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A coalition of CRC agencies have done some work on the challenges that you are describing. #1. They recommend partnering with a trusted agency--the agency will have a had a long term relationship with the community and help to ensure that (a) the participants are properly trained, (b) that the group's work plans, learning, and relationship building opportunities line up with a vision that the community has created for itself, (c) that the short term group plans ahead for how they will take their learning and experience back home and use it towards continued long term investment.

#2. They also created this video curriculum that groups can use to dig deeper into healthy practices for short term missions: http://www.bechangedforlife.org/

 

 

Thanks for the great resources!

And deacons can be more effective when they partner with other community transformation folks in their town--Communities First Association is a great resource for developing local partnerships http://archive.cfapartners.org/ and for additional training materials http://archive.cfapartners.org/tool/ 

I would recommend trying some Bible study to hear more about how peace and justice really are conflated. Psalm 85 for example celebrates the day when peace and justice kiss. (Is kiss stronger language than conflate? idk, probably)

Would you put your theology of justice in sort of a dualistic camp with justice in secular column of activity and individual relationship with God in the sacred column? That wouldn't be an uncommon theology. Or, asked another way would you put the cross in one column of interest and justice in a separate column? My theology puts justice and the cross together but when other theologies don't make that connection I can understand how they would also not appreciate social justice.  

 

 

I love this post. There is another thread going on where the author is trying to separate justice from peace and defines justice only as people following the law and being punished when they don't--which falls far short of a biblical definition of justice. Jesus and the prophets give us a vision of human flourishing that results from right laws and right relationships--which apparently isn't happening for Palestinians. In the context of these breakdowns followers of Jesus need to envision a better way and speak against the oppression--I think being drawn in that direction is evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in one's heart. 

I wouldn't be so quick to say that mercy is simply giving without obligation because scripture's use of that word goes way deeper than that--beyond a world of obligations and transactional relationships. The word translated as "mercy" here is a word for covenantal loving kindness that can't be measured in terms of who owes who what. When we see mercy or covenantal-loving-kindness happen in the world its a reflection of a relationship finding a cosmically deeper level and a vision of the creators intent for creation. Mercy/covenantal-loving-kindness is a deeper ethic that our creator has infused into every inch of creation.

Are individuals and/or governments "obliged to do mercy"? I would say that question misses the point of what mercy is b/c, obligations aside, it's something everyone longs for. It's a value that God created into our very being and that we long to see renewed everywhere.

I would love to hear from more churches on what I could do to help the congregation better fulfill its mission in the area of Biblical justice. National and local cooperation is critical if we are going to actually be effective in protecting the most vulnerable. The outspokenness or silence of the church in Florida has an real impact on the issues of poverty faced by members of my congregation in Holland, MI where I am a deacon. 

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