Wins & losses

Poverty-fighting | Bob Lupton shows how Christian understanding plus business savvy transforms poor neighbors | Marvin Olasky

ATLANTA -- Many who whiz by inner-city areas on freeways have only a vague sense of the struggles that go on there. To see poor areas through different eyes, take a ride with Bob Lupton, who at age 61 has seen how hard it is to help some among the poor climb out of dependency and despair, and how rewarding the calling at times can be.

Mr. Lupton founded Family Consultation Service one-third of a century ago after serving in Vietnam and gaining a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Georgia. His goal was to help troubled kids, but he learned that they often emerge from troubled families whose problems grew worse amid the pressures of troubled environments. He's one of the most respected Christian urban reformers around, but he's had defeats as well as victories. In a drive around Atlanta last month he showed WORLD five sites that represent two decades of effort.