Thursday, May 08, 2008

The wheels are turning...

I'm teaching in church this Sunday about "social justice". Here's a quick overview of what I'm trying to incorporate into the teaching portion of the morning. I'd like to know if any of you have any other suggestions.
  • Teaching the congregation Charlie Hall's "Micah 6:8"
  • Viewing a short video on what sponsoring a child is all about.
  • Interviewing students & adult leaders who are sponsoring children through Compassion Canada (this is a student led initiative that we're trying to get the rest of the church to buy into)
  • The big idea of the teaching time: "Righting the wrongs..." (using Micah 6:1-8 as the primary teaching text). The goal is to get people to see how many opportunities there are for them to get involved in areas of showing kindness and justice and inspiring them to get involved somewhere so that they can start righting the wrongs.
  • Visual: Most of the students (as well as myself if I muster up enough courage) will be wearing matching t-shirts designed by Rosa Loves, a company that designs & sells shirts to raise money for people who are in need.
  • Practical Step: (a work in progress)
I'd like to ask people to do something at the end of the service. Something that would require them to think, ponder and engage. Something that would make a difference, but something that wouldn't come across as gimmicky. Make sense?

I called the local Food Bank and asked for their top 3 needs. I could present that to them and ask them to bring one of the items in next week. But I'm still working through how this would happen from a logistics standpoint.

Any ideas?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure if this would "jive" with your people - but body prayer always seems to me to be a good physical response when we talk about justice.
Have people thinking about how God is moving them to respond to injustice around the world - and symbolically express it through prayer. Eg: kneel in empathy with those who are losing loved ones daily as a result of injustice; Stand for those who can't stand on their own; eyes open to commit to learning more about injustice; hands... etc.
I know it's not actually "doing something" - but it might be a good step for some.

Jon Coutts said...

attaboy.

whatever your application at the end is, don't do anything to give the impression that the appropriate response to the message can successfully accomplished by the end of the service. i don't know if that runs contradictory to jonathan's point above or not, but i hate it when we conclude a sermon (especially an exhortative one) with a "song of response" or whatever so we can have our sitcom ending and leave many with the impression that our work here is done.

the song "heart of worship" comes to mind, but that's another story.

social justice is a long road. the commercialization of "green" is so silly, as if we can save the world by using different lightbulbs. of course we should be greener, but let's not decieve ourselves that this is not so much bigger than that.

having said that, giving a concrete thing is a good idea. I've often thought churches should do this more. But ideally they should be ready to go all the way with it, or at least communicate how far it can and needs to be taken.

however, i digress. i think you've got a good thing going there. god bless mike.