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What if your charity is doing more harm than good?

In this honest and unsettling conversation, Michael Pursley and Ethan Bricker take a hard look at poverty—not just as an economic condition, but as a deeply human struggle shaped by broken systems, generational patterns, and misunderstood virtues.

This isn’t about easy answers or feel-good solutions. It’s about the moral complexity of helping others. Why do some families remain in poverty despite decades of assistance? Can generosity, untethered from wisdom, actually harm the very people we’re trying to help?

Drawing from real stories in ministry—where food trucks meet entitlement and third-generation reliance on handouts challenges our idea of progress—this episode explores the limits of charity and the need for something deeper: relationship, responsibility, and spiritual clarity.

Pursley and Bricker navigate the tension between unconditional love and boundaries, between grace and accountability. They explore how churches sometimes compete rather than collaborate, and how our need to feel virtuous can overshadow the actual needs of those we serve.

Whether you're weary from compassion fatigue, frustrated with ineffective systems, or simply trying to live out your values with more discernment, this conversation doesn’t flinch—and it might just reshape how you think about helping others.

“Love without truth is sentimentality. Truth without love is brutality. Real help requires both.”
“We must learn to give not to feel good, but to do good—and those are rarely the same.”

Check out the fellowship Ethan pastors and subscribe to the youtube channel here: 

https://www.theclearing.net/

https://www.youtube.com/@theclearing1

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