The Blog that spawned The Conversion Investment Series
[singlepic id=50 w=320 h=240 float=left]Are You a Slacktivist? | Donald Miller’s Blog
A friend of mine has a non-profit in which he raises money to provide academic scholarships to kids in South Africa. It’s a terrific organization doing terrific work. He raises funds on the platform of Academic Equality, and mostly mobilizes college students to host parties and fundraisers then works closely with students who are being provided scholarships. As he started his organization, I couldn’t help but notice it grew much more quickly than The Mentoring Project, an organization I started to provide positive male role models for kids growing up without fathers. I couldn’t help but wonder why.
As my friend and I talked about it, we wondered whether organizations that simply raise money in America and send that money overseas weren’t easier to grow because, quite frankly, they don’t require you to change the way you actually live? I know that sounds harsh, but think about it, if you could feel like a humanitarian for simply wearing a t-shirt and attending an occasional rally or updating your facebook status, or if you could feel like a humanitarian for taking a few hours a week out of your life and working with an actual child in an after-school program, which would you rather do? In other words, would you rather wear a t-shirt that says you are a humanitarian, or would you rather be a humanitarian?
My friend shared with me a term he’d learned that summed up our current dilemma: Slacktivism.
Are you a slacktivist?
Now to be fair, organizations building wells and freeing child soldiers and stopping sex-trafficking are doing extremely important work, but I don’t think we should feel all that altruistic for throwing them a twenty in exchange for a t-shirt. People need more than money, they need other people.
What if you laid out all your non-profit t-shirts and asked how you were directly dealing with the issue? And what if you no longer considered yourself altruistic unless the causes you supported were actually making your life more complicated? What if slacktivism wasn’t actually social change? What if it was just another way of exploiting the poor and marginalized, using them to foster our own false identity as humanitarians?
Does your activism cost you anything besides money? And in exchange for that money, do you get a social commodity and identity as an activist?
The Conversion Investment – Part 4
I meet with lots of lost people every week who are in dire financial struggles, who are living a life handed down to them for generations. A life that includes:
Moving into a residence that they could afford if they didn’t smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.
Staying in a residence as long as possible until they receive a seven day eviction notice at which time the scramble begins.
They either miraculously coming up with the funds to pay the back rent or
Move into another more affordable shelter only to repeat the same thing a month later.
They have either had their electric or water cut off at least once, and typically receive multiple cut-off notices in a given year.
What I have discovered is they didn’t just decide to live this way, but saw their parents do the same thing. They were children who have had 25 different addresses who in Mrs. Thompson’s second grade class couldn’t remember their phone number, because it had changed again. Most of them know no other way to live.
They have used the church as a financial means to rescue them from circumstances because the church most likely refused to do anything other than just pay their bills. We’ve allowed them to play the victimization card instead of changing the game because writing checks is far easier than holding them accountable. So, we’ve become enablers instead of change agents when it comes to the poor.
In reality, these people need freedom from a cycle of living that has proven oppressive and hopeless. They need freedom from being consumed with what they want and given a chance to see what they need. They need a friend who is willing to say, “No. I’m not going to give you what you asked for, but I’m going to dig deeper into the crap that is your life in order to shine the light of Jesus on that which is broken and even wicked.”
We, the Church, need to risk being their friend even when much of the time it ends in rejection, or it involves time, effort, money and risk. We, the Church, need to be willing to invest in their conversion.
“The lame man looked at them eagerly, expecting some money. But Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold for you. But I’ll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!” – Acts 3:5-6 NLT
I wish this approach had multiple success stories, but the truth of the matter is that if there is change it is not immediately obvious. This leads to the temptation to just write checks and dismiss the people as hopeless. However, when I look at the life of Jesus Christ the Nazarene there is no evidence of “easy grace.” So, why then do we expect it to be easy? Especially when we’re not Jesus…
My blog is for Losers! The Conversion Investment part 3
When I was in Youth Ministry I came up with the tag line, “Making Losers More Than Conquerors.” Now depending upon how you read that phrase either the ministry was going to be about making Losers more than we make Conquerors, or the ministry was going to be about turning Losers into something more than a Conqueror. In reality, it meant both things.
The phrase is a marriage of Romans 8:37 and 2 Corinthians 12:10. It is the mysterious fusion of two opposites, conquerors and losers; strength and weakness. Life sucks, but yet it is glorious all at the same time.
It is imperative for someone to be converted to realize just how big of a Loser we are apart from Christ. We go about winning a lot of small meaningless battles without Him. We really bring Him nothing worth bragging about other than our brokenness, so that He can be glorified in putting us back together as He intended us to be while looking forward to the eventual finish of that work on the other side of death. It’s the death of Christ that makes us worthy. Without it we are worthless. It’s this admission of our Loserdom that keeps us from really being converted. It’s why time and relationship and truth and love and conflict is necessary to help people not only go from life to death, but to live in the reality of this new life.
Because it is also imperative to realize that NOTHING can separate us from the love of God shown to us through Jesus Christ in order to enjoy the converted life. Nothing can overcome His love. Even if we are led as sheep to the slaughter and it looks as if we should be pitied the reality is that our suffering can produce an immeasurable amount of joy and because of this we more than Conquer fear, failure, and death. In fact, those aren’t even battles for us to win anymore.
Weird, right?
But awesome!
So, what are your losses? Do you feel like sharing them here?
Have you found a way to rejoice in the midst of your loserdom?
“35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?36 As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
37
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.