Walkable City - A Review

I have a theory—as yet nowhere near proved—that one of the most significant ways to combat poverty in the US would be to make it easier to walk or ride a bike.

If you look at a map of suburbia or even of development in small towns, it becomes clear that everything has been designed to maximize the convenience of cars. This reality obviously serves me well as I drive my car to and from my home, but it creates the situation that there is no truly safe way for me to get to the grocery store that is 1.5 miles from my house without taking a car. There is a decent shoulder on much of the road, but the last half mile or so is a four-lane road with a turn lane, but no shoulder and no sidewalk. There is a decent chance I could make it every time, but it can be a little nerve wracking given how fast some people drive in the 45-mile per hour stretch of road.

If you see someone walking in many places, the assumption is either that he is homeless or is having car trouble. This is a problem that makes everything more expensive, people less healthy, and life less enjoyable.

Jeff Speck’s book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time is an argument for cities that have mixed-use areas and the ability to transit via foot-power to all the necessary resources. He argues that progress toward this end would be good for people, good for the planet, and good for communities.

Step By Step Walkability

Jane Jacobs cast a vision that is still shaping the goals of city planning in our day. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, set in motion a movement that has come to be accepted as generally correct. Urban centers are less crime-filled when there is activity at all hours, when the usage is mixed between residential, business, and light industry, when the sidewalks are wide and the blocks are short, and when people have to interact because they bump into one another more frequently. Speck points back to Jacobs’ vision as the appropriate starting point for his ideas about walkable cities.

There are ten key steps in Speck’s progress toward walkability:

“Step 1: Put Cars in Their Place” The idea is to allow car access, but not to build the world around autos. Walking needs to be the priority in dense areas, not the passage of cars. Too often, the order is reversed.

“Step 2: Mix the Uses” This is a basic city planning element that encourages walking by allowing apartments, bodegas, offices, and restaurants to mix within a general area. This will offer a reason for walking.

“Step 3: Get the Parking Right” Free parking makes the parking situation worse. Having lots and on-street parking that cost encourages people to value their parking decisions. If off-street parking is expensive and on-street parking is cheap, then parking and traffic will become a problem as people circle blocks or double park to get cheap parking. Making parking expensive often makes parking more available and solves a number of issues.

“Step 4: Let Transit Work” Speck is a fan of mass transit, especially into and through neighborhoods. He argues that it raises the value of the neighborhoods it serves. Though it often runs in the red on the city ledger it can often put the city in the black.

“Step 5: Protect the Pedestrian” People need to feel like they aren’t going to die if they are going to walk. Speck offers some suggestions that would seem to counter our instincts, but has evidence they work.

“Step 6: Welcome Bikes” Obviously, if you can walk, you can bike. He argues that measures that improve bikeability will make life better overall, especially for walkers.

“Step 7: Shape the Space” Speck’s research shows that large, open spaces tend to discourage walkers, so some creative structure and planning to right size walkways can encourage that behavior.

“Step 8: Plant Trees” The shade, the oxygen, and the pleasure of being around trees all encourage walking.

“Step 9: Make Friendly and Unique Faces” Various in facades, especially facades that have some life to them are good for walkability.

“Step 10: Pick Your Winners” Choose the sections of the city or town that will be walkable. It isn’t plausible to make the entire space perfect for the pedestrian, so a little triage is the way to make things work.

Conclusion and Analysis

Obviously, there is a lot more to the book than the summaries I offered for each of the steps to walkability. Even if you don’t come to full agreement with Speck on every point, there is a lot in this to think about.

One of the limitations of the book is that it is particularly focused on larger urban areas. Some of ideas, like having mass transit, may not be feasible on a smaller scale. However, there are aspects of design and planning that could be worth considering even in less populated areas.

Speck’s approach is refreshing because it is balanced and realistic. He recognizes that taking a purist approach to city planning is bound to lead to failure. He also understands that many plans take decades to implement. This is not a book about fixing everything right away, but about setting in motion a change in expectation that will allow conditions to improve in the future.

This is an interesting book to consider as a conservative that values community and livability for the world. It is a book that provides helpful insights into design and planning that could make the world greener. It is also a book that demonstrates how poverty could be mitigated to some degree by making some areas of cities and towns more livable and walkable.

