A Grassroots Gathering

I managed to find and turn up at this stranger’s house tonight having been told only the street name, no house number and that it had a tall gum tree in the front yard. I’d been invited to the second informal gathering of a group of Christians in their 20s (and possibly 30s) who want to do more in their lives to address issues relating to poverty and how it relates to their Christian faith.

I was the first to rock up and was greeted by the owner of the house and his university-aged son and Georgie their dog. Before long, other people started turning up. We went around the room and introduced ourselves. There were occupational therapists, law students, a plumber, fashion design student, an arts student, horticultural landscaper, speech pathologist and also a handful employed in the human services and mental health areas and also with youths. Oh, and, of course, a TV captioner too.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting myself into when I rocked up there tonight. I didn’t know anything about it other that it would be a night where some people come together on a very grassroots level to discuss about their thoughts and experiences on poverty and, in turn, on other related social justice issues and how that intersects with their faith. I will confess, however, that I have never been passionate about social justice issues and I also want to stress that it was NOT a social justice gathering tonight that I’d attended. And there was a consensus among us there tonight; we all felt it wasn’t a social justice gathering that we were coming to but rather something on how our common Christian faith intersected this issue. I went because I was curious to find out what other people feeling the same tension that I do about the poor and marginalised have to say.

The night was initiated and organised by two guys who’d gone on a TEAR Australia trip to India last summer and it was held in the house of one of the TEAR staff members. Commenting on the TEAR trip program, the staff member said that the purpose of those trips were to enable Christians particularly in our age group to go there and lose their (Christian) faith in order to find it again. I couldn’t help but break into a smile when I heard him say that.

The purpose of those trips, he said, was to enable these Christians to experience their Christian faith in a context that is so different to that which they’ve been brought up in and in staring at poverty in the face, challenge and ask themselves just exactly what it is that they believe in, what is important and what isn’t important and exactly how their faith can be integrated into the world around us. To strip their faith bare to the core and then rediscover it for themselves.

The premise underpinning the whole reason for gathering tonight was, without a doubt, God’s commandment to love our neighbour. And that encompasses looking out for the poor and bringing justice to where there is injustice. The convenor of the group threw out a question for us all to think – “What is the kingdom of God? What does it look like?” If we can answer that and if we can grasp the vision of what God’s kingdom looks like, then we can work towards it. God’s kingdom is not just solely the heaven that we get to when we die, it’s the here and now. And the kingdom of God that Jesus speaks of is already here and is in the present.

As the night progressed, people shared their various thoughts and experiences, including the tensions and dilemmas they had and the questions. Thoughts and issues we touched on briefly ranged from inequities of wealth in the world, the complexities of the multilayered aspects of poverty, of supply and demand, of God’s commandment to love your neighbour and what that meant, to issues of recycling, of being aware of how much we consume and what we consume, of sustainable energy resources, and materialism and consumer culture not only amongst the Christians of the developed nations but even also among the Christians of the developing countries.

Steve, the TEAR Australia staff member shared about how he bought a shirt on one occasion when he was in the US. Upon his return to Australia, he looked at the label and realised that it was actually made in Bangladesh and quite possibly by some poor person who was paid peanuts for making the shirt while the multinational pocketed the majority of the profit. However, on a recent trip to Bangladesh, he ended up meeting people there in aid programs that were equipping them with sewing skills in order to gain employment in those very same clothing factories! The pay may appear to be peanuts to us by our standards, but to these people, he said, the pay that they were earning at the clothing factory was far greater than what they would have otherwise been earning. One good thing about multinationals in developed countries, he continued, was that they are very susceptible to community pressure. And he encouraged us to exert pressure on multinationals to improve their act because when multinationals improve their work and pay conditions in countries like Bangladesh, other companies will eventually be pressured to follow suit in order to attract workers to work for them.

Warnings against becoming overly focused on the practicalities of social justice and losing our focus – God – was also pointed out. And even poor old Maslow’s hierarchy of needs got dragged into the discussion as well, somewhere during the night.

The night eventually ended with a consensus to meet up again on a regular monthly basis and to start addressing specific areas of concern for discussion in future meetings. As I walked to my car, I felt encouraged knowing that there were other Christians of my age out there with a similar burden. Incidentally, I'll be attending the UNOH Conference on the poor and marginalised this Saturday at the Swanston Street Church of Christ. And I am looking forward to meeting other Christians with this same tension in their lives and burden on their hearts.