New Faces of Homelessness
In Seminole County, one in every 50 children are homeless and that’s growing. This CBN story documents hardship and the hope for changing their lives.
Filtering by Category: Poverty,Creation Care
A Tax Day Bible Lesson
Jesus’ famous line on paying taxes is “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17)What is less well remembered is the reason Jesus called out both the political and the religious leaders who asked him about whether you should pay your taxes: Jesus “knew their hypocrisy.” (Mark 12:15)
FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/a-tax-day-bible-lesson/2012/04/15/gIQAv3YCKT_blog.html
There’s nothing more hypocritical today than the kind of political gamesmanship we have about paying taxes. The most vivid example of this is, as Erza Klein so rightly says, the “dumb tax pledges that dominate Washington.” These dumb tax pledges, especially “Grover Norquist’s now-infamous pledge” that Republicans have taken never to raise taxes on anyone for any reason, effectively ended our capacity to have government function properly. Of course, now, as Klein points out, Democrats are being forced into tax pledges of their own, exempting those who earn less than $250,000 per year from having their taxes raised. Dumb and hypocritical.
Taxes happen, friends. Nobody likes them, and yet it is certain they have to be paid. Daniel Defoe, in “The Political History of the Devil,” (1726) coined the famous phrase, “Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.” Death and taxes. They’re inevitable.
Taxes happen because taxes are how you fund government and you can’t have a government unless you have revenue.
Of course, the attack on taxes from the political right is an attack on government and its right to even exist. Norquist has said, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” thus, of course, abolishing it.
Government needs to exist and in fact be celebrated. It’s U.S., all of us, and the way we take care of each other. We have a moral responsibility to our fellow citizens, both from a civil and a moral perspective. We are one people. The problem is that some of us, in fact, many of us in this difficult economy are struggling, and we need to help those folks out. Government does that.
The “small government” or even “no government” folks want to say that the churches should pick up the slack on taking care of the poor instead of us paying taxes for a social safety net. Rev. Joel Hunter, a prominent evangelical pastor, has recently noted how unrealistic that view really is in a recent talk with the title, “Government is Not the Enemy.”
Hunter’s church does a huge amount of humanitarian work, but, he says, they can’t do it all without the government:
“Look at the math. It is ridiculous to even, just look at the SNAP – Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the old Food Stamps program – it has been estimated by I think the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that the average church in America would literally have to double its budget and just take that extra budget and give to hungry people. And that is just one government program. So let’s not fool ourselves.”
What is hypocrisy but ‘fooling yourself’? That’s what Jesus is talking about. Don’t be a hypocrite. We need taxes to run the government, and we need government because it does things no individual or even organization can do on its own.
Don’t be a hypocrite. Pay your taxes.
Even the Romans used the taxes they collected to build infrastructure, per Monty Python, the British comedians. Besides, everybody deserves a good laugh on tax day.
An On Faith panelist and former president of Chicago Theological Seminary (1998-2008), Thistlethwaite is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Pastor Joel Hunter: "Government Can't Change Lives, But They Have Resources We Need"
It's not uncommon to hear the idealistic argument by small-government proponents that if the church did its job, then there would be no need for the government. But an evangelical pastor who is also one of President Obama's spiritual advisers said that looking at the numbers, it is not possible for the church to replace the government in feeding the poor, let alone meet other needs.
Dr. Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of Northland, A Church Distributed in Longwood, Fla., gave a short talk at the Q Conference in Washington, D.C., Tuesday evening with the title of "Government is Not the Enemy." Hunter, who was named one of the 50 most powerful people in Orlando by Orlando Magazine in 2011, leads the 15,000-member Northland church, which is well-known for its humanitarian work in the community.
Northland has sent relief teams to neighboring states when they were devastated by natural disasters, been involved in the Homeless Services Network in Central Florida, worked with local schools to feed children from low-income families, and has organized community green cleaning events, among other activities.
Despite all of his church's humanitarian efforts, Hunter believes that the government is needed when it comes to helping the poor.
