few years, or, in some cases, just a few months, depending on how many native speakers were available to distribute the workload. And, when evaluating the new approach, they found that the translations were both more accurate and more natural-sounding in the local language.
If you do determine that an STM is appropriate, Corbett and Fikkert suggest presenting the trip as an opportunity to learn about mission work or poverty alleviation in the destination area, not an opportunity to save others from disaster or poverty. To that end, they advise that everyone who goes on the trip be required to attend training sessions before and after the trip.
Pre-trip training should provide an overview of poverty alleviation principles, team-building exercises, cultural orientation, and basic language skills if the people in the destination area speak a different language. In addition to preparing team members for the trip, the mandatory pre-trip training will help to filter out anyone who’s not committed to learning on the trip.
In the field, the authors say you should take time to review concepts from the pre-trip training with the team so they can better understand how to apply them or how what they’re doing on the trip relates to what they’ve learned beforehand.
According to Corbett and Fikkert, mandatory post-trip training should continue for at least a year after the team returns. The post-trip training gives team members a chance to reflect on the trip and process what they learned into lessons that will shape how they approach poverty alleviation in the future.
Finally, the authors recommend keeping the size of the team relatively small, to further mitigate the risk of unintended negative impact. The mandatory training contributes to keeping the team small. They also recommend requiring involvement in your church’s local poverty alleviation efforts as a prerequisite for going on the trip. And they insist that every team member pay at least a portion of their own travel expenses out of pocket. This not only deters people who are less committed but will also make the trip more valuable to those who do go because they have more vested in the trip.
Getting the Most Out of STMs Through Training
As we’ve seen, Corbett and Fikkert recommend mandatory training for anyone who participates in an STM, both to make sure that the people who go on the trip get the most out of it and to weed out people who aren’t fully committed.
In addition to the content Corbett and Fikkert recommend covering in the training, other sources provide some additional recommendations for elements of training that can help the trip go smoothly and ensure you get the most out of it.
Some sources add safety and security precautions to the pre-trip training itinerary. They emphasize that traveling abroad always entails some risk, but that there are simple things you can do to minimize the risks. For example, simply staying alert and knowing enough about the culture that you can fit in instead of standing out as an easy victim goes a long way toward mitigating the risk of being robbed.
And during the post-trip training, consider writing up an account of your trip to post on social media, maintaining contact with the indigenous people you met on the trip through social media or correspondence, and planning your next step based on what you’ve learned, whether your next step is another trip, a commitment to support someone else’s work financially, or something else.
In Part 4.2, we discussed how you can manage STMs to reduce the risk of harming the communities that you’re trying to help. In Part 4.3, we’ll widen the scope and consider Corbett and Fikkert’s discussion of poverty alleviation in developing countries more generally, the pros and cons of different models, and what North American churches can do to support those efforts.
As we alluded to in the previous section, Corbett and Fikkert argue that short-term missions, by themselves, aren’t particularly effective in encouraging long-term development, which is what poor people usually need. They argue that the most impactful—and least harmful—way for North American churches to alleviate poverty outside of their local communities is to support long-term development efforts by frontline organizations that are already at work.
They identify microfinance as a particularly effective tool for catalyzing long-term development and helping poor people in developing countries improve their lives and businesses. So we’ll discuss microfinance first and then consider some other ways to support development.
Microfinance (MF) consists of very small loans (anywhere from a few cents to a few hundred dollars) made to people who wouldn’t qualify for credit at traditional banks. As the authors explain, the MF movement originated in 1976, when an economics professor established Grameen Bank in Bangladesh to provide credit to poor people. His motivation for establishing the bank was to create an option for poor people to borrow money without having to turn to predatory lenders or meet the high loan amount requirements of larger financial institutions. Corbett and Fikkert say that as of 2014, the Grameen Bank has lent over $7.4 billion and has nearly 8 million borrowers. In addition, almost 100% of the loans have been paid back in full.
Because of Grameen Bank’s success, organizations have established many microfinance institutions (MFIs) to help poor communities across the world. This means that North American churches have many opportunities to team up with churches and ministries in impoverished communities to provide support on a global scale. Corbett and Fikkert mention a number of models for church involvement in MF, which we’ll discuss in turn.
Criticism of Microfinance
Some sources argue that microfinance institutions are not as effective at helping the poor as Corbett and Fikkert suggest. In Poor Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo discuss a number of factors that limit the usefulness of microfinance loans.
For one thing, they note that microfinance companies typically prefer to make a loan to a group of people rather than to an individual. This reduces administrative costs (because there are fewer loans to track). Moreover, it reduces the risk of non-payment because other people in the group must make up the difference if one person fails to repay his share of the loan. However, this shifts liability for the loan to the recipients, rather than the lender, which makes loans less attractive to poor people.
Both Corbett and Fikkert and Banerjee and Duflo note that microfinance companies were created to provide poor people with a more helpful alternative to predatory lending services (lenders that charge exorbitant interest rates to cover the risk of loaning money to people with no credit). But some sources report that in recent years the distinction between predatory lenders and microfinance institutions has become blurred, leading poor people to borrow money at high interest rates and become trapped in debt.
