If you haven’t already, watch it for yourself…

In the face of criticism, Invisible Children has responded with an official statement in order to clarify their intentions and draw attention to their financial transparency and on-the-ground efforts toward rehabilitation of those impacted by the LRA.

RESOURCES: Our friend, Rachel Held Evans, has done a stellar job at compiling A LIST OF IMPORTANT ARTICLES about Joseph Kony, the LRA, and Invisible Children. Check them out and tell us what you think!

I am a white, middle-class man working on a master’s degree. I’m supposed to eat lunch at anAsian-Fusion restaurant or Whole Foods or a sushi bar (tongue in cheek). I shouldn’t be eating the free meals that urban churches are cooking up for people in need, right?

Or… should I? I’m beginning to think that I – we – actually should be.

There isn’t enough to go around? I simply can’t believe that anymore.

There IS enough to go around. We live in a world of abundance and the Creator of this world is the God of abundance.

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Joshua Walters is an M.Div. candidate at Palmer Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA. Follow him at videoaudiodisco.blogspot.com.

There is one image of the time in Baghdad that will never leave me. As the bombs fell from the sky and smoke filled the air, one of the doctors in the hospital held a little girl whose body was riddled with missile fragments. He threw his hands in the air and said, “This violence is for a world that has lost its imagination.” Then he looked square into my eyes, with tears pouring from his, and said, “Has your country lost its imagination?”

That doctor’s words have stayed with me.

In a country that is going bankrupt as it continues to spend 250,000 a minute on war… it is clear that it is time to re-imagine things. That doctor’s words have inspired a little something.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of September 11, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, and I are teaming up. And we have rallied a bunch of other artists and storytellers to create a 90-minute variety show and multimedia presentation raising questions of violence and militarism… and sharing stories of reconciliation and grace.

We’ve been calling it “Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream.”

A victim of 911 will share about why she has insisted that more violence will not cure the epidemic of hatred in the world.

A veteran from Iraq will speak about the collision he felt as a Christian trying to follow the nonviolent-enemy-love of Jesus on the cross… while carrying a gun.

A welder will tie an AK-47 in a knot and while a muralist paints something beautiful on stage.

We’re going to do a SKYPE call with Afghan youth working for peace, and hear their dreams for a world free of war and bombs and other ugly things.

I don’t want to give the whole thing away, but I will say we’ve got the world’s best juggler Josh Horton doing an original anti-violence routine… and we’ve got some of the finest musicians rocking out some old freedom songs.

Ben and I are sort of like the ringmasters of the circus. He’ll do this spectacular demonstration with Oreos, with each one representing 10 billion dollars of federal spending so we can see how the money stacks up with all these budget talks. I’ll share about Jesus, and that grace that dulls even the sharpest sword.

We hope you can make it.

Oh, and word on the street is – ice cream will be served.

But even if you can’t make it to Philly on September 10 for our little party… find some way to do something that doesn’t compute with the patterns of violence. It’s time to re-imagine the world.

Find a way to interrupt injustice and to build the kind of world we are proud to pass on to our kids — a world with fewer bombs and more ice cream.

I hope to go back to Iraq in a year or two, find that doctor again — and tell him: “We have not lost our imagination.”

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Shane Claiborne is a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is the co-author, with Chris Haw, of Jesus for President. For more information and to sign up for the event go to the “Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream” Facebook and event pages.

You, in fact, assemble your shoes (which are no modern marvels of lasting quality or art) in nations which employ unfair labor practices and often child labor. Then, you charge exorbitant amounts for said shoes, which the materials and assembly are below par. Your profit margin skyrockets with your laughably lining your pockets at a criminal level. To top it all off, you “generously” and “charitably” “give” a pair of shoes to a child in need. What about those who you unfairly employ? Your greed only gets you so far with the public who no longer brainlessly buys into your charade of charitability. Your marketing campaign is no longer acceptable.

As to me? You may say I am just a hypocritical part of the problem. I would have to agree that most products are made in foreign nations, commissioned by greedy, corporate capitalists. However, my television maker doesn’t masquerade as a generous company, hooking third world nations up with technology or education for the children. Add to that the fact that I am 98% second-hand and consignment for the clothes on my back and the shoes on my feet. I can sleep at night knowing I am doing the best I can with the shoes on my feet to no longer perpetuate the problem of child slavery and unfair labor practices.

My conclusion, TOMS and BOBS… stop the charades. We, the public, are no longer “buying” your hypocrisy. You need to begin, right now, employing fair labor practices and giving shoes away because it’s right, not as part of an advertising campaign to make you richer!

