Why the Church Cares

The home is the foundation of a lot of good and bad things society experiences today and this impacts future generations.  God ‘s grand design and plan desired that man should not stay alone but live in community with a suitable helper for him. Unfortunately, due to the fall in the Garden of Eden man fell short of the expectations. The foundation for good life, and prosperity was hinged on obedience. This is what God had instructed. This is an instruction with a promise.

It’s summer in the U.S. and Canada. Besides the long days and fresh local food, summer is increasingly associated with “danger season.” As in years past, stories of wildfires, heatwaves, and deaths due to these and other extreme weather events around the world frequently make headlines. A growing percentage of us have experienced these events firsthand. And they are connected to a larger story of change that is difficult to face.

I invite you to use this prayer guide as a resource to reflect on human trafficking and intercede on behalf of victims, survivors, perpetrators, and our communities. 

Those who are trafficked and exploited

“I looked again and saw people being mistreated everywhere on earth. They were crying, but no one was there to offer comfort, and those who mistreated them were powerful.”
Ecclesiastes 4:1 (CEV) 

I once walked out of my church right in the middle of the service. I was with my daughter and I can tell she was embarrassed but followed me out anyways. If you know me, I don’t like to interrupt or cause an interruption so walking out was a pretty drastic move. I didn’t plan on it, I was actually looking forward to the service as the topic was about forgiveness and we were going to hear from Wilma Derkson via a Ted Talk and follow up with a discussion.

“Joy is not made to be a crumb”.  So ends Mary Oliver’s short poem ‘Don’t Hesitate’.  Oliver’s poem is a playful but fierce insistence that joy is integral to a full life – even in the face of despair, pain, and human suffering.  But implied in Oliver’s poem is the acknowledgement that joy can be hard; we do hesitate to live joyfully in the face of the world’s pain and so need reminding. 

What happens to you when you die? No, this question isn’t about your soul. It’s much more literal. What happens to your actual body when you die? This is an often uncomfortable question, only broached upon necessity, for the consideration can be gruesome. Yet for Christians concerned about caring well for the environment, how we choose to have our physical body interred after death is an important decision.

Why should we care? The process of traditional burial is surprising in its toxicity for the environment. Consider the following:

My family and I spent four years as missionaries in Italy, where we met hundreds of people from various countries in Africa and the Middle East who arrived in Europe seeking humanitarian protection. 

“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name." Exodus 20:7

A United State Indigenous Churches policy was born in 1868 in a time when subjugation was the norm for native people. President Ulysses S. Grant advanced a “Peace Policy” to remove corrupt Indian agents, who supervise reservations, and replace them with Christian missionaries, whom the President deems morally exceptional.

Bartimaeus and Actively Listening to People with Disabilities in Churches

In my previous blog-post, “Embodying Equity,” I asserted that disability is a theological, political, and personal issue, and explained several strategies that believers of varied abilities can use to create access and equity within our churches. Let’s go one step further by examining Jesus’ encounter with Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52 as an example of fulsome, embodied equity.