I couldn’t say it any better myself. So will rely on the editorial board of the National Post to convey my thoughts about Christmas. Read the whole post here.
Thank you to my readers this year. I wish you a blessed Christmas season, and best wishes in 2010.
The Christian claim is bold. Just as the Jewish people were chosen not only for themselves but as a blessing for all nations, so too does Jesus Christ come to offer the gift of salvation to all peoples. Indeed, the claim goes further still. The entirety of the natural world looks for that same gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.
The whole of creation — the entire physical order to which man belongs — is “groaning in travail,” as Saint Paul wrote to the Romans. We are wise to note this groaning. The world of nature groans still, red in tooth and claw. It is a brutal world where yes, even the polar bears devour their young. Natural disasters are, well, natural, as the hurricanes and earthquakes do their efficient and lethal work. To this, man makes his own contribution, his creativity bringing out the fruit of creation, his cupidity degrading that very same creation.
To all this the disciple at Christmas recalls Saint Paul again, this time writing to the Colossians, on the cosmic dimension of Christ: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Before November 2007, Liliana* was an ordinary eight-year old girl, living with her parents and three younger siblings in a Bolivian neighbourhood. She loved to play and enjoyed school, especially math. Liliana’s mother, Genara, cared for her children full-time and worried if she had to leave them alone. But one day, Liliana’s uncle convinced her to go shopping for the food and supplies they needed for the celebration. He promised her that all would be well and he would watch over the children.
That’s not what happened.
Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about a growing ‘intellectualism’ among evangelicals in North America. Canadian think tank Cardus is cited in the article. Jonathan Fitzgerald writes:
Many young Christians who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, myself included, are trending toward intellectualism as a rejection of the experience of evangelicalism that we grew up in, with churches focused on reaching congregants’ hearts to the exclusion of their minds. Many of the pastors and other leaders of these nondenominational congregations were not seminary trained; rather, they were impassioned speakers—converts, often, from the “Jesus Movement” of the 1970s. Though the situation has changed somewhat, seeker-sensitive megachurches continue to mass-market this feelings-based evangelicalism.
The article ends, positing the question:
“Is there something anti-intellectual at the root of an experience-based movement?”
The author argues yes. What do you think?
In the latest issue of the Blue Avocado (highly recommended free subscription), Jonathan Spack rants about the low self-esteem common in non-profits. I don’t know if you have experienced these feelings, but take a read below:
Our sector suffers from a chronic self-esteem deficiency. For most Americans, personal wealth is the primary measure of social status. If you’ve had financial success it must be because you’re smart. This social Darwinism carries over to nonprofit organizations, too, morphing into a kind of sectoral Darwinism. As a result, many people– both inside and outside the nonprofit world — see our sector as being of secondary value and importance compared to the (for-profit) business sector.
The pervasiveness of this sectoral inferiority complex leads to some widely-held beliefs and practices that I consider harmful to our work, and self-destructive when they are inwardly focused.
His five myths are the following (with great commentary in the original article):
1. “It’s a lot easier to run a nonprofit than a regular business.”
2. “Nonprofits are inefficient and wasteful.”
3. “Nonprofits would be more effective if they/we operated more like commercial businesses.”
4. “Nonprofits are warm and fuzzy places . . . no one gets fired.”
5. “A nonprofit isn’t a career; it’s a job for housewives and young people.”
Care to bust any of those myths wide apart?
Here’s a request for funds that I find dignified and appealing … in a good sense. Congrats Haiti Partners. Their first Canadian fundraising and info night will be held on Sunday, January 24 in Toronto. Contact me for more info.
I love new websites. And here is one that I am immediately impressed with. Congrats to FH Canada (Food for the Hungry) who have rebranded. The 1 min video on the home page is worth a quick watch. It’s about the Poverty Revolution.
Features of the new site include: links to Picasa photo galleries, facebook and twitter feeds, joining communities, gift guide, project support; hey, you can even earn badges (?!). I joined Sasiga, Ethiopia where we were involved in a project — check out this page for a report on that project.
They also have a powerful tagline: It’s about thriving communities. Not dependency.
I wish there was opportunity on the site to post comments – that’s the only thing I am missing so far. But overall, I like it a lot. Good job FH!
I’ve been the recipient of many an approach to assist African kids through the development of an orphanage. In fact, I remember at one point a few years ago having four concept papers envisioning similar approaches on my desk. Sounds good, no? But the institutionalization of kids can lead to problems further on. As well, our attempts at helping are often laced with expensive Western notions of acceptable standards that African cultures are not demanding.
This NY Times article by Celia W. Dugger exposes the weaknesses of an orphanage strategy. (H/T to Excellence in Giving.)
In a country as desperately poor as Malawi, children placed in institutions are often seen as the lucky ones. But even as orphanages have sprung up across Africa with donations from Western churches and charities, the families who care for the vast majority of the continent’s orphans have gotten no help at all, household surveys show.
Researchers now say a far better way to assist these bereft children is with simple allocations of cash — $4 to $20 a month in an experimental program under way here in Malawi — given directly to the destitute extended families who take them in. That program could provide grants to eight families looking after some two dozen children for the $1,500 a year it costs to sponsor one child at the Home of Hope, estimated Candace M. Miller, a Boston University professor and a lead researcher in the project.
Experts and child advocates maintain that orphanages are expensive and often harm children’s development by separating them from their families. Most of the children living in institutions around the world have a surviving parent or close relative, and they most commonly entered orphanages because of poverty, according to new reports by Unicef and Save the Children.
“Because there’s money in orphanages, people are creating them and getting children in them,” said Dr. Biziwick Mwale, executive director of Malawi’s National AIDS Commission.
