Smart Compassion: How to Stop "Doing Outreach" and Start Making Change

When is doing good not good enough? When does "doing outreach" actually do harm?

Smart Compassion calls Christians to strategic, prayerful, and biblically based approaches to compassion. With evangelical Anabaptist convictions and insights from psychology, Wesley Furlong uses his background as a church leader and nonprofit founder to guide readers through the three aspects of smart compassion needed for families and neighborhoods to flourish: collective empowerment, radical hospitality, and healing presence. In the vein of When Helping Hurts, discover wise strategies that bring Jesus' love to your neighbors. Shift your paradigm from fixing everybody's problems to spending yourself well. Learn how to hold together justice and evangelism, worldly wisdom and divine revelation, action and prayer.

For anyone who wants to make a difference but doesn't know how, Smart Compassion offers a contagious vision and practical steps for real change.

Wesley Furlong is the founder and director of City of Refuge, a network for community transformation, and the director of church development for EVANA, an evangelical Anabaptist network of churches across North America. Furlong holds a master's degree in theology from Emory University and is working toward a PhD in social work. He and his wife, Bonnie, have three kids and an ever-changing number of foster children. Connect with him at WesleyFurlong.com.