(Posted February 24, 2014)

Robert Lupton, founder, FCS Urban Ministries
Robert Lupton, founder, FCS Urban Ministries

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Minister and urban activist Robert Lupton will speak at Juniata College on "Toxic Charity" at 7 p.m., Wednesday, March 5, in the Sill Boardroom in the von Liebig Center for Science on the Juniata campus.

The talk is free and open to the public. The lecture is sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and co-sponsored by Campus Ministry and the Center for International Education.

Lupton, a Christian community developer who founded FCS Urban Ministries in Atlanta, Ga., will outline how to create charitable organizations that truly serve needy and impoverished citizens in a way that leads to real-world change. Lupton also will describe the toxic effects that can be generated from modern charity and how those effects can sabotage the people seeking to benefit from charitable organizations.

As a community developer, Lupton has created charitable and economic development by developing three mixed-income housing subdivisions, organizing two multiracial church congregations, helping start many businesses and finding housing for hundreds of families.

FCS (which stands for Focused Community Strategies) Urban Ministries is a collective of Georgia-based charitable groups and businesses that were developed using the ministry's charitable model of moving into developing and underprivileged neighborhoods to help nurture spiritual and economic development.

Lupton is the author of "Toxic Charity," "Theirs is the Kingdom," "Return Flight: Renewing the City" and "Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life."
He earned a doctoral degree in psychology from the University of Georgia in 1978.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.