"Look at the math. It is ridiculous to even, just look at the SNAP – Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the old Food Stamps program – it has been estimated by I think the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that the average church in America would literally have to double its budget and just take that extra budget and give to hungry people. And that is just one government program. So let's not fool ourselves."
Hunter recalled a conversation with then-presidential candidate Barack Obama during which he said that the faith community is tremendously underutilized. Obama had agreed, but also added that the church cannot do for the common good what the government can. The Florida pastor had also agreed.
"Government can't change lives, but they have resources we don't have. We can change lives with those resources," said Hunter, who served on the first Obama administration Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
"The point is government isn't the enemy, and government isn't the answer. But government is the potential partner that we look for, that we might need."
Earlier in his talk, Hunter discussed what the biblical view of government is. He said the biblical view of government is it is an instrument of God. Pointing to the Bible, the Florida pastor said there are two types of relationships that God's people had with the government: the outsider – a prophet that would rebuke those in authority, such as Jeremiah, Amos, or John the Baptist; and the inside adviser – a person who would speak and guide the unbelieving government, such as Joseph, Nehemiah, Esther, Daniel, and even Paul who used the judicial system of his time to give a witness of what Christ had done for him.
"God has always seen to it that believers had some role in the institution of government," Hunter said.
The Q Conference in Washington, D.C., opened Tuesday and will conclude on Thursday. Some 700 Christian participants are gathering in downtown D.C. at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium to hear 30 presentations by church and cultural leaders on a wide range of issues that are aimed at inspiring them to come up with innovative ways to shape the church's future role in culture.
Speakers at the Q DC event include: New York Times columnists David Brooks and Ross Douthat; author and cultural historian Os Guinness; Elevation Burger Franchise Ventures founder Hans Hess; and D.C. pastor and author Mark Batterson.
Michelle A. Vu
"Supplement Government Funding With Personal Help," by Dr. Joel C. Hunter
“Love ... does not insist on its own way.” —1 Corinthians 13:5
Faith-based communities offer the kind of support and empowerment that can break the cycle of poverty. We need to supplement government funding with personal help. And the first step in personal individualized help is understanding the world in which those in poverty live. Without some training, we could make matters worse and even become angry at the very people we are trying to help if we presume their responses to our efforts will be ones that match our values and lifestyles.
Because of two 60 Minutes pieces on homeless school children in our county (Seminole County, Florida), people in our congregation and other county groups got fired up to help those families transition out of poverty. It seemed wise to our church leaders that we train our congregation members in understanding poverty and some of the thinking of those who are poor. We adopted a course from the Billy Graham Institute for Prison Ministries on transitioning out of generational poverty.
Part of the course alerts those of us who have never been poor to our lack of knowledge on what it takes to survive without adequate income. Would you know where to get help if you had little or no money? What places offer food and how do you get there without a car? Which agencies offer which kind of services—housing, medical attention, job training, child care—in addition to any financial help you can get? Additionally—and this is key in being able to love well—how do those in poverty think differently than those in the middle or upper class?
This training is enlightening for many of its middle-class participants, who often are able to come to the point where we can see ourselves as likely to have the same response in various situations as do people living in poverty. Let me give a few examples. When you are in poverty, you ask a different question about meals than when you are in the middle class. In the middle class, people might ask, “Did you like it?” In poverty, the question might be, “Did you get enough?”
Those in poverty see resources differently. In the middle class we are more likely to turn to possessions in times of need. “Do you have savings? An emergency fund? An IRA?” For those in poverty, relationships are often the most valuable source of aid—“Who do you know that can help?”
When you are in the middle class, bills come first and vacations are optional. When you are in poverty, living with the constant pressure of survival, fun is so much more important—there may be nothing more coveted. The story is told of an elementary school girl who let it slip to her teacher that her family did not have a refrigerator. The good-hearted teachers pitched in from their already-meager salaries and surprised the family with a refrigerator. The next few days the girl was missing from school. When she returned, she again thanked the teacher and told her that they had sold the refrigerator and gone camping. They needed the break more than they needed the appliance! The way they chose to use this gift illustrates a difference in thinking that would make many who have plenty to share angry enough to stop engaging, if we are limited to our own perspective.