Now, if you’ve read this, and you are upset because you buy and wear these, I ask you to look inside your shoes… look at where they’re made… look at the labor practices of those nations. Ask yourself, “What does it COST to make these shoes? Just one pair? What did the company pay the worker for assembling this one pair of shoes?” Then, ask yourself, “What did I pay for these?” What you will undoubtedly conclude is this: “Wow! I could’ve bought a pair of shoes at the Goodwill, and donated about $45 to any local charity to put food a child’s plate or bought water for Somalia.” Do NOT take my word for it. You can contact the company and they will give you an excuse about how their factories are “up-to-standard” for world regulations.

If you’re mad and you stopped reading a long time ago, dismissing me as a liberal quack, all it takes is investigation, and you will see what I’ve set forth is true. Moreover, it’s true of all new clothes not made in the US. The problem is bigger than we can see, which is why I try to buy everything in secondhand and consignment shops. Trust me, I think TOMS and BOBS are just as cute as the next girl, but my conscience moves me to stop the madness where God reveals it. Join me in doing the same. Not only do we reduce, reuse and recycle, but we can all help end unfair labor practices globally.

TOMS and BOBS are not the actual problem… they were the hook to get you to read. The problem is “we”.
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Tammy Fuller is a youth leader in church and community. Inspired by the radical likes of Claiborne and Campolo, she is an advocate for peace, fair labor practices, and looking for ways to reach the marginalized in the marketplace of daily life. A wife and a mother, Tammy’s first loyalty is there. Find her on Facebook.

Watch as Gabriel Salguero, President of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, discusses the immigration issue at the 2011 Wildgoose Festival. Gabriel is also is the pastor of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene in New York City, a Ph.D. candidate at Union Theological Seminary, and the director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary.
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Film created and provided by The Work of the People.

The Work of the People is a community of artists who create visual media for the church to re-orient God’s people around Jesus’ good news and mission to make all things new. Our work is to tell the story we share and to ask poignant questions through film, literature, art and music. We confess that we are created in the image of God and fulfill our calling by creating and recreating to the glory of God. Download films for your church or spiritual community at www.theworkofthepeople.com.

But recently, when the two found themselves leading possibly one of the largest community service projects ever in Alviso, their hearts melted and they began to see the neighborhood with all new eyes.

“After our experience here we have a passion for the people of Alviso,” Froese said. He said the stereotypes he once held for the community have completely disappeared. “Our opinions have been changed 180 degrees. We have a deep love and affection for the people now.”

With all the precision of a major police operation, the two marshaled the forces of 600 volunteers last weekend for the “Awaken Alviso” project, one of 17 projects worked on May 16-22 by a San Jose coalition of churches, nonprofits, businesses and governmental agencies called Beautiful Day.

“Once a cop, always a cop,” Buchanan joked, as he explained how he and Froese divided the neighborhood into zones and appointed block captains to coordinate work on 41 sites in the small community of 2,200 residents and nearly 500 homes.

“We planned it down to how many nails we’d need,” he said.

Throughout San Jose approximately 2,400 Beautiful Day volunteers worked that week to spruce up neighborhoods and schools, as well as serve the homeless, disabled and others in need.

Just to make “Awaken Alviso” happen, Buchanan and Froese put in five months of planning, working sometimes eight to sometimes 14 hours a day, they said. And even though the event is over, the two said they have become so committed to helping people there, they are already planning new projects in the coming months.

Buchanan and Froese were, as they put it, “shoulder tapped” five months ago by Beautiful Day Executive Director Jon Talbert to lead the Alviso project.

Talbert likens it more to shoving people in the pool when they least expect it.

“At first they say, ‘what?’… But then they realize it’s the best thing that could have ever happened to them,” Talbert said.

For some volunteers, a big event like Beautiful Day is something they’ll do once and check off a list, he said. But for others “it resonates in their soul,” inspiring them to serve long after the event is over.

The people of Alivso are resonating in Buchanan’s and Froese’s souls, judging by the way they talk about people who they now know on a first-name basis from months of getting ready for the weekend.

To prepare they collaborated with two churches in the community, Star of the Sea Catholic Church and Jubilee Christian Center, as well as three other San Jose churches, Holy Spirit, Lincoln Glen, and their own church, Westgate, which spearheads Beautiful Day. They also worked with businesses, neighborhood groups, and officials from San Jose and the Santa Clara Unified School District, which oversees the elementary school.

The men said that at first residents were wary of their efforts, thinking there were either strings attached, or that this was one more empty promise in a long line of past empty promises from other groups and governmental agencies. But the men persisted, and eventually neighbors warmed up to them.