WALKABLE CITY: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

By Speck, Jeff

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Something Needs to Change - A Review

David Platt wrote Radical in 2010. The subtitle of that book was Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. That compelling book was a call to resist the materialism and superfluous comforts of the idealized American existence and pursue a missional alternative that included frugal living, generous giving, and the willingness to go to all the nations with the gospel.

In the years since I’ve met many people who have read the book, who studied it in a small group or as a church, or who have heard its core message summarized. Most of them continue to live a typical American middle-class lifestyle, with a comfy house, fun vacations, and a great hope in retirement. Many of the accounts of studying the book include Christians meeting in the expansive homes of the American suburbs enjoying rich desserts. The irony is often lost on those who recount it.

For Platt, who spent four years at the helm of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, the irony still seems to be too much. He has recently published a volume, Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need, that reissues the call of Radical and seeks to make it more personal.

Something Needs to Change is a memoir or sorts that recounts a seven-day trip Platt took through the Himalayas just before he accepted the call to the International Mission Board. He outlines the devastating poverty he encountered, the horrific lostness, and the depths of human depravity that were evidenced in the communities Platt encountered.

This book is nuanced. It is not merely a 200-page guilt trip. It is an extended meditation about real needs by someone who does not have all of the answers. Platt seeks to uncover the desperate needs of the world, while still wrestling with our call to live in the place God has given us. By the end of the book, it should be clear to the reader that Platt is not proposing a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather calling for an unfettered reconsideration of our priorities and actions.

Platt is likely to face criticism from both political poles about this volume. He recognizes the deep humanitarian needs of those living in abject poverty and sees that as humans we cannot ignore them. At the same time, he cannot fail to note the even deeper need to meet to alleviate the spiritual poverty of those living apart from Christ. His proposal is to develop a both-and solution, but by all means to do something.

To often good theory dies on the pages of the book and never makes it to the hands of the reader. In Western culture we talk about the needs of the poor, but try to pay off the government to deal with their problems while hoping to keep their hands (and lives) free of the concerns of the dirty poor. In the same way, some groups claim earnest concern for the environment, but continue to drive excessively large vehicles excessively long distances while consuming excessively large quantities of beverages shipped and excessively long distance and presented in excessively wasteful packaging.

As Platt notes, something has to change. His book is a call for people to consider what that change will look like in their lives. For the business person, it may be to expand their company into a lesser served area of the world to provide jobs and resources to those who need it. For some, it may be to take marketable skills they have acquired and apply them to humanitarian solutions for areas reached neither by the gospel nor the material abundance of Western culture. There are no firm prescriptions because for each of us the task is different and our ability to contribute is uniquely shaped by God’s gifts to us.

Above all, however, we need to stop doing nothing and do something.

Platt’s book in another reminder that many of us live lives of self-satisfaction, oblivious to the great needs of the world. We will be accountable for how we have used our time and resources one day when we stand before a holy God. On that day some of our accounts of purchased comforts and wasted days will be a source of sorrow. Something Needs to Change is a reminder that day is coming. We should live like we expect it.

Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need

By David Platt

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Note: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

The Great Risk Shift - A Review

There has been a shift in recent decades in the United States on several fronts. The rise of the internet has both fragmented local communities and allowed cliques to form over great distances around a common (and sometimes really weird) interest. Politically, the two dominant parties in the United States have become more polarized than in the middle of the 20th century. And, according to Jacob Hacker, there has been an invidious shift in risk from broad risk pools to individuals.

Hacker’s book, The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, is meant to show that injustice perpetrated by Republicans and other economic and social conservatives that tend to lean that direction (particularly given the options) is keeping the little guy down. The nation has seen continued attacks on the policies of redistribution imposed by FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society movements. Defined benefit corporate pensions have been replaced by 401k plans, which force individuals to take responsibility for their own saving.