Both those in poverty and those who are not need training. We need to build understanding as well as skills to break the cycle of poverty, because our obligation as Christians is not just help, it’s love.
Dr. Joel C. Hunter is senior pastor of Northland Church in Orlando, Florida.
FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://sojo.net/magazine/2012/04/mile-your-shoes
Caring for the Environment Is a Mandate From God
There are plenty of practical reasons to be concerned about the environment and unchecked growth. Sprawl leads to higher taxes. A drained aquifer could lead to water rationing and higher costs. Pollution affects all manner of living things, from plants to humans.
Still, those reasons aren't enough for everyone.
So the Rev. Joel Hunter offers people of Christian faith another reason to care for our natural resources — because God commands it. "It was our first commandment when we were placed down here: Take care of the garden." Hunter said. "Really, it's a matter of obedience." READ MORE
Children That Are Hurting
“Children that are hurting” is a phrase the Seminole county public school district’s board chair Dede Schaffner speaks to describe more than 1,700 homeless students served by the district. Joined by Brenda Carey, chairman of the board of Seminole county government, and Dr. Joel C. Hunter, they have formed a collaboration of faith-based organizations in the county to work side-by-side with the district to confront student homelessness, decrease it and, perhaps, if successful, apply that strategy in the future to address other categories of homeless people in Seminole county. This is the story of their first steps.
Produced, reported and edited by Stephen McKenney Steck at http://cmfmedia.org/2011/11/children-that-are-hurting/
Whatever Happened to the Evangelical-Environmental Alliance?
In the fall of 2005, Joel Hunter, the senior pastor of a 12,000-member megachurch in central Florida, signed on to the Evangelical Climate Initiative—a landmark public statement acknowledging that human actions were causing the Earth to warm. The central message—“creation care,” as it became known—was that the biblical commandment to protect God’s creation was relevant to modern-day environmental issues. Soon, Hunter had distributed 20,000 creation care pamphlets to pastors around the country, and his parishioners were sifting through garbage to see how much trash his church produced. At the time, a slew of news articles took Hunter’s commitment as a sign that environmentalism could become an ethical rather than a political issue. “Hunter and others like him,” wrote The Washington Post, “have begun to reshape the politics around climate change.” Today, with climate change skepticism hitting a new high, the same sentiment seems laughable. Whatever happened to the evangelical-environmental alliance?
Between 2006 to 2008, creation care seemed poised to transform evangelical politics. 86 evangelical leaders initially signed the Climate Initiative in 2006—it had more than 100 endorsers by the next year. Rod Dreher, a conservative columnist for The Dallas Morning News and a frequent National Review contributor, published a widely discussed book called Crunchy Cons in 2006; its lengthy subtitle celebrated “evangelical free-range farmers” among other conservative environmental types. In 2008, 45 members of the Southern Baptist Convention signed a statement saying they had been “too timid” on the issue of climate change, Pat Robertson appeared in a commercial about environmental issues with Al Sharpton, and Mike Huckabee—initially the favorite candidate of middle-America evangelicals in 2008—spoke openly about his global warming concerns.
The popularity of creation care was also taken as a sign that evangelicals cared about the environment andthat the GOP’s stranglehold on the evangelical vote might be loosening. Amy Sullivan argued this for The New Republic in 2006, and E.J. Dionne opined in 2007 that creation care was part of a larger reformation “disentangling a great religious movement from a partisan political machine.” In The New Yorker, Frances Fitzgerald argued that creation care advocates might change the GOP “beyond the recognition of Karl Rove.” When Obama captured five points more than John Kerry of the white evangelical vote, it was seen as an additional sign of shifting allegiances.