Corbett and Fikkert explain that the provider model consists of a church in a developing country establishing and running an MFI on their own. They caution that this model is rarely successful. One reason for this is that sustaining an MFI requires a large amount of technical, managerial, and financial resources, which churches and other local ministries rarely have.
In addition, because churches are built on values like grace and empathy, they often struggle to enforce loan repayment—especially when the borrower is in a dire situation. For example, it’s hard to penalize a sick, elderly woman who’s struggling to repay a loan.
The Case for Church-Run MFIs
Despite Corbett and Fikkert’s observations about their low success rate, church-run MFIs might offer a solution to the problem of predatory lending that some sources identify as a growing issue among existing MFIs.
Furthermore, while the challenges that Corbett and Fikkert identify are significant, they’re not necessarily insurmountable. If a poor church in a developing nation wants to start their own MFI, a wealthy American church could help by providing start-up capital and managerial training.
And when someone’s struggling to repay a debt, there are ways the church can show compassion without neglecting loan enforcement: Even secular financial institutions will sometimes reduce your monthly payments, give you more time to pay, or reduce your interest rate if you’re struggling to repay a loan.
Finally, there is statistical evidence that churches can succeed at running MFIs in practice. According to some studies, Christian MFIs have about the same success rate of loan enforcement and repayment as secular MFIs.
With the promotion model, Corbett and Fikkert continue, churches establish a Savings and Credit Association (SCA), where members save and lend each other money from their collected savings. In contrast to a traditional MFI, which primarily uses donor money to fund loans, SCAs function solely on the money of their members.
In an SCA, each member agrees to contribute a fixed sum every week. They also participate in a weekly meeting, where they collectively decide how much money to lend and to whom they should lend it. At the end of a fixed period (usually six to 12 months), members receive all of the money they’ve contributed, plus the interest that borrowers paid on their money when it was loaned out.
(Shortform note: In some SCAs, the members agree up front to loan out the association’s money to each member in turn for a specified period of time on a fixed rotation, rather than meeting weekly to decide how much to loan to whom. This is called a “rotating SCA” or ROSCA. Some sources describe ROSCAs as more equitable than traditional SCAs because they’re less susceptible to racial or other bias on the part of the members who decide who to lend money to in a traditional SCA.)
Corbett and Fikkert argue that this model has a variety of benefits. First, SCAs can fulfill a need that traditional MFIs can’t, because traditional MFIs are often unable to make loans smaller than $40 or $50 due to the administrative costs of making a loan. SCAs can also administer loans for any purpose (like funerals or medical bills), whereas most MFIs only make business loans.
(Shortform note: Some sources report that SCAs are particularly useful for helping members improve their housing situation because they don’t require collateral like home loans do, and, as Corbett and Fikkert point out, they can make loans for any reason, including housing needs.)
Although churches can establish SCAs, SCAs are run by the members themselves. This not only takes the burden of lending and collecting money off the churches but also empowers the poor to manage their own money. And the founding church can more easily integrate biblical teachings into the SCA’s weekly meetings than it can into traditional MFIs.
However, Corbett and Fikkert also acknowledge that there are some disadvantages. In particular, poor people sometimes struggle to manage the SCA, including keeping records and enforcing loan repayment. It’s also harder for SCAs to mobilize larger sums of money because their money supply is limited to what the members themselves can contribute.
The Hi-Tech Future of SCAs
Digital SCAs may soon become the solution to the limitations of traditional SCAs that Corbett and Fikkert discuss while amplifying their existing advantages. A digital SCA would work the same way as a traditional SCA, except that software would facilitate interaction between members and take care of most of the recordkeeping. This would reduce the administrative burden on the members, making the SCA easier to manage. Digital communications could also allow the SCA to span a larger geographical area, increasing the pool of capital that members would be able to access.
However, digital SCAs are still in the early stages of development, and developers will have to address a number of challenges to realize these advantages in practice. User interfaces will need to be intuitive. The software will need to function reliably, even in areas where internet access may be spotty or unreliable. And if users of digital SCAs don’t necessarily meet all the other members in person, they may have to develop new protocols for vetting new members to ensure that the SCA doesn’t become a target for scams or theft.
According to Corbett and Fikkert, the partnership model consists of a collaboration between MFIs and churches: The MFI is responsible for offering financial services, while the church supports the poor through services like counseling, training, emergency assistance, and evangelism. By working together, you can address poverty at both the individual and systemic levels.
The advantage of this type of partnership is that it eliminates the problems of the provider model. In particular, it removes responsibility from the churches to provide technical, managerial, and financial resources, because the existing MFI does that on its own. It also provides an opportunity for churches to integrate evangelism into the MFI, which is usually absent without their involvement.
However, Corbett and Fikkert acknowledge that although this is an effective model in theory, it’s not always easy to carry out in practice. This is because both MFIs and churches sometimes lack a holistic vision—churches sometimes have difficulty expanding their focus beyond people’s spiritual needs, and MFIs tend to function on the belief that money alone can alleviate poverty. If the church and the MFI have difficulty reconciling their perspectives, they may have difficulty working together.
