StatAttak

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Social Action

So, my good friend, Doug has asked me to partner with him in facilitating a conversation among friends next weekend. It sounds like fun. We'll be covering general topics like ecclesiology, community, culture and social action (the topic laid on my shoulders). The topics are general enough to be mined for quite some time. So the set up is this: 20 minute presentation followed by 45-50 minutes of question driven discussion.

My responsibility is to talk about social action in 20 minutes, packing enough fodder for an in-depth discussion.

As I've been praying and thinking over this, a three step process has come to my mind as a way to understand a persons or community's movement toward social action.

From ignorance to awareness.

From awareness to compassion.

From compassion to action.

As I discussed this with Doug, he thought that covering each step would be too much for a 20 minute session, so for the time being we're going to explore what it looks like to bring a person/community from ignorance to awareness. Here's where I'd like some feedback.

1. What do you think keeps individuals/communities from being aware of the needs of those around them?


2. What do you think are some steps that faith communities can take to raise awareness?


3. How do communities choose which issues to shed light upon?


4. What do you think are the most pressing issues?
   
   

Darfur Crisis on Google Earth

Many of you know about the genocide and extreme crisis happening in Darfur. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has partnered with Google Earth to highlight the tragedies and bring global attention to these atrocities. Click on the picture and find out what they're doing. Use it as a way to pray and seek God's justice for this place.

Irresistible Revolution

Shane Claiborne, author of irresistible revolution and friend of The Simple Way, did a little survey on "Christians about their (mis)conceptions of Jesus. It was fun just to see how many people think Jesus loved homosexuals or ate kosher. But I learned a striking thing from the survey. I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question. I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less tahn 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire adn worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.

"When the worlds of poverty and wealth collide, the resulting powerful fusion can change the world...I long for the Calcutta slums to meet the Chicago suburbs, for lepers to meet landowners and for each to see God's image in the other. It's no wonder that the footsteps of Jesus lead from the tax collectors to the lepers. I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end."

Irresistible Revolution, 113-114