However, in late 2008, creation care’s momentum slowed, and the evangelical-GOP alliance grew stronger. Perhaps the first sign that creation care was sputtering was the abrupt departure from the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) of its chief lobbyist, Richard Cizik, the leading force behind the Evangelical Climate Initiative. Cizik was forced out after he voiced support for civil unions between gays and lesbians, but he and his critics both traced the roots of his ouster to his strident support of environmental issues. At the time, Cizik’s departure was regarded as a mere hiccup. But, in fact, it was a sign of a backlash that would be bolstered by the rise of the Tea Party, increased scientific skepticism, and the faltering economy.
The rise of the Tea Party after 2008 was detrimental to evangelical environmentalism for two main reasons: It commanded the attention of the Republican Partyand it made room for climate change skeptics. Although it’s impossible to say if politicians instigated or reacted to the increased climate change skepticism associated with the rise of the Tea Party, by late 2009 evangelical climate skeptics were out in full force—climate change denier Senator Jim Inhofe called it “the year of the skeptic.” Tea Party senate candidates Marco Rubio, Joe Miller, Ken Buck, Christine O’Donnell, Ron Johnson, and Sharron Angle—who called manmade climate change the “mantra of the left”—all proudly advertised their climate change skepticism in the 2010 GOP primaries. Meanwhile, moderate Republican candidates, such as Illinois’s Mark Kirk, renounced their votes for cap-and-trade or were booed by Tea Party throngs for defending them. Today, polls show Tea Partiers are markedly less likely than any voter group to believe that humans were causing global warming—or that the Earth is warming at all.
A new bout of skepticism over the actual science of climate change reinforced these political positions. Creationism and a “God is in charge” belief became prominent again, along with a sense that any attempt to take climate change seriously was somehow unfaithful—even unjust. At a December 2009 Heritage Foundation event, Craig Mitchell, a Southern Baptist theologian, derided cap-and-trade as “immoral,” while other evangelical leaders blasted the evidence for climate change. Measures to address climate change were disfavored for supposedly placing burdens on poorer nations. (Ironically, concern for poorer nations at risk due to climate change had been one of the main selling points for creation care.) The Cornwall Alliance (an influential evangelical group that bills its mission as “the Stewardship of Creation”) released a declaration that claimed the “Earth and its ecosystems … are robust, resilient, self-regulating. … Earth’s climate system is no exception.” A year later, the group put out “Resisting the Green Dragon,” a 12-part DVD series decrying the environmental movement. Scientific skepticism bled into cultural skepticism. Even among moderate evangelicals, creation care struggled against general ambivalence toward environment issues—rooted in opposition to the countercultural identity that American environmentalism gained in the 1970s. As David P. Gushee, one of the authors of the Evangelical Climate Initiative, put it: To them, “it’s Pocahontas talking to spirits in the trees,” and “flower-power.”
Finally, there was the economy. Once it nosedived, it became hard for anyone to talk about policy changes with significant up-front costs. Hunter points to it as one of the main reasons why his message didn’t take among members of his own church—parishioners were just too distracted by the downturn. The circa-2006 hope that pro-business evangelicals might get behind the cost-saving appeal of conservation disappeared in the face of arguments that environmental regulations would freeze economic growth. A recent Nature article points out that the Heartland Institute, a think tank that has spent millions of dollars on coordinated attacks on climate change science, mostly focuses on the economic costs of environmentalism. “I would argue that conservation … is not a luxury, but a moral imperative,” Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Cons author, wrote to me in an e-mail. “I would also get exactly nowhere with that argument among conservatives in this economy.”
It’s true that today the optimism of 2005 is nowhere to be found. The mood has shifted so far that GOP candidates must not only renounce any environmentally friendly policies, they must also explain their past support for them. As Grover Norquist recently put it, formerly environmentally-minded GOP candidates “better have an explanation, an excuse, or a mea culpa.” Despite all the theories that environmentalism might untie the GOP-evangelical alliance, most of the white evangelical vote, for now, remains inextricably linked to the Republican Party. A glum Hunter told me that he holds out hope for the next generation, conceding that his generation probably won’t be shaking up the climate change debate like they’d hoped. The old fault lines, which Cizik told The New Republic in 2006 were “no more,” are still very much alive.
Molly Redden is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.
Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/97007/evangelical-climate-initiative-creation-care
Saving the Earth Is New Mission at More Churches
At Christ Church Unity south of Orlando, they've replaced paper napkins with handmade cloth napkins, plastic forks and knives with metal utensils, disposable plates with china plates.
Leftover food scraped from the plates is fed to a church member's pig, Mr. Greengenes.
Northland, A Church Distributed is competing to become one of the most energy-efficient facilities in the United States in a contest sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the past year, the Longwood megachurch has reduced its monthly electric bill by more than $500 a month.
Members of Winter Park Presbyterian Church grow food for the needy in a 28-plot community garden on church grounds.
In churches — and synagogues and mosques — across the country, saving the planet is becoming as important as saving souls. Nearly every religion, and almost every denomination, has added protecting the environment as a religious tenet.
"We've seen this explosion of activity at the individual and congregational level that is really a sign that this is firmly centered in terms of who we are as a religious people," said Matthew Anderson-Stembridge, executive director of National Religious Partnership for the Environment, a coalition of Jewish and Christian denominations formed in the early 1990s.
The greening of the church comes at the same time that concern for the environment is becoming a part of the cultural mainstream. Driving hybrid cars, unplugging household appliances, replacing disposable plastic water bottles with reusable metal ones, andseparating household trash into recyclables and garbage are no longer the intellectual property of hippies, tree huggers and communes.
"The surprising thing for me is there seems to be some consensus. We are seeing very conservative Protestant denominations embracing Earth care, and you are seeing some mainline, more-liberal denominations," said Darby Ray, associate professor of religious studies at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss.
In many ways, the change in the culture has produced a change in theology — a rethinking and reinterpretation of Scripture from a belief that God intended mankind to exploit the Earth for its own benefit to mankind's obligation to protect and preserve the Earth that God created. Much of the push for going green has come from the people in the pews rather than the people behind the pulpit, said Gerald Smith, religion professor at Sewanee: TheUniversity of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.
"I think it's congregation-driven rather than leadership-driven. This is what people are bringing to the church," Smith said.
But it also has come from church leaders, such as Northland pastor Joel Hunter, who was an early convert among influential evangelists in advocating saving the Earth.
"The moral issues of our times, including environmental care, are a part of the practice of our faith and thus very important," Hunter said, but added that nothing surpasses the importance of saving souls.
At Northland, employees put into practice what Hunter peaches. Each department looks for ways to recycle, reduce and reuse.
Printer paper is reused three times before it ends up in the recycling bin. Lights and air conditioning are turned off in the balcony of the church for services that are less than capacity, and the whole building is closed on Fridays. The children's ministry has a team that sorts through the trash cans to separate the recyclable paper, plastic and glass from the garbage. The information-technology department refurbishes and recycles old computers and other electronics.
Northland is following in the footsteps of another megachurch, First Baptist Orlando, which has won Energy Star recognition from the EPA for its reduced electricity use and recycling.
Though Northland's "creation care team" is comprised primarily of church employees, Christ Church Unity's "green team" is made up of members of the congregation. Based on green-team recommendations, the church uses a custom-made, 100-gallon rain barrel to water the church grounds, recycles Sunday programs, sells metal water bottles in the church bookstore to replace plastic bottles, and reminds everyone leaving a church restroom to turn off the lights.
Because of its efforts, the congregation was recognized as the first Unity church in the United States to be designated as certifiably "green."
"It's more than a buzzword or a popular trend with us. It shows up in everything we do," said Kathy Beasley, director of pastoral care.
Since March, Orange County has been contacting religious organizations on how they can save the planet and money at the same time.
"Our goal is to encourage the faith-based organizations to simply reduce their utility bills by 30 percent and then get into recycling and reusing," said Chris Kuebler, the county's faith-based community-outreach coordinator.
One of the churches Kuebler contacted was Winter Park Presbyterian. Senior pastor Lawrence Cuthill said his church is looking at installing solar panels to save energy. But the biggest step the church has taken is a community garden, which represents the growing spiritual commitment among many faith-based organizations to cultivate the Earth instead of just taking whatever resources it has to offer.
