There’s a revolution brewing; a revolution against poverty. Beginning with a powerful comparison of his own daughter’s life situation to that of Malika, a dear girl he met in an orphanage in Mumbai, Phil Smith has written a rallying cry, and a training manual, for joining the revolution.

If you are one of the many folks inspired by Smith’s first book, A Billion Bootstraps: Microcredit, Barefoot Banking, and the Business Solution for Ending Poverty, you will not want to miss The Poor Will Be Glad: Joining the Revolution to Lift the World out of Poverty.

A Billion Bootstraps was a compelling introduction to micro enterprise development, microcredit, and microfinance. It was Phil’s testimony of how he discovered microcredit in his personal quest to be as efficient in giving money and doing good as he had been in his very successful efforts to make money as an entrepreneur. With an engineer’s drive for efficiency he discovered the powerful leverage of microcredit to help more people per dollar than any other strategy he had found to address dire poverty on a global scale. This was one of the best books I had ever found to introduce a reader to microcredit – until I read Phil’s second book.

The Poor Will Be Glad does everything A Billion Bootstraps did to introduce readers to microcredit concepts in simple yet thorough terms, and so much more. The Poor Will Be Glad asks and answers all the important questions which swirl around in your head after you hear about microfinance and the new wears off the cool new idea. How bad is poverty anyway? Why should the church spend so much time, energy, and money addressing physical needs when ours is primarily a spiritual mission? Micro lending isn’t the answer to all of life’s problems, why all the fuss? It doesn’t always even work, so why bother? I dare you to read this book and examine your life in light of Phil’s answers to those questions.

CBF Foundation provides churches a way to participate in microfinance. To find out more about the CBF Foundation Microfinance Initiative email me at ddurham@cbff.org. As CBF allows the power and possiblities of micro enterprise development to pervade our missiology of how to empower the poor and our missional strategies for being the Presence of Christ, the poor will be glad. If you read this book, you will be glad too.