poverty
rich christians in an age of hunger, 4
08/10/08 09:05 Filed in: poverty,
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 Filed in: poverty,
| discipleship
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 Filed in: poverty,
| discipleship
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.
rich christians in and age of hunger
24/09/08 06:12 Filed in: poverty,
discipleship
on occasion i receive responses to what i write or the videos i produce. it doesn’t happen very often, but when it does i am always interested in what viewers and readers are thinking.
i recently received a response to my newest video, Bonhoeffer and the Loss of God, which included several further email exchanges. i thought i would share a couple paragraphs from one on those posts that came from a unique perspective:
"I've walked through countries in which 99.999% of the people "vote" for the current leader (if you know what I mean). I've walked through countries where the people believe the blood of an albino will cure any disease, and the blood of a lion will make them invincible to bullets. I've walked through countries in where I've met pastors who couldn't put all of their worldly possessions inside the trunk of a Volkswagen, yet you cold never erase the joy from their heart. I come home and see the Church try to raise 25,000 dollars for a new sign to put out in front of the building, and I wonder about the Bible College in the middle of a muslim dominated country that is equipping new pastors for 80 dollars a month.
"I come home and I watch people complain about the price of gas, not even realizing for every one of them, there are 1o more who don't even have clean drinking water. I come home and watch people throw away so much food, and never even try to work 2 days on what some people have to survive on. There's a reason "Garri" is such a popular food in Nigeria. I come home and watch families act like the only reason they have to talk to each other is because they just happen to live under the same roof. And this is just a small part of how much I've seen and how much my eyes have been opened."
the above came to me as i was working through an article i found on theOOZE entitled, why christians suck. the upshot of this article is similar to the email i received, calling us, as christians, to respond to the needs of the poor. tom davis authored this article and he writes: “Outside of a tiny minority of Christians, we have become a self-centered group of priggish snobs.”
ouch!
he goes on to write:
Here are the facts:
Eighty-five percent of young people outside the church who have had connection to Christians believe present-day Christianity is hypocritical. Inside the church, forty-seven percent of young people believe the same thing.
And why wouldn't they? We’re pretty stingy with our money:
- 80 percent of the world’s evangelical wealth is in North America.
- Giving by churchgoers was higher during the Great Depression than it is today.
- Christians give an average of $13.31/week to their local church.
- Only 9 percent of “born-again” adults reported tithing in 2004.
And let's take a peek in on our neighbors:
- More than 1 billion people live in absolute poverty.
- 500 million people are at the edge of starvation.
- 200 million children are being exploited as laborers.
- Half of the human beings on the planet live on less than $2/day.
- 1.5 billion people do not have enough money to buy food.
pretty potent stuff, both of them. all this reminded me of a book i read 25 years ago called, rich christian in a age of hunger. this book, by ronald j. sider, is described on the CBD website like this:
“When Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger first appeared twenty-eight years ago, it shook readers to the core. Informed about the issues of world hunger and poverty, they could no longer ignore the plight of their global neighbors. This thoroughly revised edition of Sider's best-selling book outlines the progress that has been made in the last three decades, and the work that is still left to do. Every day 30,000 children still die of starvation and preventable diseases, and 1.2 billion people live in relentless, unrelieved poverty worldwide.
Why is there still so much poverty? Conservatives blame sinful individual choices and laziness. Liberals condemn economic and social structures. Who is right? Who is wrong? Both, according to Sider, who explains poverty's complex causes in this new edition and offers concrete, practical proposals for change.”
more next time...