Soma Church Blog

People get fired up about fair trade.  Some people (including Christians) will say it is something that must be done, the Christians saying it is sinful not to.  Other say it is does not work and the Christians in this side of the debate say it is sinful to do so.  So what do we make of fair trade?   Let me put the spoiler in up front: I am not going to take one position or another.  I am merely going to say whatever your position (and mine happens to be positive towards fair trade) you need to be able to articulate how you hold that position from the Gospel.

How it works

Let’s start by looking at the principle of how it works.  Essentially fair trade is an ‘ethically regulated market’.  The market is: coffee growers (producers) grow coffee and sell it to business.  Business buys the coffee from the producers and exports it, grinds it and makes a grande latte.  Consumers buy the coffee from business.   When coffee prices go up producers are happy because they get more money.  When coffee prices go down they need to find some other ways of getting by and this can include slavery: virtual and real, sex working: usually leading to HIV inflection and other complications, starvation, etc.  Generally speaking when things go down it is more than a mild inconvenience.

Fair trade comes along and convinces consumers to buy their labeled product.  Because the consumer buys that, business needs to sell it.  But business now has to help the producers that business buys it from to keep standards (regulators) that fair trade police.  In the case of the well known fair trade company, it seeks to make sure that workers have a voice, essentially a union; farmers have a say to business about what is going on and there is a fixed minimum market price guaranteeing income for the farm.

Does it work?

On one hand, the ‘ethically regulated market’ will protect workers from abuse, protect their rights and keep a minimum of the market price.  So, yes it can work.

But there are a number of problems with a regulated market.

1. What do you regulate? Fair Trade the company regulates workers rights.  Rainforest Alliance, seeking also to protect people, seeks environmentally sustainable production systems.  Which ones are right?  Which ones are best?
2. Regulating too many things means people find it hard to get into the market. One observer who worked in a country with fair trade farms observed that it was good for people working on the farms, but for farmers too poor to be able to reach the standards of fair trade, it means that they are left without buyers.  Essentially it can mean the poor are helped, but the poorest of the poor can be left worse off.  Virgin United, for example are tackling the problem from a different direction: helping business compete  in a free trade environment.
3. Regulation can lead to an inferior product. When people buy fair trade they are partly buying it because it is fair trade and not because it is the best thing on the market.  Long term this can make things difficult for producers who want to move into a free market economy, because they are now able to do so economically, but will struggle with an inferior product.
4. A regulated market is open to abuse. Because the system now relies on people policing the system (The companies promoting fair trade) they are also now targets for corrupting and bribery.  This has been a long standing criticism of fair trade companies.  People can use the label when they are not actually adhering to any of the standards

The principle has enough problems that a Christian may feel that this is not the most loving thing to do.  How should we think about it?

Christian Reflections

God is God and He Loves

Bible starts with the idea of God.  God exists and we need to treat him as God.  This is an important point because we currently live in a world where economics can be god.  As one writer put it:

“In an age that is said to distrust metanarratives, the market has been described as “the true metanarrative of our age.” In certain neo-liberal circles, the market has been elevated to a quasi-religious status. For Christian, indeed for ethical people, economic life needs to reflect not just self-interest or a narrow definition of efficiency, but fundamental values.

I.e. we live in a world where we can’t know anything is true except the market.  But that is not the way we think as Christians, which is his point.  Our God is not the market it is the God of the Bible and He is the one to guide what is best.  So we need to do what pleases God, not what works economically

What does please God?  Simply, to love.  God is a God of love.  God shows his love to us at the cross.  His Son dies in our place.  He comes and rescues us, those in need:

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though He was rich, for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9)

And as a response God wants us to take on the family trait of love and do the same:

“If anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need but closes his eyes to his need—how can God’s love reside in him?” (1 John 3:17)

This is shown clearly in the way that Jesus talks of our accountability to him on the last day:

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry
and you gave Me something to eat;
I was thirsty
and you gave Me something to drink;
I was a stranger and you took Me in;
I was naked and you clothed Me;
I was sick and you took care of Me;
I was in prison and you visited Me.’

“Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or without clothes and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and visit You?’
“And the King will answer them, ‘I assure you: Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’” (Matthew 25:34–41)

How we treat those in need, whether they be next to us or on the other side of the globe is a reflection on how we treat Jesus, and he sees it clearly as that.

Fair trade is seeking to care for those people.  While it does not do it perfectly, it does do something to help.  So they questions are:

1. If you are not going to buy fair trade because you don’t think it works, what will you do to take on the family trait of God: caring for those in need?
2. If you are going to buy fair trade, what else will you do? You cannot think you can buy a block of chocolate and think “I have ticked the box of caring for the poor”.  It will take a lot more than that.

Man is God’s Image
Man has been made in the image of God  and this effects the way we think of the ‘fair’ in fair trade.  Why is it so important to look after people in the developing countries?  I can answer this as a Christian.  It is because all humans have been made in the image of God, whether we are born in Australia or Africa.  And this effects the way we see each other. And it effects the way we see God.  Humans are the image of God and when you abuse the image it says something about the image holder.  Like if I were to rip up a photo of our PM, what would you say that says about my attitude towards him?  So we need to look after all humans in need.

As I said, I can answer the question Why is it so important to look after people in the developing countries?” but can the Atheist?  Most people will have an innate sense of ‘well this seems fair’, but why? Surely if you were to follow evolution to its end point you would have to say survival of the fittest.  At this point the fittest (and I mean that loosely considering the amount of obesity we have) would be the Western world.  The weakest is the developing world, let nature take its course??

Man is God’s Fallen Image
While man is God’s image, he is God’s fallen image  It is like looking through a fractured mirror.  We should love as God does but we fail to do so.  This is one of the reasons we have the problem of poverty.
Currently, 2 billion people live on less than $2 a day.  It would take something like $90 billion to fix this.  That is a lot of money, but not an impossible amount.  Especially when we consider that $900 billion is spent globally on defense budgets.  For the economically challenged here is what I am saying: take 10% of a budget that is designed to kill people and you can save 100s of thousands of lives.

countries.  I am not the sharpest tack in the box, so why don’t we do it?  We are too selfish to lobby the government.  They are too fearful of invasion.  And for good reason because there are people who want to invade.  All the opposite of a loving ethic  Jesus knew this.  He knew what is in people’s hearts.  So he was able to say this little throw away line in this story:

“While Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon, a man who had a serious skin disease, a woman approached Him with an alabaster jar of very expensive fragrant oil. She poured it on His head as He was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw it, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This might have been sold for a great deal and given to the poor.”
But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a noble thing for Me. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me” (Matthew 26:6–12)

You will always have the poor, because you will always fail to love as you should.  This means that fair trade will fail.  (Actually to the credit of the fair trade employees I spoke to, they understood that this alone will not end poverty).  So is there any reason to support it, if it is not going to end poverty?

Let me give you two reasons.  The first is an Africa parable:

One morning an elderly man was walking on a nearly deserted beach. He came upon a boy surrounded by thousands and thousands of starfish. As eagerly as he could, the youngster was picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean.  Puzzled, the older man looked at the young boy and asked, “Little boy, what are you doing?”  The youth responded without looking up, “I’m trying to save these starfish, sir.”  The old man chuckled aloud, and queried, “Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?”  Holding a starfish in his hand, the boy turned to the man and, gently tossing the starfish into the water, said, “It will make a difference to that one!”

Buying fair trade will not solve the problem, but in the absence of a solution that will, this is a good idea.

There is another reason I will return to.  But before I do, I want to point out that poverty is a symptom of a deeper problem.   A problem so great that no human system that deal with it.  Only God himself could and does deal with it and He did that by sending His Son Jesus.  The best thing we do for the developing world is not just buy fair trade, but send the missionaries who will tell people about what Jesus has done.  Some organisations like Compassion do both and we should support them.

