Tom Bassford founder and President of Significant Matters and the creator of SATtalks discusses how we have moved the conversation beyond the lament of “Helping That Hurts.”

Over the past 10 years I have watched as the church has wrestled with the reality that much of our helping has had the unintended consequence of hurting the very people we have been trying to help.  First it was an outright denial followed by a “double-down” commitment to work harder and more efficient.  But the problem has never been about effort or efficiencies, those are distractions to the harder work of facing the reality that we have to change our ways.

Then we were introduced to books like “Toxic Charity” by Robert Lupton and “When Helping Hurts” by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert and little by little we’ve settled into the reality that there is a problem in the way we help.  But what are we to do?  That’s what I’m hearing from people today.  They are saying, “I got it, we have a problem so what can we do to change?”  Churches and individuals are asking, “How do we move beyond helping that hurts?”

That’s why we are here.  SATtalks and the follow-up work of Missions 3.0 is about helping move churches beyond helping that hurts and connect them to real alternatives.