Following my earlier post this week, this is part 2 on a report produced by Tearfund Ireland and Evangelical Alliance Ireland “Irish Christians’ involvement in charity, social justice and sustainable development”
There are 7 recommendations of the Tearfund / EAI report
They are:
- Engage with theology: – Irish Christians need a deeper understanding of the church, especially in regard to charity, social justice and sustainable development. Leaders can play a key role here.
- Engage beyond charity:- towards addressing underlying causes of poverty through sustainable development
- Extend the boundaries:- getting more strategic about engaging those outside their membership, especially those on the margins of society
- Create points of connection:- developing relational partnerships with churches overseas. Developing relational partnerships with migrant-led churches in Ireland.
- Ensure the centrality of prayer:- more informed prayer addressing issues of social justice and poverty
- Empower youth:- encouraging and facilitating young people to connect their faith with action
- Seek integrity and accountability:- ask for and receive transparency from partner organizations regarding how funds are used to help transform lives.
Points 1-4 are basically calling for a more thought-out and strategic approach to church and mission [defining mission in a broad sense]. This raises for me two interesting points:
The first connects the first of the 7 recommendations with our post two days ago on the marginal place of theological education in the local church.
The overall basic thrust of this report suggests that there is a gap between theological thinking about social justice and everyday experience in the local church. Basically, Christians in local churches haven’t been engaged in that thinking. And this isn’t just a problem in the area of social justice, it is a general problem. It again raises the need for some sort of programme of basic biblical education combined with a systematic preaching schedule through to give a sense of the whole biblical narrative.
Second is that most Irish (evangelically minded) churches are small, with limited budgets, limited time, limited expertise and with busy stretched leadership. Most charity and social justice activities tend to be ad hoc and developed out of relationships individuals within the church happen to have with other organizations or people. IMHO this all tends to contrast sharply with the USA where church life is much more planned, strategic, budgeted and ‘professional’.
There are strengths (and weaknesses) in both, but the Irish experience is that we need a bit more American organizational know-how but without losing the priority on relational partnerships.
Comments on any of this welcome!
FaithinIreland 
There are still those lurking around churches that disagree with formal Theological, or, any formal education (in my experience) – we all know one at least. My argument to them is that we don’t have a foundation like those who were ‘raised up’ in the Bible, or even centuries ago. Thus, we need more knowledge of the Bible in order to know more of Yahweh, and His plans for our lives.
Bible-knowledge seems to be diminishing rapidly, which could be arguably evidenced by ‘Millionaire’ shows using Bible questions for the BIG questions. A lot of people don’t know scriptures anymore, sadly, including churches and those in leadership.
Its easy pointing the finger – I am guilty of not knowing enough.
Bignorm.net
there is also a real issue regarding the paucity of theological teaching in colleges and seminaries on the Biblical/theological underpinnings of social action… You can’t expect the untaught to teach…
David, I think back to my own training and can’t disagree. I wonder how things are changing? Certainly my understanding of how Gospel, social action, kingdom of God, the two greatest commandments fit together has developed over the years. Post-Lausanne evangelicalism, books like The Mission of God and initiatives like The Micah Challenge all point in a more holistic direction?
Hi Norman – I think in an increasinlgy post-Christendom context it won’t be surprising that there is less and less familiarity with the biblical narrative. Maybe this can also be seen as refreshing challenge in that all too often in the past it could be assumed. Now little can be assumed. I think it is more than knowing the Bible better. Perhaps the bigger challenge is for leaders / teachers especially to be constantly framing their teaching within the overall biblical narrative to help people ‘get’ how their lives can be shaped to fit within God’s story.
Emily and I think you do this well!