Barefoot’s leadership in Lansing for Haiti on WLNS CBS 6 News 7/15/10.

Already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti was recently devastated by a massive earthquake.  We are a core organizing church for the Lansing for Haiti church network in Lansing; which is a 3-way partnership between our Lansing churches, World Relief, and a network of Haitian churches.  Check out at www.lansingforhaiti.com

Video of World Relief’s on-the-ground relief

We begin the afternoon at 5:30pm with a variety of games and activities for kids and teens.  You can learn how to juggle, do arts & crafts, play all kinds of sports, play great games, and even paint your nails!  After this, we eat a pizza dinner together in small groups, which includes a discussion about life and God. After our small group time, we finish up by giving away great prizes. You can win all kinds of toys, sports equipment like basketballs and footballs, clothes, jewelry, and of course tons of candy!  We will be done at 7:00pm each Tuesday.  We’ll run T@FP all summer, every Tuesday, except when it rains. See you at the park!  Contact Cayden with questions or if you’re interested in volunteering.

Visit www.flickr.com/barefootlansing to see photos from our Foster Park ministry.

Below is my paraphrase of this text (which is a combination of the NIV, The Message, and my words) in an effort to show how this text powerfully applies to the Church today in real time.  You can listen to the full sermon surrounding this text here.

Isaiah1:11 “The multitude of your Barefoot church meetings—
what are they to me?” says the LORD.
“I have heard more than enough of Here I Am To Worship,
Amazing Grace and Blessed Be Your Name;
I have no pleasure
in you lifting your hands and closing your eyes in worship, in your piano, drums, or guitar.
I have not pleasure in the money that you give, or in the bread and wine you
receive during communion.

12 When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
Running here and there, doing this and that—
all this sheer commotion?

13 “Quit your worship charades.
I can’t stand your trivial religious games: it’s all so fake.
Community group Bible studies, Sunday morning preaching, special meetings—
meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more!

Community Groups, Sunday morning singing and preaching, worship song words on a screen —
I cannot bear your evil assemblies.

14 Your Christmas, Lent, & Easter celebrations and your appointed feasts
my soul hates.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.

15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even if you offer many prayers, & you pray & you pray & you pray
I will not listen.
And do you know why? Because the blood of those you
have neglected is on your hands.

16 wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds
out of my sight!
Stop doing wrong,

17 learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the orphan,
plead the case of the defenseless.

I often feel like ‘social justice’ is a topic that certain Christians love to talk about, but it seems like we don’t often put our money where our mouth is.  It can be a topic that we will talk about at coffee shops, join Facebook groups for, and maybe even watch a documentary on.  While I think awareness is better than nothing at all, I think the Body of Christ is called to action.  Which is where the problem arises.  Besides writing an occasional check to a nonprofit, what are ways that we can really be involved in social justice as Christians living in Lansing, MI?  I think a major way is to be perceptive to the brokenness on our block.  To see the widows and orphans that surround us and to actively love them with the love of Christ, which I hope is something that characterizes Barefoot.  This still leaves a great global need.  There is a conference I’ll be going to at the end of October, which I’m very excited about: www.worldrelief.org/umoja . One of the topics being discussed at the conference is microfinance.  I’ve been really challenged recently in some reading I’m doing about sweatshops and about the oppression of global workers, whose work supplies many of the low cost and/or high fashion products that we purchase in America.  At this point, I’m not ready to get on a soapbox and tell everyone what stores they should boycott or support, as I have such limited information.  But I know that I want to be a part of the solution rather than a contributor to the problem.  I’m excited to learn more about microfinance and hope to come back with some tools that we as a church can begin to apply, promote, and support to bring more of God’s light to dark places.

God has recently challenged me to pray. There is a small group of us that meet at 8am on Sundays to pray for our ministry. During this time, I felt God’s conviction that I was once again trying to make things work on my own, rather than going to him in prayer. In this Sunday morning time, I began praying for individuals to come into a relationship with Jesus, then realized my methods for trying to make this happen: sermons, community groups, kids’ ministries, etc., yet I was hardly praying. And realizing (once again) that it is not sermons, programs, or even conversations that soften people’s heart to Jesus, but is through the Holy Spirit, through prayer. My prayer life had dwindled to a few minutes of prayer at night that I fell asleep to. I realized I set time aside to work out, to study, and even to watch television, yet not to pray. I’ve now committed to a daily prayer time in the mornings that has thus far been a rich blessing to me. I believe Luke 11:5-13; that prayer really does change things. God is not a genie in the sky or a Santa Clause to grant all of our specific wishes, but he wants us to seek him and ask him to bring his Kingdom into this world. I’ve been greatly encouraged this week as I’ve seen the effects of prayer playing out before me in my life and in my heart. I hope that you pray with me for his Kingdom to come and his will to be done, here in Lansing, as it is in heaven.