In The Great Risk Shift, Hacker presents a declinist narrative with a call to make America great again by expanding government programs, moving back toward pensions in corporate jobs, and generally trying to spread out risk to the entire nation. He begins by painting an apocalyptic picture of economic insecurity, focusing particularly on the financial crisis of the last decade. That shows, according to Hacker, how precarious life must be. In the second chapter he puts a line in the sand between those who feel that there should be a measure of accountability in risky decisions to those who believe risk should be shared equally. In the remaining four content chapters Hacker presents some data that illustrates his point about the risk to jobs, families, retirement, and due to the rising costs of health care based on a refusal to nationalize all risk. He concludes the book by a call to create new government programs, expand the ones we have nearly indefinitely, increases taxes dramatically, and hopefully get a robust economy that makes everyone reasonably wealthy simultaneously.

Hacker teaches at Yale, so he likely has done careful, well-reasoned scholarship to ascend to that level. This book is not that, but is a call to action intended to mobilize the already outraged. The argument, such as it is, in The Great Risk Shift is likely to galvanize the convinced, but has little power to convince those (like me, for example) who might agree with a number of his premises, but want an approach that takes reality into account. After the first couple of chapters, the book is a tedious tirade that is likely to ensure Hacker gets to speak on cable news, but does little to expand the range of human knowledge.

At the same time, Hacker has some worthwhile observations. There has been a significant shift in the last few decades toward a more individualized burden of risk. The shift away from the life-long, supposedly guaranteed, defined benefit corporate pension has changed the landscape of employment. To Hacker’s mind, that has been entirely to the negative. This example is perhaps the best way to show the major flaws in Hacker’s argument.

Based on Hacker’s argument, corporate pensions have been replaced by the 401k. That is entirely bad because fewer people have access to permanent security that gets funded on their behalf. All people had to do back in the good old days of pensions (when America was great?) is work at the same job for a few decades and, if they made it to 20, 30, 35 years, or whatever, they would walk away with a gold watch and a steady stream of replacement income for life.

Missing from Hacker’s account, however, is that when you get a jerk boss and you are five years from retirement, you are now forced to sit and take it or lose your permanent financial security. Also missing from the rosy story is that if both spouses work (something he laments and celebrates at the same time) and one gets the opportunity for a relocation, you now have a much bigger decision to make. Finally, Hacker ignores the accounts of the pension plans that have gone bankrupt or been significantly reduced because they were underfunded (in part due to changing assumptions for longevity, but also due to bad actuarial assumptions). In Hacker’s paradise, the risk seems reduced, but it merely makes the fall so much more stunning when the collapse cuts your supposedly guaranteed pension in half.

We can have a meaningful debate about the duties of a company (which may not exist by the time you retire) to permanently fund your future life, but the data to have that debate is missing from this book. Additionally, Hacker ignores the real benefits of individual retirement accounts, because of the mobility they provide. As someone who has changed careers several times, I appreciate having a retirement account that follows me rather than having wasted those years of accrued service.

For Hacker, people like me are waging a war against the rights of the poor to be protected because we see the benefits of portable retirement accounts, the ability to purchase insurance plans that cover the most likely risks for me and my family, and who see the benefit in allowing workers at all levels to keep more of their earnings. There are certainly those among fiscal conservatives who embody a more Randian individualism and think all risk should be individual. However, there are others (like myself) who think there is a place for pooling of risk, but that it need not be at the level envisioned by communism, democratic socialism, or lighter variations like those proposed in the so-called Great Society, New Deal, or the (not very green) Green New Deal.

What Hacker and others that urge greater government intrusion in life through more expansive redistribution programs is that a reduction in risk is typically coupled with a significant loss of potential. So, for example, a minimum of 15% of my lifetime earnings have already been assigned to the government’s preferred vision of a retirement plan through social security and FICA taxes (both my share and that deducted before my salary is offered by the company). If 15% of my productivity isn’t enough to satisfy Hacker, then how much of the reward of my labor should be dedicated to satisfying his need to avoid economic difficulty? Is 50% enough, or 75%? Or, should we shift to simply pooling our goods and then distributing the results according to government’s needs? Never mind that the progressive tax system already discourages me from being more productive because having the top end of my wages reduced by 50% through various state and federal taxes makes it not worth earning more. (Never mind the realization that for the first $388k a person earns, they make out like a bandit from Social security, but it becomes a rip off after that point.)

