Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help, And How to Reverse It

I bought this book for my staff to read and study through. We go through alot of benevolence help and at times I think we can hurt the healing process instead of helping. We can enable folks to abuse the system. This book challenged our thinking and helped to gauge our true effectiveness. Great book for everyone.

I’ve only read a few chapters so far but this is a great book, and gives you so much to think about

Good book that encourages positive due diligence, but ignores the spiritual angle of charity and structures the charity framework on capitalism.

In a well reasoned case based on more than 30 years of experience, Robert Lupton’s book Toxic Charity challenges the good done by charities, especially churches, to state boldly that we most often hurt those we wish to help. Lupton is an Atlanta-based author whose day job is in urban ministry whose has created housing for hundreds of families while initiating a wide range of human services for the community. He is an empassioned advocate for Asset Based Community Development that works with people in need to improve.In his decades of work on the front lines of urban ministry Lupton has found “doing for rather than doing with those in need is the norm” and goes on to write, “Add to it the combination of patronizing pity and unintended superiority, and charity becomes toxic.”Lupton does not simply write against such cherished ministries as short-term mission trips, soup kitchens and clothes closests, but goes on to make a compelling argument for the fundamental problems and how to overcome them. Using not only examples from his own work, but also from the development work of many others, he demonstrates how to break out of an endless flow of one-way giving. This is critical for as he notes, Giving to those in need what they could be gaining from their own initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people."Lupton works from the twin ideas of mercy and justice which he points out have equal emphasis in scripture. As he writes, “The addict needs both food and treatment. The young woman needs both a safe place to sleep and a way out of her entrapping lifestyle. Street kids need both friendship and jobs.”Most importantly, Lupton writes for the need for ongoing relationships saying, “To effectively impact a life, a relationship must be forged, trust built, accountability established. And this does not happen in long, impersonal lines of strangers.”The ideas he presents for change are very hope filled, but they are not easy. He mostly wants to tap into the unlocked potential within those in need and to find ways to build that capacity. The 191-page book from Harper One is a quick read, but in my experience, it is not a book that leaves readers unchanged. I encourage you to read and reflect on this book with others, whether in a book study at church or with a group of pastors or others. We need to be challenged to move beyond harming those we most wish to help and in this book there is a roadmap for a more better way.

Its title notwithstanding, this book is not a case for stinginess. Its author has four decades' experience of faith-based charitable work to his credit and draws on this experience as well as a host of anecdotes and research (which, however, he does not cite - the book does is one of advocacy, not scholarship). His is also not an argument against voluntary or faith-based giving in favor of public welfare or rights-based claims on the state. Rather, with multiple and compelling examples, from weeklong `missions' of church youth groups to poor countries through inner-city charitable initiatives to the enormous Kroc grant to the Salvation Army, Lupton argues that this work needs to be rethought and reoriented.As Brooks ( Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism ) has shown, giving by religious Americans, both to church-based charities and secular agencies like the Red Cross, is extraordinarily generous by any measure, in time, treasure, and talent, compared with that of secular Americans and citizens of other affluent countries. Lupton does not disparage these efforts or their (mostly) good intentions, but argues that most of this activity does more harm than good. Given the author's own commitment and credentials in the field, anyone engaged in this work will want to pay attention to his critique.In some ways, Lupton echoes those 19th-century critics of "sentimental charity," who sought to replace random handouts with organized charity based on a relationship between giver and recipient that offered "not alms, but a friend" (the motto of the Charity organization Societies). Those charity reform efforts, which gave rise to the profession of social work, are widely disparaged today, not least by professional social workers. But the problem of how to help those who need help, whether through government programs or private charity, in ways that do not shame, demoralize, sap initiative, and create dependency remains, as Lupton shows, as big a challenge today as ever.Lupton's approach, that of asset-based community development, aims to empower and partner with those helped, recognizing and engaging their capacity to contribute to their community with their own resources, knowledge, and wisdom. Instead of flying in with a team of eager young missioners to build a well for a poor village whose women have to carry water long distances on their heads - and coming back every year to fix `their' well - Lupton argues for an approach that facilitates engaging the skills and energy of the local people to fund, build, and manage their own well.It is not a matter of being stingy rather than generous, but of helping in ways that truly help, without the enervating, dependency-creating disempowerment of much current charity in practice. Lupton's argument is not against charity as such, but for charity in its true sense of willing the good of the other. This implies, Lupton shows, a consistent focus on results rather than intentions, on the good of those helped rather than the supposed benefits to the giver (e.g., the 'life-changing experience' of young participants in expensive mission junkets or the warm feelings of congregations that want to help.) The virtue of charity in this view cannot stand alone. It requires the exercise of other virtues like justice and prudence, and full engagement of the head as well as the heart.

Looking into ministry? Read this.I worked at an Orthodox Church in Toronto, Ontario. The main area of the church was transformed into a well-known centre. I met so many people with so many stories. This book is very much in line with that ministry. It will give you a good idea of how to approach it. But it will take you years of hard work and dedication to truly understand it.

Whilst reading this book I may have been inspired about a new project rehousing ex-offenders. Not only that, but I have learned how to do it in a respectful way which empowers those I hope to serve. This book is a blessing. The insight with it is precious.

Spannendes Buch, dass den Problemen auf den Grund geht.

Yes. Charities to poor countries often times turn toxic

A book for stretching the CD as entrepreneur and also of becoming a catalyst for change. It's honest in stating the issues with charity and confronting the toxic idea of simplistically serving Jesus in everyone with a hand-out. That, the truth is not only about offering mercy in a crisis but is equally about serving justice, finding ways to become a catalyst for 'freedom and dignity' through genuine relationship and development of salvation, which is probably what Jesus meant to those he healed, when he said, "to go and sin no more!" A more authentic community development model for service.