I wonder if some of us who are passionate and preach about fair trade were just as passionate about Jesus what the world would look like…

God’s Fair Trade Project
Of course the question is what is God doing about the issues that fair trade is trying to solve?  He is doing something, he has it planned out and one day this is what it will look like:

“Then one of the elders asked me, “Who are these people robed in white, and where did they come from?”

I said to him, “Sir, you know.”
Then he told me:

These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.

They washed their robes and made them whitein the blood of the Lamb.

For this reason they are before the throne of God,
and they serve Him day and night in His sanctuary.
The One seated on the throne will shelter them:
They will no longer hunger;
they will no longer thirst;
the sun will no longer strike them,
nor will any heat.
For the Lamb who is at the center of the throne
will shepherd them;
He will guide them to springs of living waters,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:13–17)

There is a day coming when there will no longer be poverty.  This is the Christian home: heaven, the new creation, the perfect creation.
Let me return the other reason we might want to think about supporting fair trade.  Everyday we do reminds us of the day when it will be done perfectly.  Poverty is something we have in this world.  It is not something we should have, but we do.  Fair trade for Christians is like a postcard from home.  It is just a little glimpse of what things are going to be like.  (Postcards never give you a completely accurate picture, they more just get the mood).  When we support fair trade (if we do) we need to explain why – because this reminds us of our home.

Support Fair trade or Not?

Should Christians support fair trade?  I think we are free to or not to.  But whether do or not we need to be able to explain our position not from economics, but from the Gospel.  The Gospel can give reasons to and not to.  That is not the point.  The point is can you explain your position from the Gospel or not?

Reimagining Evangelism

Rick Richardson

IVP:2006

If you are not a Christian and you are reading this review, you may find it a little rude and abrupt.  But let me be perfectly frank with you, as Christian I think being a Christian is the best thing in the world and I want you to be a Christian too.  Not because I get something out of it (I don’t), not because I think I am right and you are wrong (though that is part of it, otherwise I would not hold this view), but because being a Christian means communing with your Creator and He is awesome and I hope you meet Him one day.  This book is about helping Christians to help you know God.

I have to admit that I read this book twice.  The reason is that the first time I read it I thought Richardson had pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be a Christian and what evangelism was too far.  The second reading I realised that he did push the boundaries, sometimes too far but sometimes he was spot on, it was just that I was not used to thinking this way and helped me to learn about how to show the love of Jesus more clearly.

The main thesis of the book is that people are not going to become Christian if you push a bunch of doctrine down their throat.  They might become a Christian or at least have a better understanding of what it means to be Christian if you love them and be their friend.

Like I mentioned at the start there is a lot about this book that I think goes too far.  Phrases like “belonging comes before believing” p27 gets me nervous.  Jesus did not call people to repent and belong, he called them to repent and believe.

But when the sentence is followed by “evangelism is about helping people belong so that the can come to believe” I am a little more at ease.  Though to split hairs, I think that we need to have a fairly narrow definition of evangelism: the explanation of the story of God, climaxing in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the grace that it brings.  Too many other things get put in the basket, like getting to know someone.  These other things are good, but not evangelism in and of itself.

The danger in Richardson’s approach is that people could get confused about the believing and belonging relationship.  Am I a Christian because I belong to the Soma community or because I believe in Jesus?  Why do I need to believe in Jesus when I belong?  To what extent does someone belong to the community if they don’t belong to Jesus?

On the other hand this is a book worth reading because we need to be pushed, we need to find the boundaries, we need to learn from people we don’t agree with, partly to learn new things and partly so we know where the truth lies as we wrestle with the ideas.  Richardson may have pushed too far on some things, but he is on the right track and there is a lot we can learn from him.

On the ANZAC weekend, Soma went on holidays, here is a picture of what it was like:

So yesterday we had a car accident.  As I reflect on it I can see that the accident was a great metaphor for the Gospel.

We had a Red RAV 4.  We had saved and researched and celebrated when it came.  The kids loved it to the point it was almost one of the family (sad I know)!  But during the accident it did what it should have done and what we bought it for – safety.

