poverty,
rich christians in an age of hunger, 4
08/10/08 09:05
recently, i was introduced to an international, evangelical anti-poverty initiative called the micah challenge. the organization takes its name from micah 6:8:
“And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
i was introduced to this program from three different directions: 1) a christianity today article -- Evangelicals make case for bolder poverty response, 2) the evangelicals for social action website, and 3) a cbf email news release.
the micah challenge website offers this as their purpose:
"Micah Challenge USA is a Christian campaign that is part of a global Micah Challenge campaign. Our aims are to deepen our engagement with impoverished and marginalized communities; and to challenge leaders to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and so halve absolute global poverty by 2015!"
for a list of their core values go here.
i like the idea of working together with other congregations around the world in fighting the devastating paralysis that poverty brings to the human potential, and offering this fight in the name of jesus is even better.
rich christians in an age of hunger, 3
28/09/08 13:14
ok. so, the issue of rich christians in an age of hunger continues, and in fact becomes even more poignant today with the current economic crisis on wall street, and the movement toward bail-out.
what is the christian's response to this current greedfest and the prospective trashing of the future of all, all but the most wealthy?
first: repent.
i think those of us who claim allegiance to the christ must repent. certainly, unless we are a wall street tycoon, we are not the cause of the current problem facing the u.s. economy, but as followers of the jesus-way, our calling to be kingdom people compels us to a wise, compassionate use of our accumulated wealth. if this is not occurring in our families and in our churches, then we are not faithful followers of the christ, no matter what else we are.
second: untangle.
we must untangle ourselves from the seduction of possessions and this ongoing captivity to culture. somehow, we must get beyond the next fix of acquiring more stuff (surely by now we know that heaping more things to ourselves will not satisfy), thus making us more like the christ and less like a consumer.
third: grow gratitude.
finally, we must somehow grow are heart of gratitude. that is, we must become thankful for what we have & we must learn how to be satisfied with what we have.
some links for follow-up:
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
Evangelicals For Social Action
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
rich christians in an age of hunger, 2
25/09/08 08:41
ronald sider has written other books besides rich christian in an age of hunger, the most important of which is churches that make a difference: reaching your community with good news and good works.
in this work sider talks about the holistic church, writing:
the holistic church integrates discipleship, evangelism and social action...
the holistic church works toward spiritual and social transformation
the holistic church supports a spectrum of social action that includes charity, compassion, community development, public policy, and justice advocacy, addressing both individual and systemic sources of human problems
in the holistic church ministry is seen as fundamentally relational, seeking to develop long-term relationships with ministry recipients and welcoming them into the church fellowship
in the holistic church mission is viewed as both local and global in scope. (page 16)
i think a strong argument could be made that, with the death of christendom (institutional demise), the subsequent loss of cultural position (marginalization) and failure of our cultural props (plausibility structure), the church in the west has lost its foundation and mission.
but here, in sider's holistic church, we find it all again. if we could somehow learn that the gospel is not about us, that the ministry of the gospel sends us into the streets, to the poor, to the left-out, locked-out and knocked-out, if we could get beyond our market capitalism and political aspirations, maybe we could still earn a hearing from our people.
but this takes work. it takes sacrifice. we can't build the multi-million dollar edifice to our empire. no, the phallic symbols of our potency -- buildings, crowds, tv time -- must be offered on the altar to the desperately needy.