Rebuilding God’s Storehouse

Many of our best thinkers on poverty alleviation—Marvin Olasky, Bob Lupton, Brian Fikkert, John Perkins, Bob Woodson—have described a form of charity that makes a strong distinction between emergency situations and chronic ones. They’ve used many terms for how to handle chronic poverty, but let’s call it neighborhood stabilization. It’s grounded in the hyper-local community, it’s holistic, it’s defined by a long-term commitment of love, and it commits to exchange rather than handouts, dignity and self-sufficiency rather than dependence. The idea is to create an environment of stability on an entire block that then radiates out to the blocks around it. Read Full Article »