Brian Fikkert - From Dependence to Dignity: How to Alleviate Poverty through Church-Centered Microfinance

Caring for the poor is an obvious priority to followers of Jesus. But how do we help without hurting? Fikkert and Masks new book, From Dependence to Dignity, explores groundbreaking ideas on how to help the poor through microfinance ministries. The result of years of research, field experience, and prayerful insight, this latest book from the Chalmers Center will empower the body of Christ to make a significant difference in the lives of the poor worldwide.

Craig Groeschel
Senior Pastor of LifeChurch.tv and coauthor of From This Day Forward: Five Commitments to Fail-Proof Your Marriage

In this highly anticipated book, Brian Fikkert and Russell Mask of the Chalmers Center go beyond the call for charity by equipping the church to respond in ways that make a lasting impact. HOPE International has used the Chalmers Centers training and curricula in our own church-centered microfinance ministries with amazing results, so I am delighted to see the global church being equipped on an even larger scale through this outstanding book and the resources on the associated website. I couldnt recommend it more highly!

Peter Greer
President and CEO of HOPE International and coauthor of Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches

Filled with first-rate theology and practice, Fikkert and Mask present a set of proven solutions to help people overcome vulnerability. Practical and sound, this book encapsulates the virtues of the worldwide microfinance movement. I highly commend it to you.

Stephan Bauman
President and CEO of World Relief

This is an excellent book for those engaged in the task of breaking the dependency syndrome that some NGOs have inadvertently created among the poor and marginalized that they have sought to help through long-term engagement. The book makes a strong case for the important role of the local church in poverty alleviation by being balanced in how it proclaims and demonstrates the gospel, in the spirit of what true integral mission is all about. Just as Helping without Hurting in Short-Term Missions had a significant impact on the uninitiated short-term visitors into the developing world, this book has a message for transforming the long-term settlers!

Dr. Ravi I. Jayakaran
Senior Associate for Integral Mission, Lausanne Movement

Churches around the world have attempted to harness the power of microfinance to reduce poverty, empower dignity, and bring Christ-centered transformation to their communities... but the results are often disappointing. As a Rwandan pastor once told me, Its hard for a pastor to be your loan shark, expressing the frustration of grace-centered churches attempting to enforce repayment (which often requires coercion-centered measures). In From Dependence to Dignity, Fikkert and Mask have empowered the church with a great resource providing a gospel-centered framework, economic best practices, and easy-to-understand tools for churches to use microfinance for the glory of God and the transformation of the world.

Joshua Ryan Butler
Pastor of Local and Global Outreach, Imago Dei Community church

Drs. Fikkert and Mask extend the groundbreaking approach of When Helping Hurts into the practice of microfinance. Their prescriptions remain biblically sound, practically effective, and generously humane in a word, Christ-centered. If the Church is going to lead internationally in poverty alleviation that works on the ground, this is the book that must be read first.

Scott Maclellan
Chair of the Maclellan Foundation

Thank you, Brian and Russell, for sharing these stories and awesome resources about the power of dignity. Poor women and communities could have never dreamed how belonging to a church-based savings program could so radically change their lives, their family, and community. This is a book on what integral mission looks like today. This is a book about the Great Commission and how some of the poorest people and churches are loving God, loving their neighbor, and loving themselves through microfinance.

You will not read this practical, how-to book just once, but will refer back often to look at models of what Good News looks like to the poorest amongst us and those partnering with them in seeing Gods kingdom come in this generation.

G. Stephen Goode
YWAM Ambassador for Compassion/Justice, Bangkok, Thailand

Once again Fikkert and Mask are providing a pragmatic, exciting path forward to help us learn how to meet the needs of the worlds poorest people without creating dependency. Their solution, based in the local church, is supported by strong theology, real world examples, and practical steps on how to move forward. This book is must reading to understand how to bring healthy, Christ-centered, lasting change in the interesting, complex financial world of the very poor.

Peter Ochs
Cofounder and Board Chair of First Fruit Inc.

I am honored to heartily endorse the work From Dependency to Dignity by Brian Fikkert and Russ Mask. They are making a great contribution to the church and benefiting the poor in the hardest places around the globe. Through the insights of this book, they are with sound biblical reasoning and application helping us to tackle poverty alleviation in the fullest sense. I am confident that the result of their labor will be helping the Church of King Jesus to be more fully the Church that Christ intended. And their work will help the poor to see and be glad (Psalm 69:32). Do yourself, the poor, and your church a favor by putting into practice the wisdom contained in these pages.

Gary Edmonds
President and CEO, FH/Food for the Hungry

ZONDERVAN

From Dependence to Dignity

Copyright 2015 by Brian Fikkert and Russell Mask

ePub Edition March 2015: ISBN 978-0-310-51813-6

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fikkert, Brian.

From dependence to dignity / Brian Fikkert and Russell Mask.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-310-51812-9 (softcover)

1. Church work with the poor. 2. Poverty Religious aspects Christianity. 3. Microfinance. I. Title.

BV639.P6F55 2015

261.8325 dc23

2014044781

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The diagrams and charts that have no credit lines are the work of the authors and are under their ownership.

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Cover design: Studio Gearbox

Cover photography: The Chalmers Center

Interior design and composition: Greg Johnson/Textbook Perfect

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CONTENTS

by Rick Warren