Thanks Margie!

It is easy to develop a solid, theological grasp on the essential components of the church, and the nature of the gospel without understanding the ways in which a biblically-defined church will look and function in differing cultural contexts. The Bible-only folks are convinced they only need to know Scripture in order to reach the people in a given community. I think we all need more scriptural fidelity, but unless they can also exegete the culture they will be ill-equipped to identify idols and understand the ways in which sin has brought ruin to the community.

Others see an effective model of church flourish in one context and believe they only need to replicate that in order to reach the people in their context. They too avoid the hard work of studying their culture, and instead seek to import the work and conclusions drawn from a different context. Both types are hard at work primarily planting and leading in their head instead of their communities. This is bad missiology that disregards the importance of knowing and engaging culture.

Calling for Contextualization | Christianpost.com.

MISSIONAL COMMUNITY…SIMPLE from jeff maguire on Vimeo.

The survey calls that strategy into question. Children do, in fact, act as a catalyst for millions of parents. Yet, this is not the most common or normative experience for parents in the nation. While parenthood can reset people’s priorities in life, having children is not an automatic faith-starter for most adults. It’s more complicated than that. Family background and their personal faith history impact their behavior.

Kinnaman pointed out the importance of influencing young lives. “Parenthood might help to clarify and enhance people’s pursuit of spirituality, but usually it does not fundamentally alter a parent’s spiritual trajectory. Getting people to transition from church involvement based upon religious inertia to activity driven by a sense of engagement is exceedingly difficult – and relatively rare. Compounding the challenge, the age of parenthood is being pushed back as more young women delay having children into their late twenties and beyond. If the objective is to incorporate young parents into congregational life, it is important to help shape young people’s beliefs attitudes, habits and aspirations long before they become parents.”

The Barna Group - Does Having Children Make Parents More Active Churchgoers?.

“…though the historical arguments for Jesus’s bodily resurrection are truly strong, we must never suppose that they will do more than bring people tot he questions faced by Thomas, Paul and Peter, the questions of faith, hope, and love.  We cannot use a supposedly objective historical epistemology as the ultimate ground for the truth of Easter.  To do so would be like lighting a candle to see whether the sun had risen.  What the candles of historical scholarship will do is to show that the room has been disturbed, that it doesn’t look like it did last night, and that would-be normal explanations for this won’t do.  Maybe, we think after the historical arguments have done their work, maybe morning has come and the world has woken up.  But to investigate whether this is so, we must take the risk and open the curtains to the rising sun.  When we do so, we won’t rely on the candles anymore, not because we don’t believe in evidence and argument but because they will have been overtaken by the larger reality from which they borrow, to which they point, and in which they will find a new and larger home.  All knowing is a gift from God, historical and scientific knowing no less that that of faith, hop, and love; but the greatest of these is love.

…The intellectual coup d’etat by which the Enlightenment convinced so many that “we know that dead people don’t rise,” as though this was a modern discovery rather than simply the reaffirmation of what Homer and Aeschylus had taken for granted, goes hand in hand with the Enlightenment’s other proposals, not least that we have now come of age, that God can be kicked upstairs, that we can get on with running the world however we want to, carving it up to our own advantage without outside interference.  To that extent, the totalitarianisms of the last century were simply among the varied manifestations of a larger totalitarianism of thought and culture against which postmodernity has now, and rightly in my view, rebelled.  Who, after all, was it who didn’t want the dead to be raised? Not simply the intellectually timid or the rationalists.  It was, and is, those in power, the social and intellectual tyrants and bullies; the Caesars who would be threatened by a Lord of the world who had defeated the tyrants least weapon, death itself; the Herods who would be horrified at the postmortem validation of the true King of the Jews.  And this is the point where believing in the resurrection of Jesus suddenly ceases to be a matter of inquiring about an odd event in the first century and becomes a matter of rediscovering hope in the twenty-first century.  Hope is what you get when suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word.  The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world.

Think of Oscar Wilde’s wonderful scene in his play Salome, when Herod hears reports that Jesus of Nazareth has been raising the dead.  “I do not wish him to do that,” says Herod.  “I forbid him to do that.  I allow no man to raise the dead.”  There is the bluster of a tyrant who knows his power is threatened, and I hear the same tone of voice not just in the politicians who want to carve up the world to their advantage but also in the intellectual traditions that have gone along for the ride.

But Wilde’s next, haunting line is the real crunch, for us as for Herod:  “Where is this man?” demands Herod.  “He is in every place my lord” replies the courtier, “but it is hard to find him.”

-N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

Rev. James Martin, S.J.: Glenn Beck to Jesus: Drop Dead
Glenn Beck said last week on his eponymous show that Christians should leave churches that preach “social justice.” Mr. Beck equated the desire for a just society with–wait for it–Nazism and Communism.

For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery. The longer that I’ve gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were actually talking about, the more it’s been borne in on me that that distinction is one that we modern Westerners bring to the text rather than finding in the text.

Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with working for God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, and how we’ve managed for years to say the Lord’s Prayer without realizing that Jesus really meant it is very curious.

-N.T. Wright

HT Jason Lomelino

• Solutions for Swaziland must move beyond unsustainable ways of helping that discourage initiative and empowerment and increase dependency upon the outsider.

The Vision
• Sustainable Economic Empowerment for at-risk populations and improved food security must accompany our work with Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC) and those suffering with HIV/AIDS.
• Fully integrated economic, social and spiritual programs (HIV/AIDS, health, and church development).
• Partnership with Africa Works, an organization that has extraordinarily successful economic empowerment projects in other locations.
• Establishing mid-sized cooperative agribusiness enterprises that offer real business ownership to vulnerable people.
• Africa Works has a 98% loan repayment rate!
• Monies repaid are then re-invested in new projects that provide the same type of opportunity for a whole new group of people!
• A selection criterion based on the need for intervention in marginalized communities, as well as location and resource prerequisites (social capital) needed for a project to operate successfully.
• After an in-depth assessment of AFAC, Africa Works has entered into a formal partnership with AFAC and has begun in Swaziland!
• Future projects include: broiler chicken poultry farms, egg production poultry farms, large-scale irrigated farming cooperatives, and dairy farming.

An unprecedented investment opportunity!

The all important Social Capital (local leadership, community buy in, leadership networks, training staff and volunteers) are already in place! You are investing in a holistic transformational model that addresses
complex needs in sub-Saharan Africa contexts.

Your investment in this partnership ensures:

1. 100% sustainable economic empowerment for at-risk populations!
2. Growth of local economies and increase of opportunity for entire villages.
3. Clean Water for projects sites that do not have it.
4. Ongoing care for OVC: nutrition, health care, home visits, education and vocational opportunities).
5. Ongoing care for those suffering with HIV/AIDS and prevention of new HIV/AIDs infections.

You are investing in a new future that will bear fruit for generations to come! This project will be the first of many. It is a scaleable model for similar projects across sub-Saharan Africa.
Get in on the ground floor of a transformational opportunity that will be changing lives for years to come! You will not find a better investment opportunity for changing our world!

We need to raise $500,000 of investment capital to make these sustainable programs and long term transformation a reality. We are looking for investors willing to invest in the future of a generation. 20,000 shares have been made available at $25 each. (To buy shares you can visit afachildren.org or email me directly at billy@billycalderwood.com and I can get you connected personally!)

For AFAC Church Partners

As the Macedonian church gave generously to the church in Jerusalem that was
experiencing a time of drought, so we must consider what we should give to
sustain the Body of Christ in sub-Saharan Africa during this time of great need.

Acts 11: 27 During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28
One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe
famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign ofClaudius.) 29 The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the believersliving in Judea. 30 This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. Acts 11

13 Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but thatthere might be equality. 14 At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, sothat in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, 15 as it is written:
“The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little didnot have too little.” 2 Corinthians 8. (See whole chapters 8 and 9 in context)

Your investment gives the gospel message wings! As our partner churches in
Swaziland minister to both the spiritual and physical needs of those in their
community, many are coming to faith in Christ and experiencing the reality of
the Kingdom of God!

Click for video…

Mgambeni is doing so well. The poultry farm continues. But with the addition of the well, they started a garden next to the chicken coop and are using the water from the well toirrigate. They are using the chicken waste for fertilizer. They’ve divided the garden into plots that each person has responsibility for. They can feed their own families from their plot but they must also provide for one family of orphans. The community has been so impressed by this that now the chief has given 1.5 hectares of land next to Pastor Edward’s house to start a community garden. Here they will divide up the plots like at the church site and the volunteers from 4 other churches will take responsibility for their plots and feeding orphaned families. I was really humbled by the community coming out to meet us and express their thanks. They thanked us for being different than the large NGO’s here by giving them ownership of the projects from the beginning. They say it makes all the difference to them.

BBC World Service - News - What young people want from the G20

Full Article

“Women in both countries (Swaziland and Botswana) who reported food insufficiency were nearly twice as likely to have used condoms inconsistently with a non-regular partner or to have sold sex,” the report said.

