Customer Reviews

With Justice for All: A Strategy for Community Development

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It's too bad that the people who only gave this book one star didn't bother to read the book they were reviewing. Yes, this John Perkins was not their John Perkins (and let me say that both John Perkins are extremely important and helpful to the cause of bettering our communities) but they could have learned something of who the real Jesus is if they read this John Perkins-the one whose been a national figure since the Civil Rights Movement (long before the other John Perkins came on the scene). The reviewers who slammed this book did so with an anti-Christian bias that either lurks just beneath the surface of their words or floats proudly on top of them. All told, the bias has them come off as quite bigoted-noteworty because this John Perkins nearly lost his life to bigoted white Mississippi police in the early 70s. Now, perhaps the reviewers really have something against Jesus but my guess is that they just have something against the shallow religiosity of mainstream American Christianity and this book sounds an important message about what real faith in the real Jesus is as we try to love our neighbor as ourselves in the face of the materialism, individualism, and ethnocentrism that drives far too much of our society.

It is sad that there are still many who have never heard of Dr. John M. Perkins--a living man with the stature of Martin Luther King Jr. While he may not have the formal education of King, his experiential knowledge rivals that of King's. It is from this existential wisdom that Perkins writes his new book With Justice for All. Personally, I have found this book, as well as others written by Dr. Perkins, very helpful in my own endeavors serving in a poor Hispanic community. One of the attributes of this book I greatly appreciate is the way Dr. Perkin's sets forth transferable principles drawn from his own concrete practice. Anyone who is involved in community development is at a loss without this book!

University of Virginia theologian Charles Marsh has argued in his book The Beloved Community that this John Perkins and his CCDA are the most important extension of the civil rights movement in America today. Read With Justice for All and see why Marsh is right.

This book was written by the John Perkins who is an African American Christian pastor born in 1930. His other books on Amazon list him as John M Perkins. As a black pastor Perkins was the founder and pioneer of a movement described as Christian community development. This book was written in 1983 and has been reissured several times. Perkin's key formulation is the "Three Rs" of community development (Relocation, Reconciliation and Redistribution.) These powerfull concepts are well described in this book. However, considering its original publication date of 1983 this book is seriously outdated and I recommend his 1996 work (as editor) Restoring At-Risk Communities: Doing It Together and Doing It Right instead. His autobiography Let Justice Roll Down which was written in 1976 and rereleased in 2006 tells the beginning of his personal story.

The John Perkins who wrote "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" was born in 1945. Unfortunately the Amazon sales robot that victimized several unhappy reviewers of this book didn't make the distinction. Bad Robot!!

John Perkins was beaten and tortured by the sheriff and the state police during Mississippi's segregation era. His brother was murdered by a deputy marshal. Through it all, Dr. Perkins returned good for evil, love for hate, progress for prejudice and brought hope to black and white alike. Despite dropping out of school in the third grade, he has written nine books, been awarded seven honorary doctorates, and is co-founder and chairman of the Christian Community Development Association. This book is the summation of his best insights about how we can work for justice in our communities.

No, not Metallica, that's And Justice For All, and a great album as well. Today we are talking about the book With Justice For All by John Perkins. Before I give my review I want to thank Regal Publishing for sending the book, you guy's are great and I look forward to working with you more in the future.

The book focuses mostly on the poor and on racial reconciliation. The three R's that John pushes throughout the book are Relocation, Reconciliation and Redistribution. Here are a few quotes in the book that changned and challenged me.

Pg. 11 "Poverty is much more than a lack of money, it's a lack of options"

Pg. 48 "So if you haven't heard the message, if you haven't heard that call, don't go! Don't move, don't run, don't go in to the community, don't go into the ghetto, don't go anywhere unless you have a clear call of God. But if you have heard God's call, run!"

Pg. 64 "The natural man is more aware of his natural needs, not his spiritual needs, so that is where we had to meet him." Talking about reaching people where they are at.

Pg. 75 "Leadership developement is the kdy to the continuation and growth of a ministry...I am convinced that the key to bearing lasting fruit is not in developing programs but in developing people- leaders. I believe that developing creative leaders is both the most essential and the most difficult part of community developement. It was the heart of Jesus' strategy. It must be the center of our stragety too."

Pg. 145. "It's tempting for us to start out with a list of things to do. But that is not how the work of reconciliation begins. Before we can do the work of God, we must be the people of God- the believing fellowship, the Body of Christ. We cannot achieve Christ's mission each working alone' we must work as a Body, each one exercising his spiritual gifts as a part of the whole."

Pg. 166 "Our redistribution must involve us- our time, our energy, our gifts and our skills. If we are sharing ourselves, sharing our money will follow naturally." Talking about how to give back to other, to share of who we are."

