Living Our Mission in the Marketplace
Imagine this vignette from a worship service. You are sitting among the children giving the message of how Jesus taught us to love our neighbor and to think about others. You illustrate the story by sharing with the children that the products you sell in the church store are made by “our neighbors” who live in may distant countries and who are still our neighbors even though we will never meet them face-to-face. You point out that we sell these products as part of the church’s justice and outreach ministry. After the “Children’s Message” it becomes a Sunday School project to learn more about these neighbors overseas. One class looks into South America while another class investigates our neighbors in Africa. Fast forward a few weeks and you find one of the children talks about how many African children are dying from malaria and how malaria can be prevented. The child suggests that the congregation sell valentines to raise money to purchase mosquito nets to donate to make the lives of these African children better. This child’s suggestion helps to open the eyes and hearts and ears of the congregation to truly love our neighbor…exactly as Jesus has taught us.
What I have just presented is an actual experience that I witnessed in a church that I serve. It was an amazing experience to have the idea first proposed by a child, echoed and supported by the congregation to sell valentines and to have the church treasurer send the funds generated by the sale to purchase mosquito nets. It was amazing to experience faith in action. It was deeply moving to share the experience of a congregation embracing a living faith. With one small but practical action, the congregation lived our mission of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.
We live in a global community and we are all connected. Your congregation can participate in the marketplace and support programs that foster a living faith. The term “living faith” describes when we are living in ways that actually contribute to helping our brothers and sisters in the world community, demonstrating not only by our words but also by our actions that we do, indeed, love justice and kindness. We do, indeed, have the humility of servants. This is just another way of saying that we are trying to be good disciples, bringing others to Christ.
One example of this behavior is being good stewards of creation by reducing waste and supporting recycling of our planet’s resources. Working together we can help to transform the world as Paul suggests in Romans 12:1-2. Image that you and your congregation can transform the world when we truly believe that we are all connected as children of God. We reflect our belief that we are all parts of one family by our participation in solidarity and unity with our brothers and sisters. Our actions as much as our words reflect our belief that what hurts one of us, hurts all of us.
As participants in the global economy (and we all are) there are decisions we make in the marketplace that are rooted in our living faith and our commitment to justice. By our purchasing choices we can support organizations that are actively working stop hurtful and oppressive commercial practices. October and May are months with organized campaigns to build awareness of fair trade and sweat free commerce. The week of October 14-21, 2008 has been designated the Trade Week of Action and includes World Food Day (Oct. 16), the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (Oct. 17), and the joint annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Oct. 19-21). October is also a month where you and your congregation can trick or treat for UNICEF and also give our chocolate that is fairly traded. Each May, typically the weekend of Mother’s Day, provides the opportunity to participate in World Fair Trade Day.
Of course our congregations can support these concepts all year round — with or without special days. When you and I and our congregations support fair trade and sweat free practices, we deliberately decide to purchase products that are made by people who are paid a wage on which they can live and who labor under safe conditions. This decision includes intentionally rejecting the purchase of products from firms that do not share our perspective.
There are many other ways that our congregations can make changes that have a positive impact on the lives of others. For example, imagine that your summer Bible camp, youth choir, or mission team involved so visibly in working at the food pantry, homeless shelter, or local Habitat project are outfitted in tee shirts that are made by women’s collective in Nicaragua who are earning a good salary and work in safe conditions. This is a clear alternative to simply ordering shirts from whatever site on the internet offers the lowest-price sweatshop products.
Image that your congregation is able to decorate the sanctuary each week with flowers that are grown in safe conditions. Imagine that parents worldwide share the same concerns about how to feed, clothe, house, educate, and care for their children. Image that these families participate in organizations which sell fairly-traded products that are produced under safe working conditions. These products include coffee, tea, nuts, cranberries, and chocolate. Imagine that your congregation can have a store or fundraiser to sell handicrafts (http://www.serrv.org and http://www.hopeforwomen.com/ are two excellent examples) with the proceeds going back to the artisans to help them support their families.
Imagine that you can give alternative gifts such as planting trees, giving shares of animals (http://www.heifer.org), a share in a well to give clean water to a community, a box of nails to help build a home, or even sponsoring an overseas child. Image that you can share fellowship with each other while assembling kits for school children, for new parents, or for disaster relief.
Imagine that you can create centerpieces for church events or weddings or anniversaries or other events which would be made from canned goods and other products that would be donated to the local food pantry. A colleague of mine did just that. At my daughter’s wedding she gave recyclable shopping bags to lift up the need to conserve our earth and reduce, reuse, and recycle as good stewards of creation.
Imagine that you and your congregation are praying daily and giving thanks for our blessings and saving your change to change the lives of others. You can make your own or use the prepared ‘Sharing is Caring’ chart available from the Presbyterian Hunger Program (http://www.pcusa.org/hunger). The money that you save — as an individual, family, Sunday School, or congregation can then be given to any number of different organizations working to eliminate hunger and poverty.
The ways of imagining a vital justice ministry that have been suggested in this article are just a tiny sampling of the ways in which our congregations can participate in the marketplace in prayerful and positive ways. They are just some tangible, active suggestions to help us think and act the way our savior imagined for us to act when he commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Let us imagine and work together for justice and mercy and love as we live our mission as good servants, good disciples, and good stewards of creation. All of us working together in solidarity can make a difference in the marketplace!
Many of these resources that I cited and mentioned and moved from imagination to action can be located on various websites listed in the article. The Presbyterian Hunger Program (www.pcusa.org/hunger) is a particularly useful starting point.
