When Helping Hurts: the Small Group Experience: an Online Video-Based Study on Alleviating Poverty by Steve Corbett

Author:Steve Corbett [Corbett, Steve; Fikkert, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8024-9024-7
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

FOSTERING CHANGE

Discuss these questions before beginning this week’s unit.

• Think of a time when you took actions to effect positive change in your life. What caused you to take those actions?

• Think of an individual(s) who has had a significant, positive impact on your life. How did they do this? What did you appreciate about their approach?

Time for Change

“Thanks so much, Jerry! I don’t know what I would have done without you. I am sure this will be the last time.” As Tony left his office, Jerry thought, No, it won’t be the last time. You will be here again next month, and again the month after that … It will never end.

Jerry put his head in his hands and thought about quitting his job … again. For the past eight years Jerry had been serving as the Mercy Coordinator for Parkview Fellowship, a thriving congregation located on one of the main thoroughfares of a mid-size, American city. For years, Parkview’s senior pastor had been trying to move the congregation away from an unhealthy inward focus, urging the congregation to show the love of Christ in “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Jerry bought into the pastor’s vision for outreach, but he was growing increasingly disillusioned. His life seemed to be an endless cycle of people like Tony, people who for a variety of reasons, consistently struggled to pay their electric bills, consistently needed help buying their groceries, and never seemed to change. Jerry had begun to wonder if he was just enabling people like Tony, actually hurting them in the very process of trying to help them. We’ve got to change what we are doing, he thought. But how? Where do we begin?

There are countless churches across North America that, like Parkview, want to engage in ministry with materially poor individuals and communities. But their efforts aren’t resulting in lasting change. Something isn’t working.

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