Right now we’re brainstorming our next justice seminar at Grace on January 23…it’s about poverty.

We need some input from you.

What are some questions you have about poverty?

What are some misconceptions you’d like to have cleared up?

What don’t you understand about poverty?

What frustrates you about poverty?

What do you want to know about poverty?

Your comments will help us shape the next justice seminar. Thanks for your collaboration!

Did you see this article from the New York Times?

Seriously, I couldn’t believe it.

One in four kids in the U.S. receive assistance from food stamps. One in eight adults do, as well. This number shocks me. Shocking or not, this is becoming our new normal.

If everyone knew about this, do you think they’d do something about it? Or do most people enjoy a version of reality where they’re not on the hook for someone else’s suffering?

My guess is they would go to the grocery store once and fill up a bag for a food pantry, which is nice, but I’m afraid nice doesn’t quite solve the problem.

I’ve found that people are impacted most when they experience poverty firsthand, when they can see it, touch it, smell it. Sometimes they need a good friend to drag them downtown.

Someone like you.

Be a good friend this holiday season and drag a friend (or multiple friends) to a community center or mission and serve those in need. You can be the catalyst in someone else’s life to wreck them for the kingdom of God.

I remember very clearly the argument I had with Trista on the bus ride home from Moore Junior High School that winter afternoon.  She was the best 7th grade basketball player, and I was a middling to average 7th grade basketball player who was destined to not make the 9th grade team.  She and I were arguing who would win a one-on-one basketball game.  This was no Billie Jean King v. Bobby Riggs in national importance.  But the heat on that bus was intense.  I was incredulous that she thought she could beat me.  What girl could beat a boy in basketball?  That couldn’t happen.  No offense to her and all.  But boys were just better basketball players.  Even middling to average ones.  I never asked her why my attitude bothered her so much.  I thought it was just a plain fact.  But she thought it was an affront to her being.

Little did I know how millenia of prejudice against women would fuel the fire of a 7th grade girl that day.  And little did I realize how I had bought that lie hook, line, and sinker.  And it persists today, 32 years later (although hopefully not in me).  Look at these facts:

• Girl babies are still killed in countries where male babies are considered more valuable.
• Women are denied property rights and inheritance in many countries.
• Women own less than 1 percent of the world’s property.
• Women work 2/3 of all the world’s labor hours.
• Women earn 10 percent of the world’s wages.

Rich Stearns makes a startling statement in his book, The Hole in Our Gospel.

“The Single most significant thing that can be done to cure extreme poverty is this: protect, educate, and nurture girls and women and provide them with equal rights and opportunities – educationally, economically, and socially. This one thing can do more to address extreme poverty than food, shelter, health care, economic development, or increased foreign assistance.”

I for one owe Trista a long-overdue apology.  How about you?

For a few months we’ve been picking up some guys from Wheeler Men’s Mission in Indianapolis and bringing them to church on Saturday nights. Everyone seems to have a good time. The guys like coming to the “big church” in Noblesville. A team of people prepares meals and eats with the Wheeler men after the first service hour. We even build time in for a smoke break (because it wouldn’t be a pleasant night if we didn’t allow this!) before we head back to Wheeler.

If you come to Wheeler, you may be surprised how good they are at dominoes and chess. Most of our time spent with the guys is on Sunday afternoons downtown.

This past weekend marked a special moment for the guys who come to church with us. Anyone who is new at Grace can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer mass of humanity at our big church. It’s easy to feel anonymous and even lonely if you’re not connected. Everyone wants to have someone who knows them.

This Saturday night, the guys arrived early to service and were sitting with Susie and a few other Outreach groupies, when Maeven and Nick walked into the auditorium. The guys’ faces lit up when they saw their friends who hang out with them at Wheeler on Sunday nights. Unfortunately, Nick and Maeven didn’t see the Wheeler guys and sat on the opposite side of the room.

It's easy to feel anonymous when this room is full of people.

The Wheeler men would not let Maeven and Nick stay unaware of their presence at Grace. They all motioned and waved their hands for a few minutes until Maeven and Nick saw them. Not only were the guys thrilled to see someone they knew at Grace, but Nick and Maeven were equally thrilled to see their Wheeler friends! They met up afterwards and ate together. It was a great night for everyone involved.