All of this is to say that a safety net a real need, especially in an industrial economy that draws people away from their families and has, as a discernable downside, the disruption of lifelong communities. However, some thought might go into being more efficient with the large portion of people’s wealth that is already taken for redistribution and reducing risk before we plan on taking a bigger chunk of the available resources to use according to the planners’ desires. Additionally, if books on important topics like The Great Risk Shift are to be taken seriously, then they ought to consider the existence of real arguments against their positions and the fact that there is no proposed solution that does not have obvious and likely downsides.

The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, Second Edition

By Jacob S. Hacker

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

The Accidental Social Entrepreneur - A Review

Social entrepreneurship is the pursuit of business with social benefit as a primary concern rather than simply profit. In some cases, social entrepreneurship relies upon the intended social benefit as the chief marketing point. In the best cases, the entrepreneurs provide a good, needed service at a competitive price, but distribute profits with something other than the bottom line or shareholder value as the primary concern.

A reasonable profit is a good thing and necessary for a humane economy. Entrepreneurs generally risk their livelihood for their business. Profits allow business to continue, entrepreneurs to feed their families, companies to expand, and more people get jobs that support their families. Poverty will not be ended without business.

In The Accidental Social Entrepreneur, Grant Smith outlines his own life experience as a social entrepreneur. In a memoir-style book, he covers the successes, challenges, and failures he has experienced while running his Hand In Hand company with several faces and outlets. In one of its most significant aspects, Smith’s company became one of the largest home construction entities in Kenya.

Smith recognizes that business is a good thing. When run justly, companies provide opportunities for employees to feed their families. In Smith’s accounting, justice includes remunerating workers in proportion to the value they add to the company rather than as little as the market will allow. So, for example, although unskilled labor is paid near-starvation wages in Kenya, Smith’s construction company chooses to pay a significantly higher wage that ensures greater financial stability for those laborers. It works in this particular application because the profit margins for home construction in Kenya are very high. The difference between the market rate and the rate his company pays is found in the profit taken by the company itself.

For Smith, social entrepreneurship means building businesses that meet legitimate needs at a competitive price, providing a decent (though by no means extravagant) living for workers in proportion to the value they add (he is very big on merit based pay), and using a fair portion of remaining profits to invest in other charitable activities. Investors in Smith’s various schemes get a benefit, but that benefit is limited by other goals that the investors agree to in advance. Smith runs companies, but they are companies that take all stakeholders into account.

The Accidental Social Entrepreneur is an encouraging volume. It celebrates the good of business for creating wealth and freeing people from poverty. It also introduces a paradigm of valuing something besides maximizing profits to the discussion. Smith’s book strikes a healthy balance between recognizing the good of markets and considering the potential harms of markets.

Although he does not state it directly, Smith does seem to lean toward the moral superiority of his company’s practice of redistributing up to 85% of profits to more direct charitable causes. It is commendable that Smith decided to do so, but by no means morally obligatory. In some cases, by choosing to distribute profit rather than reinvest in other ventures, Smith may have made his company’s endeavors more difficult. This is by no means the major emphasis of the book, but more discussion would have been beneficial.

Another helpful aspect of this book is Smith’s honesty about times that his endeavors failed. In some cases, he even admits the mistakes that prevented entrepreneurial efforts from being successful. This adds value to the book, because it shows that the life of the entrepreneur is not necessarily a straight line toward success or failure. Rather, the entrepreneurs should expect ups and downs, successes and failures that hopefully contribute to the general good of society.

Hopefully, The Accidental Social Entrepreneur inspires some readers to take a step toward building a business with society in mind. Even if they take a more profit-oriented approach than Smith, the world will be a better place. Pastors and lay leaders in church would benefit from reading the book. It could shape social endeavors facilitated through the local church.

The Accidental Social Entrepreneur

By Grant Smith

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Note: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Radical Help - A Review

Marvin Olasky’s 1992 book, The Tragedy of American Compassion, reframed the way many Americans thought about welfare and compassion. Toward the end of the century that promised to bring utopia to the shores of North America through the New Deal and the Great Society, poverty continued to persist and, at times, threatened to upend society. Throughout the twentieth century, the United States invested billions of dollars in government programs, especially those at the federal level, designed to bring an end to poverty for good.

