Week 9: Chapter 8 — Toward a Lifestyle of Poverty Alleviation

1.The authors argue that for middle-class North American Christians, the most fundamental challenge is not finding the right poverty program to support but confronting our own relationship with money, lifestyle, and possessions. Do you agree that this is the deeper issue? Why or why not?

2.Corbett and Fikkert draw on the language of 'Jubilee' and the early church's radical generosity (Acts 4) to argue that the New Testament envisions something more radical than occasional charity — a reorienting of our whole economic life around the needs of others. What would it practically mean for your household to move in that direction?

3.The chapter revisits the concept of 'mutual need' — the idea that rich and poor need each other for their own wholeness. In what ways are you, as a materially wealthy person, impoverished by your distance from the poor? What do you stand to receive — not just give — in a genuine cross-class relationship?