Today’s episode is all about short-term mission trips! The $2 billion annual industry that takes 2+ million Americans on national and international trips each year. Why do we do this, and what (if any) are the benefits short and long-term?

At their best, short-term trips are powerful and transformative experiences both for those who are going, and for those who are receiving the team. However, at their worst they can be a tremendous waste of time and resources, and conduits for harm and exploitation. This episode details the differences between terrible and fantastic trips, concluding with nine check-list questions that every short-term leader and team member should work through before planning on going to serve:

1. Do they have a respectful presence in the community? 
2.  Does your work continue when you leave?
3. Are you invited? 
4. Are you actually helping?
5. Who gets to decide the need and the response? 
6. Are you stuck in emergency principles?
7. Are you creating dependency issues? 
8. Are you (or your team) going for the right reasons?
9. Are all levels of leadership employing best practice?

Part three and final of our mini-series on the problem! Namely why we can hurt people when our intention is to help them. 

This week, we talk about the problem with emergency principals, and the difference between relief, rehabilitation, and development. 

By seeing poverty through a strictly material lens, and giving others ongoing emergency relief, not only do we assert ourselves as in every way superior, but we also undermine the God-given abilities of those receiving our aid. We become active participants of instilling cycles of hopelessness and shame within their lives, we undermine and destroy local business opportunities and market systems, and we create cycles of generational dependence. And this does very little if anything to bring about positive and sustainable change.

And thus, in order to effectively assist the global poor, we simply must move on from emergency principles. This is both much more difficult, and tremendously more effective - requiring not only our finances, but our lives, and our time. 

 This episode concludes with a Tuesday tip that encourages asking the following questions: 

1. Do I know, and can I measure the long term impact of my assistance? 
2. Am I involved in any method of helping that ultimately hurts the poor?
3. Am I doing for anybody what they could do for themselves?
4. Am I using emergency relief principles in non-emergency situations?
5. Are the recipients of my assistance an active part of the process?

Today’s episode is part two of our three part mini-series on the problem, and this one is all about the foundational roots - which find themselves in paternalism and on the back of WWII.

We talk about Poverty Inc, the Haitian rice market, TOMS shoes, and aid as a new form of colonialism, and conclude that with more aid comes less independence, which in turn creates dependency issues that fuels the $153 billion per year global aid and development industry. 

At the end of the day, we cannot reduce the poor to objects of philanthropic fulfillment for ourselves. Our wealth, or most often simply where we were born, has not qualified us to decide what is best for those who have less than we do.

Today’s episode introduces a whole new mini-series all about the problem! The problem being that often when we try to help the poor, we cause them harm. 

On this episode, I introduce the series with a case-study on the global orphanage industry, and conclude that we, as Christians, as the church, and as individuals need to look at the systems of help within our world, analyze them, and act in accordance to both the mandate of scripture and the reality of the world in which we live. We all need to be okay asking and answering some really tough questions. Questions like:

·  Is our helping hurting people?

·  Is the system of help and aid that we are a part of effective in the long-term?

·  Who is truly benefiting from the assistance that we are giving?

·  Are we meeting true needs or felt needs, and what is the difference?

·  What are the unintended consequences of our assistance?

·  Who benefits the most from our methods?

·  How could our money and resources be better spent?

·  And, are we improving or disabling this community’s ability to steward their own lives and resources?

It is only when we answer these questions honestly and critically that we will begin to discover effective and sustainable solutions to the global poverty problem.

Today’s episode is all about HOPE! The eternal and never-ending forever kind of hope we have in Jesus, and the real-life-tangible hope we have in the world of global poverty alleviation. 

Ending extreme global poverty within our lifetime is a very real possibility, as evidenced by the abundance of past success. The past thirty-ish years have seen extreme poverty cut in half! 

We do not have to live in a world where people do not have their basic needs met, and on this episode I invite you not only into an abundant life in Jesus, but also into a hurting and broken world. Not only into personal, but also global restoration and redemption. There is an abundance of hope to be had!

Today’s episode is all about WATER!! A tangible dive (I hate myself for saying that) into the state of the water world, and what it looks like for the poor.

We are living in a world where one third of the world’s population lacks access to safe water, and in today's episode we talk about why, and what we can do about that. 

Let’s talk about justice and righteousness! Or as they saw in Hebrew, mishpat and tzadeqah.

These two power-couple words are paired together many, many times within the Bible, and for good reason. 

 The lives of Jesus followers are to be marked not simply by the absence of sin, but by the presence of justice and righteousness: acts of doing that actively care for the vulnerable, the sick, the poor, and the immigrant. 

Welcome to the misconception! Our second ever bonus episode, and this one all about the so-very-often misunderstood verse where Jesus says “you will always have the poor with you.”

Did Jesus mean this as an eternal promise for all people, for all time? Or, is it better understood within its cultural context?

We talk about Alaskan old people, alabaster perfume, mid-sentence context shifting, misrepresenting the heart of the Lord, and having Jesus with us always. 

Part four and final of our Bible series, this episode is all about the tithe and why Christians do not give.

We take a look at both sides of the to-tithe-or-not-to-tithe argument by going back to the beginning and working our way through the word.  As it turns out, the tithe is not so much about straining gnats and swallowing camels (as I always say), but instead it comes down to the bigger and more beautiful picture of God’s heart for justice, mercy, and faithfulness. 

Part three of our four part Bible series, and this one is all about the controversial Bible-y topics of works and rewards. 

We start off in 1878 with a group of Armenian monks, and soak up the goodness of what it means to be a new people with something divine amongst the midst of us. Part of following Jesus is a way of being; one which has always been characterized by moral character, human dignity, and care for the poor.  Our works matter, and have eternal consequences - and for both the believer, and the unbeliever, our compensation is deferred. For the believer, this is good news! For we can be assured that the giving away of our lives is not without its point or purpose, and in fact will eventuate in our ultimate and eternal good.