"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

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/

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.

http://vva.org/blog/?p=3219

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

FAITH IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE: IMMIGRATION

Part 5 in a series of teachings from Dr. Joel C. Hunter about how to approach today’s issues biblically, respectfully and effectively.

A Call for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Pastor Hunter talks to Fox 35 Orlando.

Conservative National Leaders Urge Action on Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Respond to Presidential Address

***Press and Public Conference Call: Wednesday, July 7 at 2 p.m. EDT***

**Call-in number: 913-643-4201 Conference Code: 7436701**

MIAMI, FLA. — Conservatives for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CFCIR) will take its national press conference call “on the road” to Miami, Fla. This will be CFCIR’s sixth call with some of the country’s most influential conservative leaders, updating the broader coalition on the ongoing efforts to pass immigration reform.

On July 1, President Obama answered the call of many prominent conservative leaders to address the nation on the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Several of these influential leaders will be on our call and will give their reaction to the President's speech. At the end of the call, press and callers will be able to ask questions from our speakers.

This conference call will feature:

Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

Rev. Guillermo Maldonado, Senior Pastor of El Rey Jesus

Dr. Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland, A Church Distributed

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, President, The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC)

Pastor Pablo Lago, Senior Pastor and Founder, La Roca Firme Brethren in Christ Church

Noel Castellanos, CEO, Christian Community Development Association

Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Juan Hernandez, Founder of Conservatives for CIR, Moderator of Call

This event will be open to the public and press, with a question and answer session at the end.

If you are in the area, please come to the Miami World Relief Office at 1:30 p.m. EDT for refreshments and fellowship.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 7 at 2 p.m. EDT

WHERE: Miami World Relief Office, 2150 SW 8th St., 2nd Floor, Miami, Fla. 33135

QUESTIONS:

Juan Hernandez

info@ConservativesForCIR.com

817-676-4090

***Press and Public Conference Call: Wednesday, July 7 at 2 p.m. EDT***

**Call-in number: 913-643-4201 Conference Code: 7436701**

MIAMI, FLA. — Conservatives for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CFCIR) will take its national press conference call “on the road” to Miami, Fla. This will be CFCIR’s sixth call with some of the country’s most influential conservative leaders, updating the broader coalition on the ongoing efforts to pass immigration reform.

On July 1, President Obama answered the call of many prominent conservative leaders to address the nation on the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Several of these influential leaders will be on our call and will give their reaction to the President's speech. At the end of the call, press and callers will be able to ask questions from our speakers.

This conference call will feature:

Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

Rev. Guillermo Maldonado, Senior Pastor of El Rey Jesus

Dr. Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland, A Church Distributed

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, President, The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC)

Pastor Pablo Lago, Senior Pastor and Founder, La Roca Firme Brethren in Christ Church

Noel Castellanos, CEO, Christian Community Development Association

Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Juan Hernandez, Founder of Conservatives for CIR, Moderator of Call

This event will be open to the public and press, with a question and answer session at the end.

If you are in the area, please come to the Miami World Relief Office at 1:30 p.m. EDT for refreshments and fellowship.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 7 at 2 p.m. EDT

WHERE: Miami World Relief Office, 2150 SW 8th St., 2nd Floor, Miami, Fla. 33135

QUESTIONS:

Juan Hernandez

info@ConservativesForCIR.com

817-676-4090

Dems put faith in religious right to help boost party agenda

By Alexander Bolton - 05/17/10 07:13 PM ET

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) have turned to evangelical Christians in a last-ditch effort to move immigration reform and climate change legislation.

Democrats are making a direct appeal to the GOP base by turning to evangelical Christian and other religious leaders, and there’s some evidence that the talks could be fruitful.

“We’re encouraging Southern Baptists to reach out to senators and congressmen to encourage Democrats and Republicans to quit playing politics and deal with immigration reform in a fair way,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

“The political will to deport 12 million people isn’t there,” he said, referring to the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the nation.

The effort comes after Schumer and Kerry spent months negotiating with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to build GOP support for two of President Barack Obama’s top initiatives.

Despite those talks, both were forced to unveil legislative proposals in the last few weeks without any Republican co-sponsors.

Republican leaders have told their colleagues not to sign on to any Democratic proposals before clearing it with the entire GOP conference, but some of the country’s staunchest conservatives want to see action in Washington on climate change and immigration reform.

Schumer called Land last week to ask if he could join a conference call with evangelical leaders on immigration reform, according to Land.