During the Beautiful Day weekend they said people with not much to give came out and offered Horchata (a traditional cold Mexican rice milk drink), punch, and other snacks to the volunteers.

By the end of the weekend, volunteers had brightened murals at George Mayne Elementary with new paint, cleaned out a community garden and many yards of weeds, repainted the local convenience store as well as many homes, and repaired a number of porches, wheelchair ramps, and roofs. A tree company donated its services to trim overgrown trees at 14 homes; other businesses donated lumber and other building materials.

The effort left two retired cops ready for a little time off, but still thinking of how to find the money and resources to come back to Alviso to help more families. And they said it’s not just them, other volunteers have expressed an interest, as well.

“There are attachments of the heart that have occurred over the last five months,” said Buchanan.
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Pam Marino is creator and editor of Good Neighbor Stories, a news website about people and organizations making a difference in their communities. Pam also works as a freelance journalist for various news sites and organizations. You can see more of her work at www.goodneighborstories.com or on Facebook.

I’m a little annoyed with Groupon. You get caught up in these daily deals, and you throw down before you think things through. So here I am, sitting around miles from my house, waiting four hours for my deeply discounted oil change. Having now had lots and lots of time to consider the matter, I’m pretty sure that a full-price oil change at a more convenient location would be worth the money.

The purchase made sense in theory: my car needed new oil, and this is a local business, mere miles from my house. It’s just not near anywhere I could hang out and kill time. So I wandered the streets for an hour and a half. I breathed in exhaust fumes from local traffic, stepped over litter and potholes, kept one eye open for a place that would have me and wouldn’t kick me out. There weren’t many. I’ll be honest: I’m sort of waiting for someone to ask me to leave the premises even as I type.

If I want to get anywhere this afternoon, I’m either taking public transportation–which in my area is not very user-friendly–or I’m walking. And my area is not very walker-friendly; where there are sidewalks, they’re not terribly well kept, and in any case the cars have the right of way, no matter what the Secretary of State’s office might tell you.

My feet are tired. I’m sweaty and uncomfortable. I’m cranky. I’d like to be at home, but for the afternoon at least, I’m effectively homeless. I don’t like it.

I realize that I’m not really homeless; I’m merely inconvenienced. The homeless folks I’ve met wouldn’t experience the benign neglect that I’ve experienced hunkering down in this hotel lobby. I have the air of the homeful–a haircut, matching clothes, a defensible number and quality of accoutrements. I get deference where less presentable, more permanently homeless people would get the fish eye and an eventual call to security.

And while I was walking aimlessly, just looking for someplace to chill out, the homeless people I know are walking someplace as specific as it is arbitrary: they’re making their way from one shelter to another, from one service provider to another, from one job opportunity to another. The point of walking is specific, but the destination is based on the whim of whatever church has opted to open its doors overnight, whatever part of town a local government has zoned to allow social service providers to open up shop, wherever the jobs happen to be today. Meanwhile, drivers in car-based towns assume that walkers are walking aimlessly; pedestrians are nuisances to cars, regardless of how dangerous cars are to pedestrians.

I know, I know: I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not homeless, I’m homeful. I just needed my oil changed and this daily deal presented itself, and I opted to inconvenience myself for an afternoon to save a few bucks. But however slight a taste of homelessness is my hour and a half of walking my town, my four hours of waiting for something to materialize, I’ve tasted enough to know that I don’t like it, and I wouldn’t wish it on people I don’t like–let alone people I like.

In Matthew 25, Jesus talks about how he hides himself in the naked and hungry and homeless and unjustly treated. We’re supposed to do unto them what we say we would do unto him. But seeing Jesus in someone sweaty and uncomfortable and cranky (and, frankly, sometimes certifiable) isn’t as easy as it sounds. And more often than not we’re actually seeing ourselves as Jesus instead. 

It’s not something we do on purpose; it just happens, because it’s easier to see ourselves as Jesus than to see someone yucky as Jesus. It’s easier for us, who try so hard to emulate our Messiah, to incarnate than to identify, to witness to someone than to witness Christ in someone.

So maybe, next time you see someone sweaty and uncomfortable and cranky and somewhat certifiable–someone yucky–instead of trying to see them as Jesus, go ahead and play Jesus yourself. Try to see them as me, you’re ole pal Dave, instead. I’m not a yucky person; I’m just having a difficult day. Try to cut me some slack, Jack.

I thank you in advance.

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David A. Zimmerman is an author and editor. His booklet The Parable of the Unexpected Guest, a thought experiment for discipleship and evangelism, will be released by InterVarsity Press in September 2011.

