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

Veteran urban activist Robert Lupton reveals the shockingly toxic effects that modern charity has upon the very people meant to benefit from it. Toxic Charity provides proven new models for charitable groups who want to help—not sabotage—those whom they desire to serve. Lupton, the founder of FCS Urban Ministries (Focused Community Strategies) in Atlanta, the voice of the Urban Perspectives newsletter, and the author of Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, has been at the forefront of urban ministry activism for forty years. Now, in the vein of Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty, Richard Stearns’s The Hole in Our Gospel, and Gregory Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart, his groundbreaking Toxic Charity shows us how to start serving needy and impoverished members of our communities in a way that will lead to lasting, real-world change.

• When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself
• Charity Detox: What Charity Would Look Like If We Cared About Results
• Helping Without Hurting in Church Benevolence: A Practical Guide to Walking with Low-Income People
• Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development
• Gospel Justice: Joining Together to Provide Help and Hope for those Oppressed by Legal Injustice
• Skills and Techniques for Human Service Professionals: Counseling Environment, Helping Skills, Treatment Issues
• Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence
• An Introduction to Community Development
• What Every Board Member Needs to Know, Do, and Avoid
• To Fool The Rain: Haiti's Poor and their Pathway to a Better Life