Hands and Feet

Matt Chandler of the Village Church in Dallas Texas recently gave an outstanding message on what it might look like to be the hands and feet of Jesus – complete with a solid theological foundation and practical application for his community’s specific opportunities to live lives of love and justice.

You can link to the podcast here:
www.thevillagechurch.net/podcast/index.html

Or read the entire transcript below…

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Local meet-up groups

The Just Life will resume local meetings beginning at Park Community Church in Chicago on the second Wednesday of the month starting August 13th.

Live in a different city? Go to a different church? Great! Start up The Just Life at your church and build into the common conversation here.

Under the meet-up category you can stay updated on the conversation and add to dialog through commenting. Meeting notes and answers to questions will be posted regularly.

Stay Tuned!

Why many Americans prefer their Sundays segregated

CNN has an insightful article on the reality that Sunday morning church is still the most segregated hour in America. Read the original article here, or for convenience the entire article is copied below:

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“Demographic Inversion”

An article in The New Republic outlines the dramatic demographic inversion of the American city. This shift has profound implications for issues of race, poverty, and gentrification. Read the original article here, or for convenience the entire article is copied below:

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Call + Response

“…never forget, justice is what love looks like in public…”

Call+Response is a first of its kind feature documentary film that reveals a terrifying secret: there are more slaves today than ever before in human history. In 2007, slave traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined. Call+Response goes deep undercover where slavery is thriving. First hand accounts from luminaries like Cornel West, Julia Ormond, Madeleine Albright, Daryl Hannah, Ashley Judd, and Nicholas Kristof provide the backdrop of for this 21st century nightmare. Grammy-winning and critically acclaimed artists including Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, Cold War Kids, Matisyahu, Imogen Heap, Talib Kweli, Five For Fighting, Switchfoot, members of Nickel Creek, Rocco Deluca, move this information into inspiration offering this century its first abolitionist songs.

Watch the trailer here:

Visit the Call + Response website for more information: www.callandresponse.com

What does the LORD require?

7 Terrible Abuses Suffered By Women Around The World

For most of us in the West, the biggest troubles in our lives are petrol prices, long working hours, and increasing food costs. For many women in the world, these are the least of their concerns. Terrible atrocities are committed against untold numbers of women around the world every day and for most of these women, justice will never be served. This is a list of the worst of the atrocities. In no particular order:
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Gender equality

We need to be concerned about gender inequality because the majority of the world’s poor are women: around 70 per cent of the 1.3 billion people who live in extreme poverty, on less than one dollar a day, are women and girls. Gender discrimination, or the denial of women’s basic human rights, is also a major cause of poverty. Men and women experience many aspects of poverty differently and ignoring these differences risks further entrenching poverty and the subordination of women.
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Justice and the Bible

(From Grace at the Table: Ending Hunger in God’s World, by David Beckmann and Art Simon. Published by Paulist Press and InterVarsity Press.)

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

If you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

—Isaiah 58:6 & 10 (NRSV)

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Gentrification With Justice

Gentrification With Justice

By Bob Lupton

Building a new home in a run-down neighborhood in Atlanta was a decision that neither of our parents supported. It was a bad financial move, they counseled us, not to mention the danger. But my wife Peggy and I were not relocating into the inner-city for economic reasons. We had finally come to the conclusion that our ministry would be more effective if we lived among the people we felt called to serve than continue to commute from the suburbs. And so we graciously thanked our parents for their love and concern and went ahead with our construction plans.

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Dean Kamen’s Solution to the World’s Water Problems

In the News: There is a lot of buzz surrounding the water-purifying machine that Segway inventor Dean Kamen demonstrated on the Colbert Report recently (clip below). Everyone has been trying to find out more about his claim that “you stick a hose into anything that looks wet … and it comes out … as perfect distilled clean water.” So far, it looks like it is all true.
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