I’m driving home from an oil change. I see Bob. He’s sitting outside in the cold, rain dripping on his winter jacket and stocking cap. Obviously waiting for a bus, Bob looks off into the distance – alone and uncomfortable. For as long as I’ve known him, this has been his life as he goes from shelter to shelter.

I’m checking out a book at the library. There’s Lawrence reading a book. I walk past as he sits at a table with other friends from the shelter. Our conversation is short and pleasant. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s been looking for places like this to stay out of the heat or cold.

I’m driving to work. I see Wayne walking down Main Street. High school students are flooding into their school parking lot; hundreds of students litter the streets as they try to beat the tardy bell. In just a few minutes, Wayne will pass them all. I wonder, What will they say to him? How will they look at him? Will anyone wish him a good morning?” For as long as I’ve known him, Wayne has taken this walk.

I’m jogging the third mile of an eight-mile run. I see Odell sleeping on a bench. It’s a pleasant morning, and twenty or thirty people are around the park this morning. None of them notices Odell. This isn’t the first time he’s slept on that bench. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s never had a bed to call his own.

When it comes to the homeless, what counts as enough? Is it enough to offer temporary shelter, have some pleasant conversations, share a few laughs and then go home? Is it enough to know their names, learn their stories and offer encouragement? Is it enough to provide an environment where people feel welcomed and valued? Is that enough?

For the last five years, I’ve been asking myself that question. I offer leadership and support to a weekly overnight shelter in my community, and on the third Tuesday of every month I pull together a consistent group to serve dinner, set up sleeping quarters, do laundry, serve breakfast and clean up. We’ve invaded the basement of the First Church of Lombard monthly for the past five years, ready to hang out.

I say “invade” because that’s what it sometimes feels like at a shelter. Sometimes it seems like volunteers want to turn this awesome experience into “Mission: Save the Homeless!” Many people with great intentions think that their job at the shelter is to help homeless folks become more like them. Some think that by cooking up some food, putting down some mats, even saying “Hello,” they are doing these guys a giant favor.

It’s different working with a group of people who “invade” with love. I’ve seen some volunteers walk into the shelter wondering what they can learn from our homeless buddies. I’ve been able to witness a group realize the mutuality of the shelter experience—realize that hanging out at the shelter is, in many ways, a gift.

The volunteers I work with at the shelter aspire toward being a “wheel” for our homeless friends: to form relationships with homeless people and then “go with them” to take advantage of all the resources available to the homeless community. If you visited our shelter on a typical Tuesday night, you might not be able to tell who was homeless and who was a volunteer. Instead, you would see a bunch of people having a great time – homeless people and “homeful” people playing “cornhole” or shuffleboard together, filling out tournament pools together, painting each other’s nails and cutting each other’s hair, singing together and referring to each other by name.

I’ll be honest, the things I’ve seen happen in that basement at First Church over the last five years are incredible. To get to the point where a homeless person can say, “You guys really look like you like being here,” to get to the point where you’d look into the basement and it would look more like Thanksgiving than a homeless shelter. But the question still bugs me, “Is it enough?” Could any of us say that we’ve been directly responsible for a person going from homelessness to homefulness? I don’t think so. Has any of us even gotten involved in their lives past the Tuesday night and Wednesday morning that we’re at the site? Not on a regular basis. Have we been a wheel for our friends? I’m not sure.

As I move through the community and see my homeless friends move from shelter to shelter in between weeks, I’m asking myself the question, “Is it enough?” Is it enough that for at least one day out of the month our homeless buddies can go somewhere they are valued and people enjoy being with them?

Bob is still at the bus stop, Lawrence is still looking for a place to stay warm, Wayne is still walking down Main, Odell is still sleeping on benches. There are still over 1,000 people in my county who are homeless. Is it enough to just be a friend? Is it enough, even, to aspire to be a wheel? Or do we, the homeless and the homeful alike, still need to figure out what being a wheel – being a friend – really means?

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Tony Melton is a volunteer with DuPage PADS and the author of Buy This Book So I Can Go to Ethiopia, a book on Christian discipleship; funds from the sale of his book will go toward his efforts at mission partnership with Arbogonea, a village in the Sidama region in Ethiopia.

It hasn’t been a year since the Gulf oil spill, which we rightly saw as the worst environmental disaster in memory. At that time I wrote a piece trying to come to terms with that situation: “How Do You Pray About an Oil Spill?” And now I sit pondering a disaster that could turn out to be exponentially greater than the BP/Halliburton fiasco.