“He asked if he could have three minutes to be part of the conference call,” Land said, referring to a call leaders held last week to promote a pro-immigration reform newspaper ad taken out by the National Association of Evangelicals.

The ad called on Congress to pass bipartisan immigration reform that included several principles, such as respecting “the God-given dignity of every person”; respecting the rule of law; guaranteeing secure national borders; and establishing a path toward legal status or citizenship for those who qualify and wish to become residents.

White Southern Baptists are considered among the most conservative voters of the electorate. And with more than 16 million members, the Southern Baptist Convention is a powerful force in Republican politics.

Kerry has also reached out to evangelical leaders to spur Republicans to support his 1,000-page climate bill.

“It’s been unusual, but these are what we see as two very moral issues that have a lot of implications for a lot of families and definitely affect the vulnerable,” said Dr. Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland, a mega-church in central Florida.

Hunter, a Republican-turned-independent who delivered the closing prayer at the 2008 Democratic convention, said Kerry approached him to build bipartisan support for the bill.

“They came to me,” said Hunter. “This has been a more recent pattern with the Democrats — they’re really broadening and including the voice of faith communities to build a consensus on these moral and biblical issues.”

Democrats hope evangelicals can persuade Republicans such as Graham and Sens. Richard Lugar (Ind.) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) to support an energy and climate bill.

Some evangelicals are more allied with the GOP than others, and some don’t see eye to eye on all the issues.

Land and Hunter, for example, agree on the need to pass immigration reform, but Land does not support a proposal to limit carbon emissions. Still, while Land has not endorsed Schumer’s proposal, political observers are surprised they’re even working together.

“It’s very surprising,” said Hunter. “These are times of interesting coalitions.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has made subtle appeals to faith-driven voters by invoking the language of evangelical leaders when calling for passage of climate change legislation.

“I think it is essential to the health of our children that we reduce emissions in the air,” Pelosi said at a recent press conference. “And for those of us who believe — and I think most of us do — that this is God’s creation, we have a moral responsibility to preserve his creation.”

Land said he has noticed Pelosi invoking God’s name more often.

“I’m all for it,” he said.

The Rev. Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network said addressing climate change follows the teachings of Jesus to minister to the poor.

“We call being an environmentalist creation care,” said Ball. “God is the creator and we’re called to steward or take care of his creation. When it comes to the issue of climate change, it’s primarily about the poor, because the poor are going to be impacted the hardest.”

Burns Strider, a former aide to Pelosi, has kept in touch with evangelical and Christian groups around the country, such as the Christian Coalition of Alabama.

Randy Brinson, head of Alabama’s Christian Coalition, said he talks regularly with Strider, who is trying to build support for climate legislation.

Brinson said his group does not support the cap-and-trade proposal passed last year by the House but could get behind a modified plan.

“We’re trying to be reasonable arbiters,” he said. “We’re trying to bring the two extremes to a more reasonable position.”

Democrats have made sporadic efforts to reach out to evangelical Christians over the years.

Those efforts became more serious when former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2005.

Some skeptics speculate that Democrats turn to evangelical voters when their political fortunes drop, but Dean dismissed that theory.

He said the new efforts by Schumer and Kerry are part of the party’s evolving relationship with Christian voters.

Dean said he was essentially forced to hold clandestine meetings with Land and other evangelical leaders when he first took over at the DNC.

“We would have to meet at hotels and arrive and leave at different times,” Dean said. “It’s not like it was really clandestine, but they wouldn’t come to the DNC. We would have to go to Capitol Hill Suites and did have to agree to come and go five minutes apart from each other.”

FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/98289-dems-put-faith-in-religious-right-to-help-boost-agenda

Learning From the Sin of Sodom

Dear Friends,

There is a great article in today's New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, who has written about what a huge mistake it would be not to channel government money through faith-based organizations for international aid. Read below or at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28kristof.html.

Blessings, Pastor Joel

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Learning From the Sin of Sodom

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

For most of the last century, save-the-worlders were primarily Democrats and liberals. In contrast, many Republicans and religious conservatives denounced government aid programs, with Senator Jesse Helms calling them “money down a rat hole.”

Over the last decade, however, that divide has dissolved, in ways that many Americans haven’t noticed or appreciated. Evangelicals have become the new internationalists, pushing successfully for new American programs against AIDS and malaria, and doing superb work on issues from human trafficking in India to mass rape in Congo.

A pop quiz: What’s the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization?

It’s not Save the Children, and it’s not CARE — both terrific secular organizations. Rather, it’s World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian organization (with strong evangelical roots) whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade.

