Isn’t missions just Western imperialism?

Pastor J.D. and Matt are joined by special guest, Brian Fikkert, author of the new Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn’t the American Dream and When Helping Hurts. A glimpse inside this episode: The answer is clearly no. The gospel is not just for western culture. But the evangelical church’s truncated understanding of the gospel has often resulted in the mixture of the gospel and western culture. Listen to learn more about he means by that. Other questions answered: You talk about the fact that we need a new story. You say “The American Dream is the wrong story, for both poor people and ourselves.” What story are we telling now? And what is the new story we need? You say that this process requires we engage with whole people. How have we, specifically the church, missed engaging the whole person? One big question I feel like many churches and people are wrestling with is how to make their initiatives and ministries geared towards poverty alleviation sustainable. So what are some of the big sustainability obstacles you see? And how can we work towards overcoming them?   The sponsor for this week’s episode: For more than 25 years, Portable Church® has helped thousands of churches launch strong and thrive in a mobile setting. They design custom solutions that fit each budget, vision, and venue. Everything you need to launch a mobile church — an inviting worship space, kids ministry areas, welcome spaces, storage cases, etc — all in a system refined to make it fast, easy & fun for the weekly volunteer teams.