At the end of the day, everyone wants to know and be known…that is, to have deep and authentic relationships with other people. This rule doesn’t just apply to homeless men, but to all people. Maeven and Nick’s lives are just as enriched (if not more) by their relationships with the men from Wheeler as the guys from Wheeler value their relationships with Maeven and Nick. To borrow from Greg Paul, we all need each other. It’s a basic human need.

As we talk about seeking out and nurturing authentic relationships at Grace, take stock of your relationships. I want relationships in my life like the ones our Wheeler friends have with Nick and Maeven. I think we all do.

I’m sitting in the Leadership Summit, listening to Wess Stafford, the President of Compassion International as he passionately talks about the source of his life calling of protecting and rescuing children.  He’s asking, “what is it that moves you passionately?”  Every one of us has a story that can be redeemed and used for God’s glory.  What is your story, and how is God going to redeem it and use it?
http://www.compassion.com/poverty-wheel/
http://www.compassionquiz.com/poverty-quiz/poverty-quiz.html

“You see that corner back there? That’s where I was told to never go when I was a kid because I’d get stabbed.”

That memorable insight from our trip leader, delivered on a night walk at 1:30 a.m., is just one of the many memories I will carry with me from the Short Term Trip to Toronto I was able to be a part of last fall. It was a cold and rainy weekend in mid-November, and I found myself in a group of six other twenty-somethings following our guide through parts of the city that I never could have dreamed, let alone imagined myself walking through.

Many images remain fixed in my mind from those night walks. I remember a man on his cell phone, standing outside a night club known as a hot spot for homosexual clientele. There was nothing remarkable in the man’s appearance, but I found myself wondering how he had found himself there on that rainy night, and where he was going.

I remember passing a waitress working at an outdoor cafe who had more tattoos and piercing that I could count. I remember feeling sad for her, and then wondering why the fact that she was different from me made me so sad.

I remember crossing the street, while a group of fifteen prostitutes walked directly behind us. As we walked, I overheard their conversation, talking about their friends, their day job and what they watched on TV last night. I thought, “Wow, they’re not very different fom me.”

I remember meeting one young man who was high on some drug or another, but was very excited to welcome us to Cananda. As he explained Canada’s systematic plan to invade the United States, I found myself uncomfortable and wanting to pull away. Why did this man’s ramblings make me want to recoil with fear?

I remember visiting the AIDS memorial and looking at plaque after plaque of names of those lost to the disease. I saw many places where only nicknames were given, and many more where only a date of death was listed, commemorating a friend who was loved in life, but not known close enough to know an age or birth date.

The AIDS Memorial in Toronto (Photo by Katie Osland)

I remember a time when labels for people came so easy: gay, punk, hooker, junkie. Those labels don’t come so easily anymore. For me, those people now have faces, some of them have names, and I know they each have a story.

Some of these people have found themselves in difficult circumstances because of choices they’ve made, some are there because of the choices of others, but all of them are children of God. They fit into Jesus’ category of “our neighbor” far more snugly than I’m often comfortable admitting to myself.  The one other thing I remember about my time in Toronto is taking time to look into those faces, and seeing how much they look like Jesus.

What would it be like to live on one dollar a day?  For food, water, gas, housing, transportation, clothes, toys, utilities, insurance, school fees and uniforms, entertainment.  Impossible?

I dare you to scroll through this list of the percentage of people living on less than one dollar a day in each of the countries of the world.

This is the budget of Bonefesi and Selina living on approximately one dollar a day in Malawi. 

Bonefesi and Selina's annual household budget

You can read more about Bonefesi and Selina’s story here.

Some people in the US have tried to eat on one dollar a day to begin to understand what it is really like for 1/6 of the world’s population, at least as far as food is concerned.  Here is the story of Evan who spent $30 one month for food.  But that of course is just one aspect of what it is like to be part of the 1.2 billion people who live on one dollar a day.

What can you do?

Deuteronomy 15:10-12

¹⁰ Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. ¹¹ There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.

Oftentimes when a person comes home from a trip overseas to a developing country they wrestle with their possessions in light of the glaring disparity in today’s global distribution of wealth (in other words, why are some people so poor, and others so rich?).  My last trip to Guatemala was no different.

The Capehart Family

Part of our team was building a house a day in some of the outlying villages around Chichi.   We got to the footprint of the first house and wow, it was shockingly small.  We all looked at it envisioning how we would ever live in a house that small. 

Our first Guatemalan house build

The new homeowners!

An American House

Our Guatemalan Family and House