Tuesday 17 May 2016

To be a Social Justice Warrior

I've been reading Thom S Rainer's book, "Autopsy of a Deceased Church". A slim volume with some great warning points. I'm not saying the Beaker Folk community is " dying", but we do have a very high churn of members and you need to think about why.

Rainer examines how churches turn into themselves, focussing on the needs of their members - not looking outwards in welcoming or social action, or towards God in prayer. He seems to expect prayer will cause things to happen.

Well, obviously we at the Beaker Folk don't hold out much hope for prayer actually changing things. And we're useless at evangelism.

So we've turned to social justice as our theme. A strong strand of Beaker ethical theology has social justice at its heart. Are we not called to love the Pharisee within our borders, and leave the crops around the edges of our fields because they're covered in glyphosate?

So we're having "30 days for Social Action to change the World." 16 days in and we've put a combined total of 45,000 signatures on Internet petitions. A massive demonstration of commitment and faith, in my opinion. And that's before you add all the George Takei Facebook posts people have shared.

Mind you, the world hasn't changed much yet. Nobody in the world is any better of, no BBC journalists have been sacked. The Government hasn't seen sense and resigned. And the Beaker Community hasn't grown.

Still, 20 days to go. And we've all signalled to non-Christians on the Web that we are really very virtuous. I reckon if we keep at it, the world will be changed by next Thursday lunchtime.

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