Wind Blows Deeply

Is this a good thing? While the individual words are safe, I would like to think that occasionally the ideas might just be a little bit provocative.

So, is [the Anabaptist Eucharist] just a meal?!
No! When you share a meal together it is never just a symbol. It is always time spent together, being mutually built up, and sharing life together. And I want to suggest that when a church rediscovers communion as a full meal, then they rediscover something important about themselves. That is, church isn’t just a series of events or religious rituals; it is a sharing of life together.
So, what does a covenant meal do? It reconciles, forms and restores us!
In the breaking of bread, the community is recreated. The transformation that happens is of people, not things.
Leaving Münster

It was listening to Stephen Lewis’ Massey Lecture series (also in book format) on my way to The Gambia last November that I first became familiar with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs were adopted by the UN in 2000 with target achievement date of 2015. We are midpoint in our journey.
Today in a hop-skip-and-jump, I came across the 2007 status update (chart or report). The report suggests that progress has been made in the areas of extreme poverty and childhood mortality. There is still much to be achieved in the areas of pregnancy and childbirth, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and global warming.

In 2002, world leaders pledged they would commit 0.7% of their national income to foreign aid. Only five countries to date have done so. Canada, the US and the UK are among those who have not yet done so. (A few more quick facts on international aid here)

The MDGs
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
:: Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
:: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
:: Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
:: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
4. Reduce childhood mortality
:: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five
5. Improve maternal health
:: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
:: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
:: Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
:: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources
:: Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water
:: Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020
8. Develop a global partnership for development
:: Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory, includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction— nationally and internationally
:: Address the least developed countries’ special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction
:: Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States
:: Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term
:: In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth
:: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
:: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies— especially information and communications technologies

Read the rest of this entry »

Television is the first truly democratic culture – the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
Clive Barnes

Jordon wrote a few thoughts in his review of “Organic Community” (Joe Myers) that caught my attention.

:: For some reason, many men cling to the idea that their pastor needs to be a visionary leader, perhaps to justify their involvement in the church.
:: True community and traditional churches are incompatible. Part of the problem is the idea of a pastoral calling being a career and also the view that church leaders are interchangeable parts that can be swapped in and out for the good of the community.
:: The leader/pastor has been so ingrained in how we see the church and we have spent so much time building him or her up, it is going to take a long time and a lot of discussion for the church to move away from it. Ironically, for the first bit, it may even take a strong leader to have the church to stop thinking in terms of heirarchical leadership and start thinking in terms of community.

The first chapter, Organic Order, he relates the story of a woman who led a conference workshop:

“The fact is, for about 90 percent of the participants, our time together was a process of learning. They came expecting to learn. And almost all of them were excited to share their own techniques, too.
But I was not prepared for the other 10 percent. These people expected me to deliver a ‘checklist/bullet-point/how-to plan’ … It caught me by surprise, and it distracted me from much of what I’d planned to do.”

While Myers’ book is about church community, the woman’s story caught my attention in relation to an entirely different context. Perhaps I’m allowed to draw a parallel.
I mentor students as part of my job. It always brings a little bit of trepidation though; half are incredibly keen, soaking up anything you pass their way, and the rest are merely putting in their time. Because they are coming to gain real life experience, all hang tightly on to their safe textbook explanations of the way things are. So how do I create an environment in which they can become passionate, motivated, self-directed learners?