World Vision now has 40,000 staff members in nearly 100 countries. That’s more staff members than CARE, Save the Children and the worldwide operations of the United States Agency for International Development — combined.

A growing number of conservative Christians are explicitly and self-critically acknowledging that to be “pro-life” must mean more than opposing abortion. The head of World Vision in the United States, Richard Stearns, begins his fascinating book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself.

“What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?” he writes. “Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?

“How have we missed it so tragically, when even rock stars and Hollywood actors seem to understand?”

Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy. He writes laceratingly about “a Church that had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build schools, hospitals, and clinics.”

In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.)

Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!

The American view of evangelicals is still shaped by preening television blowhards and hypocrites who seem obsessed with gays and fetuses. One study cited in the book found that even among churchgoers ages 16 to 29, the descriptions most associated with Christianity were “antihomosexual,” “judgmental,” “too involved in politics,” and “hypocritical.”

Some conservative Christians reinforced the worst view of themselves by inspiring Ugandan homophobes who backed a bill that would punish gays with life imprisonment or execution. Ditto for the Vatican, whose hostility to condoms contributes to the AIDS epidemic. But there’s more to the picture: I’ve also seen many Catholic nuns and priests heroically caring for AIDS patients — even quietly handing out condoms.

One of the most inspiring figures I’ve met while covering Congo’s brutal civil war is a determined Polish nun in the terrifying hinterland, feeding orphans, standing up to drunken soldiers and comforting survivors — all in a war zone. I came back and decided: I want to grow up and become a Polish nun.

Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.

Some liberals are pushing to end the longtime practice (it’s a myth that this started with President George W. Bush) of channeling American aid through faith-based organizations. That change would be a catastrophe. In Haiti, more than half of food distributions go through religious groups like World Vision that have indispensable networks on the ground. We mustn’t make Haitians the casualties in our cultural wars.

A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.

If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality.

USA Today: Activists who redefine "evangelical" call for Haiti debt relief

The crisis of biblical proportions in Haiti has brought out the full spectrum of the faithful to offer emergency aid. Now, a start-up group of progressive Protestants is launching itself with a campaign to erase Haiti's debts so the crippled nation can focus on rebuilding.

The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good -- led by marquee activists, academics, seminar profs and pastors such as Rev. Richard Cizik -- was originally going to launch later this month but stepped up to the publicity megaphone to call attention to Haiti's need beyond emergency relief. Their release says, "We believe that Jesus calls us to work together to set free those who are held captive by debt."

You remember Cizik from headlines in 2008, when the long-time head of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals resigned under fire for hinting support for gay unions in a radio interview.

Evidently, Jesus doesn't call people who disagree about the Bible to work together on issues. Cizik's outspoken concern for global climate change issues had already made him a target with big name conservatives such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. But, in recent years, the e-word (evangelical) banner, once owned by Christians with conservative views on politics, economics and biblical morality, has become a flag flown by any Protestant with a social justice focus and a contemporary focus on the Gospel.

Partnership executive director Rev. Steven Martin, formerly with Partnership co-founder David Gushee's group, Evangelicals for Human Rights, says they didn't want to wait to campaign for debt forgiveness. Although two thirds of Haiti's debt, held by other governments and major institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, has been forgiven already, the remaining billions could cost Haiti as much as $50 million a year to service. That's money Haiti needs for rebuilding, says Martin.

Their release quotes Gushee calling the Partnership, "a new way to bear witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ. We have yearned to offer a better model for how Christians address public issues; to be known for always standing up for those whom God loves but the world or the church often mistreat or neglect."

Don't look for Dobson or any other megawatt megachurch conservatives (with the exception of Rev. Joel Hunter, of Northland Church in Orlando, who also serves on President Obama's Council for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships) on the list of signators.

The Partnership's website's includes its stands -- often written with highly nuanced phrasing -- on hot issues such reproductive rights, gay marriage and environmentalism. For example:

We stand against the collapse of marriage and for stronger family life. We are involved in efforts to strengthen the fading institution of marriage and thereby protecting and enhancing the well-being of children. We do not believe that denigrating the dignity and denying the human rights of gays and lesbians is a legitimate part of a "pro-family" Christian agenda, and will work to reform Christian attitudes and treatment of lesbian and gay people.

This time, no one's going to shove Cizik out the door for saying so.

Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/topics/post/Events+and+Awards/In-depth+Coverage/Haiti+Earthquake/16364.blog/1