The Pursuit continues…

This past Thursday we gathered once again at Park Community Church in Chicago to continue the pursuit of daily practical responses to God’s call for love and justice from his people. The turn-out and feedback has been outstanding!

We began the evening by starting to form initiative teams around the issues that were raised from last month’s conversation. From this first step there is already momentum building around addressing the education gap in Chicago, human trafficking in Chicago, local and global microfinance, extreme poverty in Africa, health care education in our neighborhood, Prison ministry, environmental stewardship and more…There is no limit to the initiatives and conversations we can begin – Start now, get your small-group involved, carry on the conversation, and join us next month!

We are also beginning to see the seeds of “professional fellowships” beginning to form – a fundamental development goal for The Just Life. We are going to need our medical professionals and education professionals to network together and apply their talents to issues like health care and the education gap. Each of these initiative teams will need creative professionals and marketing professionals to help build awareness and spread the word…every gifting, every vocation, used for the Kingdom. Very exciting stuff.

After a time of coordinating the initiative teams we came back together to discuss some of the fundamentals of justice ministry.

The theme for the evening may be best summarized as: What you do and the things you care about matter – and they can be used to make a difference in the lives of others. Which I think we are beginning to see happen and hopefully each of us are beginning to realize that we truly have been uniquely prepared and uniquely placed for such a time as this.

Understanding that there are different kinds of service and action that together help a community create a holistic vision for justice is important – to help explain this we very briefly began to unpack the “justice continuum” of Compassion, Individual Development, Community Development, and Structural Change. We’ll be talking a lot more about these concepts in the future, and a detailed article that explains them is the works. The point on Thursday was that we need people working at all levels of engagement united by a common vision and striving for the high bar of biblical justice. More on this soon…

In the meantime, please tap into the resources on this site — perhaps starting with the Biblical justice scripture list and the quote list for inspiration — and begin discussions through commenting on articles or in the forums.

Here are some immediate opportunities to get involved this week:

Do not miss out on the “Let Justice Roll” conference featuring John Perkins at Park Community Church this Saturday, September 20^th. This is an amazing opportunity for our community. Sign up right now: http://www.parkcommunitychurch.org/let-justice-roll-conference/

The Anti-Human Trafficking Initiative is hosting a strategy meeting next Tuesday, September 23^rd. All are welcome, no experience necessary. For more information contact Amanda Murdock: Amanda.c.Murdock@gmail.com

Please feel free to email any questions and/or feedback you may have to: contact@thejustlife.org