‘True or False?: Christians shouldn’t make six-figures’
May 13, 2009
“I Can’t Call You a Missionary”—ouch
April 27, 2009
By Missionary Confidential
One of our supporters showed up last week. We barely knew her, but she was planning a vacation to our mission field and thought it would be great to stop by and visit. Having gone through this before, we knew the drill what we would be asked and which areas would be key to show our supporter.
Because of the distance from where she was staying, an overnight stay with us made the most sense and we were happy to accommodate. We met up with her and began the tour. First we showed her the church that we work with, which is a Gothic-style, small building in need of repair. Despite the improvements and maintenance needed, it is a beautiful building, complete with stained-glass windows of angels and mortals looking up to heaven. Being American like us, our supporter was astounded by the church, partly because there aren’t too many like this in our home state.
After showing the surrounding areas and explaining the spiritual need of the country, we continued on to our house. As she walked through our place, it was then that she made the statement, with a smile, “I can’t call you a missionary!”
Read the rest …
1,500 poverty-stricken farmers in India commit mass suicide
April 20, 2009
Photos: What can $150,000 buy in real estate around the world?
April 3, 2009
Matador Life (HT: Amy Scott)
Christian musicians unite to write music and fight poverty
March 23, 2009
CompassionArt site
(HT: CatalystSpace)
San Damiano Foundation: ‘Sam and Esther’
February 3, 2009
WARNING – This video will disturb some viewers:
(HT: Anne Jackson)
Everyone Deserves a Clean Cup
January 29, 2009
I spent today in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco with 8 of our middle school and high school youth. We went into San Francisco to serve lunch and dinner at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. The youth did an awesome job serving over 700 meals at lunch and close to 800-900 at dinner. If any of you have ever been to Glide and worked in the kitchen, you’ll know they have an amazing food assembly line that gets set up, and things go very, very quickly.
During lunch, my job for 2 hours was to place the plastic cup on the napkin, and pass it down the line. A pretty simple job - but when things were really flying, you had to be pretty quick about it. During one of these rushes, I picked up a plastic cup and happened to notice that it hadn’t gotten thoroughly cleaned by the dishwasher. It wasn’t really dirty, but it was clear that it wasn’t as clean as the rest. But I saw the rest of the trays coming my way, and another was already being handed to me, so I figured it wasn’t that big of a deal. I placed the cup on the napkin, and just kept working.
Worthless bum!
January 4, 2009
“Could you spare 35 cents for a sandwich?” A worthless bum, standing amongst the city’s downtown club scene, asked us for money. We knew where the money would go — probably for cocaine. Worthless bum.
– wait a minute –
I’m no better! …
Blogging on “invisible people”
November 21, 2008
Mark Horvath has launched invisiblepeople.tv, a blog (with several short clips like the one below) about the homeless. From the site’s About page:
“On the street I saw a small girl cold and shivering in a thin dress, with little hope of a decent meal. I became angry and said to God: ‘Why did you permit this? Why don’t you do something about it?’ For a while God said nothing. That night he replied, quite suddenly: ‘I certainly did something about it. I made you.’”
Leonard from invisible people on Vimeo.
(HT: Stacy @ Church Marketing [Stinks])
Another post-election reflection
November 6, 2008
Black independent conservative La Shawn Barber isn’t mincing words:
“As long as families (the foundation of society) are in shambles, conditions won’t improve much. But with Obama in office, white liberals can feel good about themselves and blacks can feel proud, fatherless children and dead babies be damned.”
Read her post, “Barack Obama’s Post-Racial Delusion.”
What’s so bad about the prosperity gospel?
October 27, 2008
Crunchy Con Rod Dreher takes a second look at the preaching of some who insist, “God does not want you to be poor!”
Another perspective on poverty
October 23, 2008
Do U.S. government relief programs cause poverty? Watch this video from the Acton Institute: “How Not to Help the Poor” (HT: Justin Taylor):
Climate change, the economy and the Christian
October 16, 2008
A post by Tex at Mere Orthodoxy: “Green Markets, Evangelicals, and the Poor“:
“The way to help the poor is by empowering them to grow their industries and economies through all the resources available to them. The jury is still out on the existence of catastrophic global warming as well as its possible impact; in the meantime, Christians and concerned citizens should …”
On a related note: you can see if your congress-person voted for the bailout here (HT: Vitamin Z).
Blog Action Day, Oct. 15
October 10, 2008
“Global issues like poverty are extremely complex. There is no simple, clear answer. By asking thousands of different people to give their viewpoints and opinions, Blog Action Day creates an extraordinary lens through which to view these issues. Each blogger brings their own perspective and ideas. Each blogger posts relating to their own blog topic. And each blogger engages their audience differently.”
The official site.
(HT: Tall Skinny Kiwi)
[Editor's note: I haven't decided whether I'm actually participating yet -- the event is an inter-faith initiative -- I just got the button to display in this post.]