As the accident took place the car transformed from being a vehicle to being a safety pod.  The air bags deployed, making a mess of the dashboard, the crumple points crumpled and we were all safe.  The bottom line is that the body of the car destroyed itself in an effort to safe the lives of the people inside.  And that is what the purpose of the body of the car was to do – destroy itself to save others.  And it is destroyed: the air bags make the interior inoperable, the exterior crumple points have pretty well destroyed the outside of the car.  It is a dead car.

It reminded me of another body whose purpose was to be crushed and crushed to save my life.  To take the blow of the wrath of God on my behalf.  The body of Jesus.

Anne Rice has gone through one of the most dramatic conversions in modern literary history.  She was well know and well read as the author of the Vampire Chronicles.  This was before Bella and Edward became a phenomenon.  She was the one who gave us Interview with a Vampire, the movie version  starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in his girly long hair days.

But in the last decade or so she has become a Christian, though admits her gay son and catholic background present some problems for her.  As such, she is now dedicating her life to the service of Jesus “In 2002 I made up my mind that I would not write anything that wasn’t for Christ” she says in an interview.

So her present series of novels is on the life of Jesus.  The first thing I was surprised about The Road to Cana, is written in the first person.  This is life through the eyes of God incarnate.  On one hand this is audicous, but on the other hand somewhat refreshing: what was it like to be baptized by John the Baptist?  What was the 40 days in the desert like?

This book is the second in the series.  Jesus has grown to be a man, he is preparing for something in his life, but is not sure what it is.  Rice has done a good thing in setting his life in a larger Biblical theological framework by having Jesus’ awareness of who he is not   coming from some mystical understanding that he knew and no-one else did, but through OT prophecy and the events surrounding his birth.

The second thing I was surprised about it was the amount of research that Rice has put into it.  Not just Biblical knowledge but historical and geological knowledge as well.  The effect on the Jewish people when Pilate had Roman effigies put up in the temple, how far is it to walk from Nazareth to Cana and that sort of thing.

Finally I loved how she portrayed the character of Jesus as man, who has become God, and yet has humbled himself fully into his humanity, without letting go of his divinity.  A complex character, that has been pulled off with relative simplicity, though at times makes Jesus into a simpleton.

The thing I am most worried about when it comes to this novel is that people may forget it is is a novel and treat it with the same authority as a Gospel.   But it is a novel and could be an interesting way of getting people to think about the life of Jesus who won’t read a Gospel.

What is happening in Haiti is difficult to watch and it is important for Christians not to merely watch.

We want to look after the people of Haiti the best we can, there are lots of different ways we can do that, but at Soma we want to partner Churches Helping Churches. This organisation aims to help with the humanitarian issues, as well as just churches back on their feet as soon as possible.  Here is a video to help you see what is going on: Haiti

What can you do?
Give money
You can give money directly through the website or transfer money to the St John’s account (BSB 032 088 Account: 810054) with “Haiti” in the note section and we will make sure the money gets to right people.
Stay Informed
On the website there will be videos and blogs to stay up to date with what’s going on.
Pray
Also on the website there will be prayer points as well as what you can hear through the media to pray for the people of Haiti.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKovkG8KUjU

One of the things that Soma has been trying to do is look at church and see how can do it differently.  January has provided us with an opportunity to do this.

During our planning time the team talked about how the main experience we had had of church was fairly linear.  It starts at a time and ends at time and you do things in order.  We asked the question “What if we didn’t do it this way?”

Here is what we have done.  The room has been split into different areas.  There is an area for prayer, encouragement and fellowship, listening to the Bible and to sing music.  People are free to go to any of these areas at any time, but there are some set times for certain things: like the talk and singing, but people can go to those areas and talk to musos or Bible teachers at other times if they like.  People are also free to come and go as they please, but most people stuck around for most of the time.

