Our Poverty Framework

Lovewell Colfax holds to a reframing of poverty*, defining it as the brokenness of four key relationships that happened at the Fall in Genesis 3:

  • Broken Relationship with God

  • Broken Relationship with One Another

  • Broken Relationship with Self

  • Broken Relationships with Creation

These relationships can be broken for a variety of reasons, such as:

  • Individual Behaviors

  • Abusive or Exploitative People

  • Oppressive Systems

  • Demonic Forces

  • Trauma & Traumatic Events

These four key relationships highlight the fact that human beings are multifaceted, implying that poverty alleviation efforts should be multifaceted as well. The best stance to serve the materially poor is from a stance of recognizing the mutual brokenness that exists.

*derived from When Helping Hurts

By viewing poverty in this way, we attempt to eliminate any sense of division between the privileged and the materially poor, valuing one more than the other, but rather recognize that all people are made in the image of God, have experienced brokenness, and are in need of saving by Jesus alone.

Get Involved with Lovewell Colfax: