Activist Faith

Despite a lack of prayer at the official 9/11 Memorial Ceremony, YWAM found a way to show prayer changes things. Clad in “prayer changes things” T-shirts, YWAM volunteers set up a variety of prayer stations throughout the neighboring street corners, including a station near City Hall, to offer prayer for anyone who asked for it.

According to a YWAM representative, it was only fitting, as their organization had been there ten years earlier, ministering in the same locations, praying with those effected by the events and aftermath of 9/11. Even now, ten years later, prayer is making a difference.

If a band of praying volunteers on street corners can change a nation, what could your prayers and my prayers accomplish when taking place around the world in far more locations? Even if we don’t wear the T-shirt, let’s live to let our lives resonate love to those around us today. Prayer changes things.

For Discussion Below: How is prayer changing your life today?

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DILLON BURROUGHS is an author, activist, and co-founder of Activist Faith. Dillon served in Haiti following the epic 2010 earthquake and has investigated modern slavery in the US and internationally. His books include Undefending Christianity, Not in My Town (with Charles J. Powell), and Thirst No More (November). Discover more at ActivistFaith.org.

The Christian Post recently announced an innovative strategy by my friends at Food for the Poor to both help those in need and create jobs for those in need. An excerpt is below. My question to readers:

What other ideas are you seeing that go beyond helping the poor but also empowering those in need?

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In a move to help Haitian farmers as well as to supply food even more efficiently to the hungry in that country, the international relief and development agency Food For The Poor will start buying rice from 2,000 farmers in the area most affected by the 2010 earthquake. The partnership will begin today and will provide a third of the rice that the charity needs for its feeding programs in Haiti.

“This initiative is going to help the rice growers increase their production and grow a better strain of rice through help we are providing,” said Robin Mahfood, President/CEO of Food For The Poor. “We are happy we’re able to work with the farmers in this way, and we believe it will help us better meet the needs of the poor we serve.”

The program will begin with Food For The Poor buying about 200 tons of rice each month, but Mahfood said he hopes that will continue to grow as the farmers have more success with their crops. “We will buy everything they produce,” he said.

Read the original article here.

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DILLON BURROUGHS is an author, activist, and co-founder of Activist Faith. Dillon served in Haiti following the epic 2010 earthquake and has investigated modern slavery in the US and internationally. His books include Undefending Christianity, Not in My Town (with Charles J. Powell), and Thirst No More (October). Discover more at ActivistFaith.org.

[The following is a guest post by pastor and author Daniel Darling. For more about Daniel, see his website at danieldarling.com.]

Lately I’ve been working on a book project aimed at 2nd Generation evangelicals. In the last few years, there has been a surge of books authored by young evangelicals who have been hurt by the church. Some have stayed in the faith. Others have lost their way.

I’ve read a few and have been saddened by the myriad ways in which Christians can cause pain. These books serve as a helpful warning to my generation of church leaders. May we hold our power lightly and live out the faith we preach.

But something else saddens me about the memoirs. Not only are many questioning methods and allegiances (a good thing, in my view), but the very essence of the faith.

They so dislike the bathwater of evangelical Christianity; they’re throwing out the baby of orthodoxy.

I understand the logic. If you’ve seen theology poorly applied, it’s only natural to question everything in it. But there is a danger. Simply because a leader, a denomination, a movement has misapplied Scripture in one area, it doesn’t mean the totality of their set of beliefs is wrong.

For instance, consider the raging debate about the doctrine of Hell fueled by Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read several reviews. Some of those who defend Bell are quick to share the most extreme stories of preachers using the very biblical doctrine of eternal Hell to intimidate and bully. I’ve seen this myself.

But simply because some have wrongly used this doctrine doesn’t mean it’s not true.

The tendency when we’re hurt by other Christians (as I have been) is to look at those Christians and judge the infallibility of the Word of God by the fallibility of Jesus’ followers.

We’d do better to stop looking at bad Christians and look anew at Christ Himself. And perhaps the obscure story of Malchus is a good place to start (Luke 22:49; John 18:10). Malchus is the Roman guard whose ear was cut off by Peter’s ill-advised use of the sword in the Garden of Gethsemane. Peter loved Jesus, but his embrace of the sword went against Jesus’ teaching. Jesus not only rebuked Peter, but healed Malchus’ ear.

I always wondered why John mentioned Malchus’ name. But I wonder if perhaps Jesus healing touch was not only applied to this soldier’s ear, but also to his heart. Some have speculated that Malchus became a follower of Christ and a pillar of the early church.

We don’t know. But we do know this: Jesus is in the business of healing those who’ve been hurt by His followers. There are many in our world today like Malchus’s. They’re ability to “hear” Jesus has been cut off by someone who claims to follow Christ.

Let’s face it. At its best, the Church is clumsy. We often operate with fleshly motives. We have agendas that go beyond the gospel.

If like Malchus, you’ve been hurt by the Church, the temptation is to live your life dwelling on the hurt. But that doesn’t have to be the end of your story, for if you focus your gaze away from the offender and onto Christ, you’ll find healing and hope.

It’s a serious thing when a Christian takes up the sword of offense. People are hurt. Lives are damaged. We inflict a spiritual deafness to those in our crosshairs.

But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus is bigger than any Christian’s ability to offend. God is greater than the hurt. And those who feel the pain can find healing in the simple touch offered by Jesus.

As part of an effort to bring awareness to the important issue of human trafficking, I’m featuring a series of posts on the subject. Earlier today, I posted an informative article by my friend, Kathi Macias. I also asked Charles Powell to write a guest post for me. Charles is the coauthor (with Dillon Burroughs) of a book, Not in My Town, which exposes the scourge of human trafficking in our own American towns. 

Sometimes when I wrote about human trafficking, I’m told to avoid using too many “figures and facts.” While I have used “figures” in my writing as a necessity, I’m not a guy who likes to lean too heavily on statistics unless I know the scientific methods used to obtain them. As for “facts,” in my experience people tend to trust them at face value and then show very little indignation when they are proven wrong. What I want to share in this column is the truth . . . the truth is unchanging and that is what brings me to my topic: the economy of human trafficking.

Trafficking is about money. At the end of the day, the traffickers themselves care precious little about what they are trafficking. If little brown furry bunnies were worth billions of dollars when smuggled across international borders into the US, then that is what they would sell. Bunnies would be the commodity of choice. As it is, the most profitable products are drugs, guns, and people. From my research, the people who are trafficking women into the United States for sexual exploitation are mainly large criminal organizations, usually with a shared ethnic background, such as Russian, Albanian, Chinese or Korean.

Crime can make strange bedfellows. Recently Hizballah (Hezbollah), classified by the US government as a terrorist group out of Lebanon, has been linked to trafficking in guns, drugs, and presumably people (they usually go together) under contract so to speak for Mexican drug cartels near the US border. Their aim is not political gain—it’s money, pure and simple.

The answer to the problem of international criminal organizations trafficking people into the United States is not more law enforcement, not more prisons, nor more politician’s promises. Traffickers don’t fear law enforcement and prison—these are factored into the operation’s overhead. But, they do fear common everyday people like you saying “No more!” to trafficking in their own communities. They fear people leaving the comfort of their homes. The criminals are absolutely terrified of church and civic and grassroots political groups who decide that enough is enough and take action in the streets. More laws and moral statements do not bring social change . . . people do. That was proved by the American civil rights movement.

Additional Resources:

• A recent Friday Five Interview with Charles Powell
• The website for Charle’s organization, Mercy Movement, which has resources and contact information if you’d like to have him speak at your church or group.