Managing a Partnership
If your church is considering using the partnership model, some of the principles used in forming and managing business partnerships can provide relevant insight, even though your church isn’t a for-profit business, and the MFI may or may not be.
For example, in his book Crossing the Chasm, business consultant Geoffrey Moore observes that when two businesses—especially two businesses with relatively different cultures and values—try to coordinate their operations extensively through formal processes, the result is usually detrimental to both companies instead of beneficial. He advises keeping partnerships simple, mutually beneficial, and relatively informal: You produce one product or service, your partner produces a different product or service, and you each make sure your customers are aware of your partner’s products because the products are complementary.
Similarly, business and marketing consultant Regis McKenna asserts that the two keys to a successful partnership are adequate communication and adequate separation: Both partners need a clear understanding of who is responsible for doing what. And both partners need to retain their autonomy so that they can be responsible for their respective parts.
From this standpoint, a partnership between a church and an MFI such as Corbett and Fikkert suggest seems viable, because the respective services that they typically provide can be complementary but have very little overlap.
In addition to microfinance, Corbett and Fikkert explain that “Business-as-Mission,” or BAM, is another method you can use to support the development of the poor, particularly if you have a background in business administration.
To practice BAM, you start up a business in an area where development is needed. This allows you to help the poor people in that area directly by offering them jobs. The business also serves as a means for you to engage the local community as you develop relationships with your employees, which often provides ample opportunities for evangelism.
The authors point out that the advantage of BAM over microfinance is that bringing in outside capital, technology, and expertise usually helps people increase their productivity and income by a greater degree.
But they also caution that BAM has its own risks and limitations. For one thing, BAM typically impacts fewer people because a given business can only hire a certain number of employees. There is also a risk of creating dependency, which is particularly problematic if the business isn’t likely to continue operations after you retire or move on to other ventures.
Furthermore, the authors warn that business management skills acquired in North America don’t necessarily translate into other cultural contexts. As we discussed in earlier chapters, missionaries operating without adequate knowledge and appreciation of the local culture are at risk of doing more harm than good, and missionaries using BAM are no exception.
BAM and the Problem of Corruption
Other sources corroborate Corbett and Fikkert’s perspective on the risks and opportunities inherent in BAM and add some additional information. They tend to emphasize the importance of creating a profitable, sustainable business to mitigate the risk of dependency and increase the likelihood that your business will continue to operate after you leave. This also makes it possible to continue providing the job opportunities, community engagement, and opportunity for evangelism you created.
They also discuss the issue of corruption in business and government as both a risk and an opportunity for BAM. Corruption is present in every country to some extent, but it is often a more visible problem in developing nations. It usually takes the form of government officials demanding bribes to issue businesses operating permits or other licenses, or giving preference to companies that bribe them in terms of awarding government contracts. It can also manifest in diverting welfare funding or charitable donations to the pockets of government or corporate officials who oversee these programs.
Corruption is a problem for BAM because Christian businesses may face setbacks or disadvantages if they refuse to bribe officials, but they cannot afford to compromise their integrity by engaging in bribery. And it’s a problem for poverty alleviation because it diverts money from welfare programs and honest businesses to corrupt officials.
But BAM also provides an opportunity to benefit society and help the poor by fighting corruption. BAM ventures that maintain their integrity and persevere in spite of the difficulties that corruption causes often become instrumental in social reforms aimed at reducing corruption. In this way, going against local practices, which the authors repeatedly caution you not to do, can be beneficial when those local practices are harmful.
In addition to BAM and the various models of facilitating microfinance, Corbett and Fikkert suggest a few more ways you or your church can support the development of the poor.
Instead of trying to minister to the poor in a given area directly, the authors recommend that you provide training to the indigenous missionaries or ministers who are already working with them. This can expose them to new tools and methods (such as microfinance and asset-based interventions) that may increase the effectiveness of their ministry.
Or, if the indigenous church is capable of organizing training for its ministers, you can just financially subsidize training. Don’t pay all the training expenses because they’ll value the training more if they have to invest their own funds in it, and they may even find the exercise of raising some funds on their own empowering. But donating enough money to make training missionaries readily feasible for the local church in an impoverished area is an effective way you can help.
Finally, another option is to donate funds to MFIs with the stipulation that they use these funds to integrate evangelism and discipleship into their financial development programs.
A Specifically Religious Form of Support: Prayer
The support that Corbett and Fikkert discuss above—training and subsidization—are supports secular aid organizations would likely also offer. But one form of support that only religious organizations would consider is prayer. For instance, Southern Baptists believe you can also pray for the success of ministers and missionaries involved in poverty alleviation efforts, whether in your own community or in faraway countries. Some sources assert frequent, fervent prayer is actually the most impactful thing you can do to help because it prompts God to create opportunities for the missionaries, gives them courage to deal with difficult situations, and changes circumstances that are beyond their control for their benefit.