Ideas for Action

“Have you ever started tearing up seeing your baby move during an ultrasound? Have you ever walked around your highschool halls and knew that everyone was talking behind your back? Have you ever laid quietly on the couch and felt like there was a butterfly inside of you?...I live at a maternity homeless shelter.” Temporary government nutritional assistance allowed Alli to keep her baby André and finish high school. Here’s her story.

As people, we naturally gravitate toward those similar to ourselves. It’s simple, easy and it’s comfortable. We gain friendship, empathy and encouragement from such relationships but a problem ensues when we solely hang around those similar to us - we end up only listening to like-minded voices.

As people, we naturally gravitate toward those similar to ourselves. It’s simple, easy and it’s comfortable. We gain friendship, empathy and encouragement from such relationships but a problem ensues when we solely hang around those similar to us - we end up only listening to like-minded voices.

Every few months a new report shows that the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly irreversible. Clearly United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-moon understands the gravity of the climate situation when he noted that, “we know that we are not on track, and time is not on our side.”

We haven’t been able to think about anything else recently. The images of unarmed protesters in Ferguson facing down cops in riot gear through a haze of tear gas are on loop in our brains. If you’ve been watching the news at all, you know some version of the story: an unarmed 18-year-old African American named Michael Brown was shot by a police officer while he was walking home. The circumstances of the shooting are disputed. Riots and looting ensued and heavily militarized cops rolled in.

The first time Jesus preached in a synagogue, he said that he came to proclaim release to the captives (Luke 4:18). Those captives include people who have disabilities, sometimes literally. My friend Margaret who works overseas with people with disabilities told me that some of them have scars on their wrists from being chained to their beds for years as children. Pastors from a number of different countries have told me similar stories.

One injustice that I've recently become more aware of is what I've begun to think of as "dream-killing," and it's an injustice that those of us in the church practice all too often against our young people. 

Are you interested in the plight of refugees? Would you like to sponsor refugees as a group or church? The book The Middle of Everywhere by Mary Pipher is a great resource to help you.

Every day at five am in the small rural community of Basurú, on Colombia’s Pacific Coast, a group from the local Mennonite church gathers to broadcast the events of the day. Using a microphone connected to megaphones hoisted high above the community on bamboo poles, the technology may be archaic but the messages are not. The only way to reach the community is by boat on the San Juan river; access to local news is a way to keep the community connected and informed of what is going on in the world around them.

If you won a court case for horrendous abuse, what would you demand? Money? Indigenous peoples in Canada asked for a chance to tell their stories of residential schools to the nation, to teach others about a part of our history that often doesn’t get much space in the history textbooks. (If you’re American, you’re not off the hook. Our countries share a very similar story about residential schools.)