When Helping Hurts

"Predominately Caucasian North American churches describe poverty differently than low-income countries do. The poor tend to describe their condition in far more psychological and social terms than our North American audiences. Poor people typically talk more in terms of shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness.  North American audiences tend to emphasize a lack of material things such as food, money, clean water, medicine, housing, etc."
-When Helping Hurts. Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert

"If poverty is rooted in the brokeness of the foundational relationships (with God, self, others and creation), then who are the poor?"
-When Helping Hurts. Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert

"Poverty alleviation is the ministry of reconciliation: moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation."
-When Helping Hurts. Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert

2 Corinthians 5:16-20
 16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
-http://www.biblegateway.com/