Looking around, many people recognized that the ever-growing network of programs and promises were not having the desired effect. Olasky’s book proved to be a catalyst for many to rethink their expectations for government poverty relief. The basic thesis of his book is that community solutions have been much more effective at poverty alleviation than impersonal government programs. His theory has largely been met with antipathy from progressives, affirmation from many conservatives, and skepticism by many between.

To some, the problem of poverty is too widespread and too significant for local solutions. Person-to-person charitable efforts are well-intentioned and often beneficial, but cannot hope to solve the needs of the poor. That is the argument made by many proponents of the growth of centralized welfare programs. However, it is less clear to many people that expanding existing programs or creating new offerings with the same bureaucratic model can achieve a better outcome.

In her recent book, Radical Help, Hilary Cottam challenges the expansion of centrally planned model of government poverty alleviation. Writing from progressive perspective, Cottam makes an argument that will sound familiar and welcome to conservative ears: The most effective means of poverty alleviation is the development of community.

Determined to do something practical about the problem of poverty, Cottam set to work redesigning portions of the welfare system in the United Kingdom. She challenged the status quo by asking a profound question of workers within a number of social programs: Who has been helped by your social program so that they are no longer enmeshed in the welfare system?

The inability of any program to show a single family that had been freed from the shackles of poverty through the work of the state led Cottam to conclude, “We had hoped for safety nets that would give us the weft and propulsion of a trampoline but instead we are woven into a tight trap.”

Radical Help documents five experiments that Cottam conducted in an attempt to uncover alternative solutions to poverty alleviation. Four of the five have been deemed successes. All five have in common that they rely on the individuals receiving help to drive the change, that the solutions are locally centered, and that they leverage technology as a means to coordinate human connection rather than as a replacement for it.

The first experiment allowed particular families to coordinate the host of poverty alleviation services they required to chart a course out of poverty. Instead of working with a wide range of social workers from a dozen different government programs, the Family Life experiment allowed a family to pick what help they would get, chart their own course, and get the help they needed to actually make it out of poverty. While this program was expensive in the short term, it reduced the long-term costs by getting multiple families in the experiment off the welfare rolls.

The second experiment helped teens find meaning and purpose by putting them into short-term internships in local businesses. These voluntary programs were coordinated using social technologies and gave teens a glimpse of a world outside the local recreation center. Although the program was scuttled due to the perceived risk of coordinating contact between minors and adults, it illustrates the power of a social network.

Experiment #3 replaced the queues of the unemployment office with a small support group filled with employed, underemployed, and unemployed individuals. Rather than seeking the first possible placement, the Good Work program looked for ways to motivate the unmotivated, focus the undirected, and assist the willing to make personal connections to make progress toward a vocation, not merely a job. Cottam notes that the idea of work as merely a means of earning bread is insufficient, which leads many of the unemployed to bounce from one dead end job to another.

The fourth experiment challenged the idea that the best solution to the stress on the National Health Service (NHS) is simply to dump in more money. Cottam rightly notes that the majority of medical spending is used treat chronic diseases like diabetes, which are often caused and exacerbated by lifestyle choices. The bureaucratic systems of the NHS was designed in industrial fashion to deal with punctiliar events like providing pregnancy services, solving medical emergencies, and performing needed surgeries. Cottam created the Wellogram project, which put healthcare professionals in direct and durable contact with people. By listening to people, asking follow up questions, and getting to know them, the healthcare professionals were able to help people improve their overall health, which in turn reduced their need for expensive medical interventions over a sustained period.

Cottam’s final experiment was designed to serve the aged. Her team created the Circle program, which she describes as “part social club, part concierge service, and part cooperative self-help group.” The basic function of the program was to break down the isolation in communities by putting people, particularly the elderly, in contact with others with similar interests. It also enabled willing volunteers to help their hidden neighbors by doing small things, like picking up groceries; there are many willing people who simply lacked the personal connections to perform these simple services for others. The Circle program used a basic technological platform to help people to help other people––technology was a means to the desired end, not the solution to the problem.

Each of the programs listed above used grants from the government, but relied on localized implementations to create contextual solutions to pervasive dehumanization caused by relational poverty. Cottam’s approach reminds us that we were designed for community, and those programs that encourage personal relationships tend to enhance flourishing in ways that a blank check never will. The goal was not to eliminate all government action for the poor, but to leverage government resources efficiently to accomplish the intended purpose.

