musing...
man i feel really evangelical lately. as i mentioned to a friend this afternoon, most of my thoughts over the past week have been about evangelism, preaching and the mission of the church. i haven't yet reached the point where i feel comfortable trudging the unimaginative halls of s.h.i.t., but i'm becoming a bit worried. i intentionally left bible college jeff's wedged under a radiator on the second floor of the jessie eury library. i don't know about you, but i'd feel a lot better if his crusty ass would stay there.
anyway, like it or not, Jesus jeff is back and here's what he's thinking: most of my investments in mission are really self-centered.
two weeks ago, while the pix was lovingly preparing our tax documents, we realized that we have more money to give to the mission of God and we started rethinking our redistribution.* when we looked at our current balance sheet i realized that a) we give money to reconciliation focused ministries in foreign lands and b) almost all of the money we give to such ministries directly supports our friends** and only derivatively impacts the lives of the people they serve.
so, since we have a few extra bucks we are going to start investing directly in the lives of people in the middle east through kiva. as i've recently mentioned elsewhere, i think that westerners have done a fine job of extracting natural and human resources from the middle east over the past twenty years and now is the time for us to reinvest.
< sermon > so when the free money from the government shows up in your mailbox in a couple of weeks, consider joining us in setting aside a portion of it for redistribution. i'm sure that there are legions of small business people throughout the developing world who can turn our short money into significant dividends. moreover, i'm sure there will be plenty of others who plow their whole refund into stimulating our stumbling, bush-plagued consumer economy. < /sermon >
* oh, john perkins, i loves those 3rs! i'm all about relocation, redistribution and reconciliation as long as those needy folks don't get all up into my shit.
** whose needs have not fallen of our radar and will not be neglected on our watch. the Lord knows how much kansas city needs Jesus and so.do.we.
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3 comments:
Kiva is wonderful. I have a friend who works in Christian microfinance who laments that it is sort of "child sponsorship for microlending," but you can't beat the sense of cross-cultural connection and the ability to target very directly. I have had 2 loans fully repaid now, and lent the money out again. There is also a good forum at kivafriends.org where a lot of "next steps" are taken.
Over the past few months Cade and I have sponsored two people with Kiva . We have nothing but positive words to say about this program.
And as a side note... watching Cade take on his angry landlord persona while waving his fist at the computer saying "Where's our money Janali?!" is also worth the price of sponsorship.
The folks at Communality in Lexington, KY have a matching grant program with Kiva.
Here's their write-up on their blog and how to get them to match: http://theashram.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html
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