I am doing so at my dining room table, in a part of the world that is seismically if not politically stable, many miles from the nearest nuclear facility. I am looking out at a landscape where the first birds of spring have arrived and are singing up a storm: Robins, redwing blackbirds, a cedar waxwing and (I think) a pine warbler just this morning. The contrast between my window and the stories on my computer screen could not be more different, and I am forced to ask: How do I pray about what is now happening in Japan?

Let’s start by experiencing the disaster just a little bit. Click here to watch one of the first live reports of the wall of water and debris engulfing the flat land bordering the sea in Miyagi Prefecture north of Tokyo. Take it at least through the first four or five minutes, remembering that every house, every vehicle being swallowed has people in it.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything, even in fiction, like this monster as it races across the landscape, belching smoke and flame, swallowing everything in its path. I feel similarly to how I feel when I stand at the base of Niagara Falls—small and inconsequential. Look—everything human is being obliterated. Our greatest works hardly slow it down. Instead, as human artifacts are swallowed they become part of the monster, swelling its size and increasing its power to destroy.

This is only the middle act of a three-part tragedy. To this we have to add, on the front end, approximately three minutes of the worst earthquake in recorded Japanese history, and on the back end a still unfolding nuclear disaster whose effects could last from decades to centuries.

This is happening in Japan—one of the wealthiest, most technologically advanced countries in the world. Japan is not only the source of many of our cars and electronic gadgets—she is the most prepared-for-disaster country in history. Japan knows earthquakes as Oklahoma knows tornadoes. Building codes are possibly the strictest in the world. Public education, early warning systems, disaster drills: Everything that could be done in anticipation of a disaster was being done. There is no way to blame this tragedy on greed (the Gulf oil spill), poverty (Haiti), or political ineptness (Hurricane Katrina). No—it seems like this is one tragic event that was going to happen and there was nothing anyone anywhere could have done to prevent it or to adequately prepare for it. An article in the New York Times sums up the situation nicely:

No matter how high the levee or how flexible the foundation, disaster experts say, nature bats last.

In such a situation, where the best that human society can offer is less than inadequate, how should we pray?

We need to put God back into the picture. “Nature” is a euphemism; God is the reality. Nature does not control the movement of tectonic plates, the displacement of billions of tons of sea water. But God does. Isaiah 40 might be a useful chapter to run to in these times of trouble and chaos:

He [God] sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
     and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
     and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
He brings princes to naught
     and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted,
     no sooner are they sown,
     no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
     and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.

Does putting God at the center of the Japan disaster make you uncomfortable? It should. “Fear God” is a common exhortation in the Bible for good reason: overfamiliarity with the God of earthquakes and tsunamis is not a good idea. This leads directly to our second item.

We need to understand our frailty and adopt an attitude of humility. There’s a line I use often in my talks: “The entire human enterprise depends on two things: Six inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains.” No matter how clever our inventions, no matter how beautiful our artwork, no matter how profound our works of literature or how powerful our weapons or how vast our (imaginary) wealth, we are in the end biological creatures who suffer and die quickly without air, food and water.

Our frailty is evident in every disaster. Water and food become matters of top priority; their lack is often a major reason for breakdowns in security and social norms. But absent a disaster, we human beings act like teenagers who are invincible and will live forever. Could there be a better description of an economic system built on the premise that perpetual growth is possible, desirable and inevitable? Perhaps James’ caution could apply here:

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.

We need to admit the reality of our sin and repent. Think back to the image of the tsunami wave racing across the landscape, engulfing cars and buildings and then carrying them along, adding them to itself and using them to consume and destroy yet more cars and buildings. There is a powerful metaphor here: All of our economic, political and social structures have been built, like the Tower of Babel, on a foundation of arrogance and greed. We have in fact “added house to house until there is no more room and we live alone in the land” (Is 5). We have “destroyed the earth” and unknowingly lived on the blood of millions trapped in poverty. And the system we’ve built for our comfort and prosperity is in the process of destroying us—more slowly than, but just as effectively as, that tsunami wave.

Biblical repentance calls for a change of attitude as well as change of direction. “Go and sin no more,” says Jesus to an admitted sinner. Can an entire global society learn to “sin no more”? I’m not sure we can, but I suspect this is the great challenge of our time.

And this brings us to our one hope in all of this: We can appeal to the mercy and grace of a God who is not only wrathful but also loving. While we confess and pray, we can also hang on tight to the words of Jeremiah at one of the darkest periods of Israel’s history, words that are the source of one of our greatest hymns of prayer and praise:

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.” (Lamentations 3:19-24)

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Ed Brown is executive director and CEO of Care of Creation, Inc., and author of Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation. This post is adapted from an earlier post at ourfathersworld.org.