As it becomes increasingly apparent that America’s welfare system is ineffective in winning the war on poverty, Cottam’s approach of innovating local solutions with a relational focus may provide a way forward for those who genuinely desire to help the poor, but recognize the devastating social impact of impersonal bureaucratic poverty alleviation strategies.

Radical Help: How we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionize the welfare state

By Hilary Cottam

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Note: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Becoming Whole - A Review

A decade ago, When Helping Hurts released and began a paradigm shift in how evangelicals viewed poverty alleviation. So much of our vision of missions previously included doing work for the poor, especially in the developing world, and sending money and goods to developing nations.

The outcome of that vision, long term, has been less than helpful. In some cases, foreign aid has pushed out local commerce. The excess rice shipped from nations (like the US) with bumper crops (and often as a means for the government to prop up prices in the US market) were given or sold at a low price, often undercutting the markets for local grains. This means that aid has pushed local farmers in some developing nations out of the market and prevented them from being able to support themselves and uproots local markets that support dozens of people. The same story is true for textile donations (think the Super Bowl loser’s shirts), which have damaged the economy in several developing nations.

On balance, many of the ways that we’ve believed we were helping people through charity have been hurting them. This revelation shocked many faithful Christians who, with the best intentions, were harming more than hurting. Brian Fikkert, along with other people associated with the Chalmers Center at Covenant College, have since been trying to show how real help can be offered. Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn’t the American Dream is a recent entry in the conversation of how to help people in meaningful ways.

As the authors note in this preface, “This book provides a more systematic treatment of the underlying concepts and principles foundational to W[hen] H[elping] H[urts].” (pg 15) That is exactly the tone and content of the volume. If When Helping Hurts is the wake-up call to stop doing charity wrong, Becoming Whole is the theological basis that explains why aid does not work as a long-term response to poverty and the framework for a more positive vision for actually helping those in poverty. This is a volume that does a great deal more for building a foundation of ideas, but always with the view that the reader can take many of the ideas explained in the book and begin to apply them carefully on their own.

Summary

The bulk of this book is a plea for readers to understand an communicate a better story. The opposite of poverty is not consumption. The opposite of poverty is flourishing in a biblical framework. There is no question that having money and other resources are essential in alleviating the worst symptoms of human suffering, but an excess of such resources do not ensure a greater degree of happiness. For Fikkert and Kapic, true flourishing is found in living out the storyline of the gospel. As they summarize the message of the book: “there is a better life than the one you are currently living, a life of greater flourishing for both you and for people who are materially poor.” (pg. 15)

Part One of this volume calls readers to seek a new, better story; one framed around the gospel of Christ. It then argues for the primacy of human relationships, particularly loving ones, in human flourishing, and laying out a picture of how the focus of individuals and cultures shapes them.

In Part Two, the authors take on two false stories that continue to dog the steps of many Christians (even theologically conservative ones) in the majority world: (1) The trap of consumption and viewing consumption as a pathway to flourishing, and (2) the gnostic and pseudo-gnostic worldviews that undermine the value of the body and the eternal significance of physical aid. These errors drive a lot of the dis-ease in the pews of American evangelical churches and also frame much of the errant attempts at charity in and around the local church.

Part Three offers unpacks a biblical theology of human flourishing, which is mixed with insights about common American attitudes to poverty. This section is relevant to the conversations that go on in many of our Sunday Schools, around our potlucks, and in our homes. There is nothing new theologically in this section, but Kapic and Fikkert have presented it in a way that makes biblical theology obviously valuable to the reader.

Conclusion

Becoming Whole is an excellent tool to get people inside the local church to rethink poverty alleviation and, en route to that reconsideration, to think about the value structures in their own lives. I have read dozens of books on poverty and the American dream in my studies of wealth and poverty, environmental ethics, and the like. I did not want to put this book down. Each page offered new ways of explaining Christian theology in a way that is relevant to people in a dominant culture that is both gnostic and excessively materialistic.

This is volume that, along with When Helping Hearts and Practicing the King’s Economy, ministry leaders should read as they seek to form people and outline a vision for human flourishing among their own congregants and in the world around them.

Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn't the American Dream

By Brian Fikkert, Kelly M. Kapic

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.