“As a result of severe food insecurity, people develop negative coping mechanisms, or ways of survival that have harmful effects on their lives,” said a WFP official in Johannesburg.
“These negative coping mechanisms include eating fewer meals, migrating from their homes to other places where they think they can find work or survive better, and pulling kids out of school.  Often, it is found that girls and women are exchanging sex for food.”
The WFP spokesperson said the burden was particularly heavy on women because they were not only expected to feed their immediate families, but also relatives such as grandparents and orphans.
The sentiment of one such woman summed up what many feel: “Hunger will kill me tomorrow but AIDS will kill me in a few years.”

“The knowledge of HIV is good, but the need for food overrides it.” The study recommended improving food security through targeted food assistance and supporting women’s subsistence farming as ways to break the cycle of sex for food.
“Such programmes would also need to enhance women’s legal and social rights so that they have more control over food supplies as well as their sexual lives,” the study concluded.
With immediate effect, food aid should be organised for unemployed women in Matsapha, and not concentrate solely on rural areas.  Unemployed men need food also, but in terms of limited HIV contagion it is women who must receive the attention because there are no reports of men on a large scale engaging in dangerous sexual practices in exchange for food.

From the research:

Our population-based study found that food insufficiency was associated with multiple risky sexual practices for women in Botswana and Swaziland. Women who reported lacking sufficient food to eat had an 80% increased odds of selling sex for money or resources, a 70% increased odds of engaging in unprotected sex and reporting lack of sexual control, and a 50% increased odds of intergenerational sex. Our results extend previous findings by Dunkle et al. that women who reported hunger in the household were more likely to engage in transactional sex,^[21] and by Oyefere at al. who found that low socioeconomic status and food insufficiency played a strong role in influencing women to become sex workers.^[19] Oyefere et al. also found that poverty and food insufficiency significantly influenced the decision of whether to use condoms among female sex workers.^[19]

We are gathering some of the most innovative and creative leaders from around the country this means YOU to share ideas, intentionally network, and move collaboratively into idea-making. Whether your passion is church leadership, non-profit work, social entrepreneurialism, technology, media, creativity, culture making, church planting, spiritual formation, compassionate justice, etc., this is the conference for YOU.

The focus of this conference will be on the participants yes, You and not on keynote speakers. We function under the belief that the crowd is always smarter and wiser than any one speaker. In fact, you are invited to create and refine some of the major components of the conference prior to the gathering itself via our web interface. You are welcome to suggest specific topics for our workshops called Idea Sessions, leave comments, ask questions, share case scenarios for discussion, and even volunteer yourself to facilitate one of our Idea Sessions.

hmmmm…. yeah, that pretty much sounds like everything I am interested in! Thanks Charles for putting this together!

Shane Blogs about it here…

Enough to the myth that happiness must be purchased. Enough to an economy that is awarding CEOs salaries 500 times that of their workers and still manages to seduce people in poverty and wealth alike to give more money to these predatorial corporations. Enough to the American dream that now consumes over 40 percent of the world’s stuff with less than 6 percent of the world’s resources. Enough to a dream that would need four more planets if the world pursued it … a dream the world cannot afford. Enough to the advice of government leaders who fearfully order us to “just keep shopping” after tragedies like September 11 and November 28. ENOUGH. Maybe God has another dream.

I see a church pregnant with new imagination this Advent season.

“At 26%, national adult HIV prevalence in Swaziland is the highest ever found in a countrywide population-based survey anywhere in the world.”

(Among pregnant women, the prevalence is at 40%)

“More than three quarters of all AIDS deaths globally in 2007 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Your gift makes a huge difference!

Thanks for joining and participating in our first Red Friday! I’m happy that so many folks joined this group in its first 24 hours! Those of you that joined know that the idea behind Red Friday is borne out of a willingness to embrace simplicity and generosity in a culture where the days news includes a story about a person trampled to death by shoppers trying to get good deals on flat screen T.V.s. After spending a few weeks in rural villages in Southern Africa earlier this month, the phrase “live simply so that others may simply live” has taken on new meaning for me personally.

I know each of you have joined because somehow you feel something similar and desire to help create a more just world.

With this in mind, lets stay connected!

First, would you consider sharing your Red Friday story on the site. (Instead of shopping, what did you do and where did you give?) This would help to inspire all of us through the reminder of the Holiday Season.

Second, if you have a desire to be a part of a longer term movement that pushes back against the cultural phenomenon that created “black friday” in the first place… Would you let me know?

I’m excited to see where we will be a year from now!

Love to you all!
Billy Calderwood

In the meantime, here are some starting points…

1. Resist the desire to participate in the all too pervasive culture of consumerism…

2. Spend some time educating yourself about the places and people in the world who have the greatest need and the groups doing good work to serve them.

3. Give something! (Compare how much you give to how much you plan to spend on gifts for people who most likely have less need).

4. Talk about what you are doing and why with someone else!

Philosophy of Education: Theology