What this has meant is that church is more organic.  If you are in the middle of a conversation with someone, you can keep talking to them.  If you want to pray with someone, you can do that.  It relies on people wanting to do things that will help them to know Jesus, but this is why people come to church!

Before we go further I need to let credit go where credit is due, this is not really my idea.  But I think it is important to take risks, even ones that you personally don’t think will work.  I want to publicly thank Carly for putting January together.

Come and check it out :2:30 – 4:30 at Mac Centre. Why not bring a friend who has been a little hostile to church, this will be a new thing for them.

So rating season is over and there are lots more digital channels on TV and this all leads to one thing – lots of bad TV.  My son and I have recently started to watch “Wipeout”.

If you have not seen the show it works like this: there are three elimination rounds of various obstacle courses and whoever gets the shortest time of the last round wins $X.  But all of that is largely irrelevant.  The show is really about the commentary which seeks to make fun of and humiliate the contestants as much as possible (and the obstacles help at this point, especially the famous big red balls that people are supposed to leap across!).

This is an example of how the show works, and the only time I have seen anyone cross the famous big, red balls, only to run into another problem…

After watching for awhile I have observed too things:

1. I am not really going for a winner, but looking for the loser to get hammered.  This is the opposite of most sporting shows where you are usually encouraged to barrack for someone or other.
2. I have no problem watching these people get humiliated.

It’s this last point that I find interesting.  Why do I enjoy watching these people fall in awkward directions?

Now the producers of Wipeout carefully cast the contestants for the show not according to their ability to get through the courses, but to in their ability to embarrass and humility themselves.  It is like “you are an extrovert whose brain really should vet what you say before you say it but doesn’t, great you are in!”.

Who does this remind me of?  The Fool from Proverbs. Here are a few things that remind me of the contestants on Wipeout:

“The wise store up knowledge,
but the mouth of the fool hastens destruction.” (Proverbs 10:14 HCSB)

“Every sensible person acts knowledgeably,
but a fool displays his stupidity.” (Proverbs 13:16 HCSB)

“The proud speech of a fool brings a rod of discipline,
but the lips of the wise protect them.” (Proverbs 14:3 HCSB)

“A fool does not delight in understanding,
but only wants to show off his opinions.” (Proverbs 18:2 HCSB)

The producers of Wipeout are very clever in their ability to pick up on something that is clear in Scripture: Falling fools are easy to make fun of!

I am still convinced of David Wells comment: “What someone thinks about the church tells us exactly what that person is thinking about Christianity”.  So what do people think of church?

I sent some students out to do some door knocking and ask them.  Before we look at some of the results I should point out that 62% of respondents had lived in the area for 11 years or more and that 49% of respondents had been to church in the last month.  This means that this study is a little skewed and I think that we can assume that a large number of people are older, have been churched for a while and so are not typical of the population.

But this has been a good pilot study to help us work out a few things.

1. Why don’t people go to church?

The reason we asked this question is for people to express the obstacles of people going to church.  We didn’t want to ask them why they don’t go to church, because we thought they would be more honest about the answer.

The top three reasons people don’t go to church are because they don’t agree, they don’t have time and think it is boring.  The most popular comment in the ‘other’ category is that it is seen as ‘irrelevant’.  These need to be addressed in different ways.  While the church is not compromise what it says, it needs to be accessible and people need to be able to interact and be able to express doubts in a helpful way.  Irrelevant and boring could lead to a church that is pandering to the people or it could be a church that is genuinely excited about the Gospel.  That people don’t have time could be addressed a couple of solutions.  One is to have a more slimmed down service, that is to decrease the quantity, or it could be to increase the quality of the meeting.

2. What is the primary purpose of church?

We asked this question because we wanted to know what people expected church to do.

Most people thought it was a place where people could find answers to life, the Bible and everything.  But this could be because this was a skewed population.   What is more interesting is the number of people who see that church is where people should be finding and defending values.  Again this might have something to do with the people who were surveyed.

The idea that we are to help people means that, I think, people are expecting the church to interact with the world around them.

Thoughts?