"We are part of that movement that says we need to be good stewards of the Earth," Cuthill said. "Our calling is not to exploit the garden, but to keep the garden."
by Jeff Kunerth, jkunerth@tribune.com or 407-420-5392
FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/os-save-the-earth-at-church-20110813,0,3410208.story
Faith Leaders Go All In to Help Homeless Student
More than 130 faith leaders in Seminole Co. met at Northland August 10, 2011. Their vision: to make homelessness for Seminole's kids a thing of the past.
The meeting is the result of a "60 minutes" report that aired earlier this year, which revealed that there are more than 1,750 homeless children attending Seminole Co. schools. This meeting, hosted by Pastor Hunter, was a first step toward solving this problem.
American Christians Urged to See Jesus In The Poor And Hungry
DALLAS—The church in the United States dare not ignore its mandate to seek justice for the world’s poor and hungry, Henry Williamson Sr., bishop of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Texas, told a world hunger conference.
“We are still the most God-blessed nation I can find. And my Bible tells me, ‘To whom much is given, much is required,’” Williamson told the conference at Dallas Baptist University. “We must have the vision to see the needs of others, the faith to believe we can do something about them and the courage to reach out.”
Unfortunately, the church often fails to fulfill its mandate, he lamented.
“One area in which the church’s credibility gap is most evident is our lack of care for the poor,” he said. “We, the church, are supposed to reflect the priorities of God, and I’m confident God loves the poor.”
When the church fails to serve the poor, it fails to see Jesus in its midst, Williamson stressed.
Speaking to the event called “An Evangelical Advocacy Response to Global Childhood Hunger,” he told a story of Mother Teresa saving the life of a child whose feet and hands had been gnawed off by rats. That evening, she asked a visitor to her center if he had seen Jesus that day. Overcome by the horror, he acknowledged he had not seen Jesus.
“But Mother Teresa saw Jesus all around her every day” when she held the poor and suffering, the ones Jesus called “the least of these,” Williamson said.
In order for the church to respond to childhood poverty and hunger appropriately, Christians must see children as Christ sees them, demanded Paul Msiza, general secretary of the Baptist Convention of South Africa . “Jesus said, ‘If you want to know who is the greatest, look at the children.’ But churches don’t take children seriously.”
Churches must change that mindset and welcome children, looking out for their welfare the world over, he urged.
“We must not allow children to roam the streets naked and hungry and pretend all is well,” he said. “But there are millions … dying today because of hunger. In Africa, 20 children die every minute.”
The church must speak on behalf of children, just as Jesus did, Msiza insisted. He thanked America and aid agencies for providing aid and hunger relief around the world. But he called on the Western world to hold Africa’s leaders accountable for the welfare of their own people.
“We cannot stand here and allow the powers back in Africa not to do their part,” he said. Although America and others provide billions of dollars in relief aid, the African nations should be required to contribute at least a portion—perhaps 25 percent—of that aid, he added.
“We can do this,” he said. “… It is not fair until African governments take care of their children.”
The church in America is stretched by the tension between individual rights and communal responsibility, observed Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland, A Church Distributed in Orlando, Fla.
On one side, rugged individualism compels Americans to ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Hunter said. “This is the ancient voice, the abdication of responsibility” for other people.
On the other side, Americans root for the underdog and often set up processes to care for hurting people, he added. The overwhelming challenge causes them to band together to defeat hunger because no group can do it alone.
When Christians look to Jesus’ model, they see he had compassion on people and instructed his followers to feed them, he said.
But unfortunately, many Christians today ignore that model, Hunter reported.
“A spiritual alarm goes off when I hear Christians saying, ‘How much of my money can I keep?’” rather than asking how they can help the poor and hungry, whom Jesus loved.
“Hoarding your own stash is the original temptation,” he said, comparing selfish contemporary Christians to Adam and Eve, whose original sin was to supplant their need for God.
FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.baptiststandard.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12564&Itemid=53