Pg. 192 "Justice cannot be achieved by long distance."

This is a great book, very challenging, lots of enticing stories and beautiful testimonies. This book gave me hope and got me excited to keep going in the direction of doing justice.

Dr. Perkins offers the "three R's" of Christian community development. They provide an excellent, easy to understand structure for the book and he looks at each separately and how they all work together to form the trinity of Christian community development.

Within the context of the racial divide that exists in America even in the church, Perkins offers a view of how the church should minister to the lost. His contention is that if evangelism is simply the attempted transmission of the content of Christian faith with no contextual reference to the lives of the target audience, then this evangelism will be ineffective. Using the ministry of Christ as an example, he demonstrates that Jesus physically relocated among us, he reconciled those who were fallen enemies of God to Himself, and modeled redistribution of resources to those in need. In each of these concepts (relocation, reconciliation, redistribution) Perkins is explicit in his ontology - it is the relationship and obedience of the individual believer that is foundational to the results. As individuals conform to the love of God, they express the will of God as individuals, corporately as a church, and they begin to affect the social systems in which they live.

Such a believer will heed the call of God to relocate to where his ministry is, and share the lives of those to whom God has appointed him/her. S)he will model reconciliation through forgiveness of those who wrong him and the release of bitterness about any past injustices. S)he will recognize that all his resources belong to God, and that they are simply tools for the service of God's work, not for his/her own comfort of desires. It is the work of the Christian leader to teach all of this through personal example to whatever group God has identified as his/her mission field. Essential to the work is the identification and training of others who will commit to similar discipleship, so that the real gospel is lived out in ways that result in actual demonstration of transformation. In this way, God's justice is made real to the world.'

Perkins' book is a very powerful and biblical argument for how the church is to relate to its social environment. He does not make the mistake of attempting any theological justification for a divinely mandated corporate church strategy toward social justice, but describes the results that individuals who are fully submitted to God achieve. He does not express this distinction in so many words, but it is affirmed in the history of his ministry.

Theologically, Perkins is on firm ground. As he points out, throughout scripture the heart of God is revealed to be concerned with the poor and oppressed. Without making any claims that government or church as an organization is commanded to deal with the injustice of the world, he points out that the Christian (as an individual) operates within these organizations and affects outcomes. His point that evangelism isn't enough (Chapter 1) is absolutely correct in that discipleship (sanctification) involves much more than the initial regeneration a believer experiences, as described in 1 Corinthians.

Chapter 14 is pivotal to this thesis. As Perkins says, "Before we do the work of God, we must be the people of God" (p. 138). He aptly notes that putting this "doing" ahead of submission to God ("being") is a temptation. In an unintentional example, he mentioned his wife's dismay over their children's' access to proper health care, and over their family living conditions in Mississippi. It would seem at a minimum that the author was somewhat remiss in his ministry to his wife in this instance. Clearly she was an integral part of the ministry in and had concerns that were not adequately addressed. Nevertheless, the blessings of God have been manifest in Perkins life and ministry, and these provide a welcome example of how self-denial and obedience achieve concrete results.

Perkins' emphasis on church leadership did not explicitly recognize that it is not primarily a human responsibility. God always raises leaders to do His will. Having said that, undoubtedly God also works through human agency and choosing leaders is certainly necessary. However the primary quality must be discipleship, as Perkins demonstrated. If the church begins to resemble the world in such fundamental ways as the leadership ideas currently in vogue (reflecting outward appearances of all sorts) the health of the church is at risk. God chooses the weak and foolish to confound the strong and wise. The wisdom of the world is heavily contrasted with the wisdom from God throughout the NT, and there is much of the wisdom of the world in current Christian leadership thinking.

The development of church leadership is an easy topic to address biblically. Leaders must be godly to be qualified. God will raise up whatever or whoever is needed by the body - the first priority is that such a one be willing to listen to Him, obey Him, and trust Him. God does use human ability and aptitude to accomplish His work, but those attributes must be first placed at His disposal through denial of any capability to accomplish good except through Him. That Perkins describes the practical steps he took in this way is the very best thing about this book.

The emphasis for what the church should be (and how the modern church falls far short) must be heavily targeted toward making disciples. If we truly teach our brethren everything that Jesus commanded and model discipleship within church leadership, then the entire cross section of people in the congregation (potential leaders included) will be fully functional in the roles that the Spirit has fitted for them.

This book was truly a great study and "re-thinker" when regarding the effectiveness of urban ministry.

A great book to stir people into action in their local communities to bring aobut justice for those pockets of the community that society has conveniently forgotten about. Discusses an excellent and simple concept of community development that is biblical and very practical. A great thought provoking and challenging book for those who identify with the more 'mainstream' in society.