This week we are concluding our series on Developing a Heart of Compassion Mercy & Justice. We will be examining the concepts in the book When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor ... and Yourself by Steve Corbet & Brian Fikkert which is one of the books listed on our Spiritual Practices worksheet.

(Book Introduction) Poverty is much more than simply a lack of material resources, and it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve it. When Helping Hurts shows how some alleviation efforts, failing to consider the complexities of poverty, have actually (and unintentionally) done more harm than good. But it looks ahead. It encourages us to see the dignity in everyone, to empower the materially poor, and to know that we are all uniquely needy—and that God in the gospel is reconciling all things to himself.

We will seek to answer the following questions: Why did Jesus Come to earth? What is poverty? What causes poverty? and What can we do? We will discuss that poverty is not merely an absence of stuff but broken relationships. We will look at what those relationships are and how they can be reconciled.