I love people who are bold enough to tell the truth, especially when the truth will mean rocking the boat.  Robert Lupton is a bold truth teller in his book “Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It." 

Below are just a few excerpts from Lupton’s book that capture the heart of what he sees as the problem with our current approaches to poverty alleviation:

When we do for those in need what they have the capacity to do for themselves, we disempower them.

For all our efforts to eliminate poverty—our entitlements, our programs, our charities—we have succeeded only in creating a permanent underclass, dismantling their family structures, and eroding their ethic of work. And our poor continue to become poorer.

And religiously motivated charity is often the most irresponsible. Our free food and clothing distribution encourages ever-growing handout lines, diminishing the dignity of the poor while increasing their dependency.

Giving to those in need what they could be gaining from their own initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people.

Why do we miss this crucial aspect in evaluating our charitable work? Because,as compassionate people, we have been evaluating our charity by the rewards we receive through service, rather than the benefits received by the served. We have failed to adequately calculate the effects of our service on the lives of those reduced to objects of our pity and patronage.

We respond with immediacy to desperate circumstances but often are unable to shift from crisis relief to the more complex work of long-term development.  When relief does not transition to development in a timely way, compassion becomes toxic.

Most work done by volunteers could be better done by locals in less time and with better results.

As a country, we understand that welfare creates unhealthy dependency, that it erodes the work ethic, that it cannot elevate people out of poverty.

Again and again we are finding that when it comes to global needs in organizational development and human development, the granting of money creates dependence and conflict, not independence and respect.

Wherever there was sustained one-way giving, unwholesome dynamics and pathologies festered under the cover of kindheartedness.

Doing “for” rather than doing “with” those in need is the norm. Add to it the combination of patronizing pity and unintended superiority, and charity becomes toxic.

The challenge for those of us in service work is to redirect traditional methods of charity into systems of genuine exchange.

Mercy without justice degenerates into dependency and entitlement, preserving the power of the giver over the recipient. Justice without mercy is cold and impersonal, more concerned about rights than relationships. Relationships built on need are seldom healthy.

When a church makes decisions about serving others, are the ones being served the urban poor or the church?

Someone needs to raise the question, Is the church enabling missionaries to minister, or are the missionaries serving the needs of the church?

Top-down charity seldom works.  

Lupton gives these suggestions to those seeking to empower people and not create dependence:

• Don’t subsidize poverty.

• Reinforce productive work.

• Create producers, not beggars.

• Invest in self-sufficiency.  

Lupton acknowledges that, "The hard part is rethinking the entrenched giveaway mentality and restructuring an established one-way charity system."  He suggests churches and non-profits ask these questions:

• Are recipients assuming greater levels of control over their own lives or do they show up, year after year, with their hands out?

• Is leadership emerging among the served?

• Are their aspirations on the rise?

• Is there a positive trajectory?  

Irregardless of your political leanings, Lupton's approach should appeal to individuals on both sides of the aisle.

I am not sure how I feel about this book and its message with 14 years of hindsight. Is this a post worth revisiting?

Are these insights from Toxic Charity still helpful to us today?

Have you applied any of these insights to your own work? If so, what did you learn?

If you were to revisit this post today, what would you change, add, call into question or affirm?

If you found this post helpful, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

This post is part of our Throwback Thursday Series (#TBT) and was originally posted on June, 2010. It was the top post of all time over on my View from the Bridge blog at wendymccaig.com with over 6000 views.

A friend of mine shared concern over the fact that her children, who are in their forties, love Christ and live by Christian principles but have little interest in being a part of the institutional church. I read this quote over at Emerging Mummy, which speaks to why some Christians have left the church.

“As we all know, this is the world 2.0, meaning that it is interactive and we are the people formerly known as the audience, viewing our individual voices and stories as equal and valuable.  Also, as Bill Kinnon said, we are also the people formerly known as the congregation:

"We are The People formerly known as The Congregation. We have not stopped loving the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nor do we avoid "the assembling of the saints." We just don't assemble under your supposed leadership. We meet in coffee shops, around dinner tables, in the parks and on the streets. We connect virtually across space and time - engaged in generative conversations - teaching and being taught.

We live amongst our neighbors, in their homes and they in ours. We laugh and cry and really live - without the need to have you teach us how. - by reading your ridiculous books or listening to your supercilious CDs or podcasts."

My friend attended my first book signing, which turned into a spiritual experience when each of my Richmond friends shared a portion of their testimony.  She commented that in that experience, she saw a new and very different kind of Christian Community.  She stated “What you are doing reminded me of Bonhoeffer’s vision of a Religionless Christianity.” 

She went on to say that she felt what many Christians were seeking was an intimate place where they could discover themselves, share their lives with others, and find Christ in and through one another. This concept of finding Christ outside the church walls and in ordinary people is a very strong thread in my book From the Sanctuary to the Streets, and I also found this same thread in a book I read titled Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God by .  Palmer writes;

“In my disillusionment with institutional church, I contemplated chucking Christianity but I discovered that these were two separate and not nearly equal things.  Sometimes it is not a professor or a preacher leading you to divine truth but the commonplace people God sticks right in front of your face.

Isn’t it people God indwells, not buildings?  When two or three believers are together encouraging one another in their journey with God, isn’t Christ present in their community whether the geographical location is First Baptist, St. Peter’s, or Starbucks?  Maybe my greatest need isn’t another sermon about Christian living, morality, and do’s and don’ts.  If the life of Christ is configured within me, isn’t spiritual growth a matter of grasping the reality of that and being transformed through my intimate, personal, individual relationship with Jesus?

And if the risen Christ lives inside all believers, doesn’t it stand to reason that significant relationships with one another are another dimension of experiencing Christ’s nourishing and renewing presence? Perhaps God never intended people to relate to him through services, programs, and meetings.  Maybe “church” had devolved into a man-made bureaucracy seeking to control and manage God. Despite all the denominational distinctions I’ve come across along the way, for the life of me, I cannot find any other litmus test Jesus insisted upon to authenticate his followers except love.”

I think many believers, myself included, feel much the way Palmer does.  Some of us have experienced Christ more powerfully outside the church walls than by sitting in the church pews.  For Palmer, it is through encounters with individuals in his community, and for me, it has been through relationships that have formed through my work at Embrace. My friend asked me what advice I had for helping her children connect to “the church.” 

I think that depends on how you define “church.” What if we created spaces where ordinary people are encouraged to see Christ in one another and in the ordinary stuff of life?  What if, through these ordinary encounters, we helped people see God and grow in faith? 

Are we willing to let go of curriculum, sermons, and bible studies and instead look deep within our own souls and hear Christ’s spirit that dwells within each of us?  Are we willing to see such spaces and encounters as a new expression of Christ’s church? Are there individuals who have been rooted in the Christian faith who are willing to open up their homes, create such spaces, and point to God in the ordinary? Are we willing to trust the Holy Spirit to guide and lead us in our encounters?

I am not proposing that we do not need the institutional church, nor am I suggesting that there is no need for theological foundations and training.  The institutional church is the spiritual home for millions of Americans, and I also know that I would never have found faith in Christ without the institutional church. I am also a seminary graduate who believes that solid theology is essential for healthy spirituality. 

However, our society hungers for a level of intimacy that is currently missing, both in society and in many institutional churches, and we have so busied those with a call to ministry with "church activities" that there are few who are willing to be guides to those outside the church on their spiritual journey.

If it is intimacy that the 2.0 generation is seeking, are we willing to release theologically grounded Christians out into the world to guide them on their quest?  Or will we allow them to wander in the wilderness like sheep without shepherds?

My prayer is that those who have not found a home in the institutional church, or who, like myself, have been called out of the institutional church, will create these kinds of spaces: spaces where we experience intimacy with one another and through each other’s experience of Christ. Intimacy will not be found through the internet or social media, but it is present when two or three of us gather and learn to love one another deeply and authentically. That is the true church, no matter what you want to call it.

So, should I do a 2.0 version of this post?

Is this a topic that is relevant to our culture today?

I know a lot has changed in my own spiritual journey since I penned this 15 years ago. Would others be interested in where these early questions led me?

Let me know if this one should go into the trash bin, if it is fine the way it is, or if you would like me to do a follow-up post.