Last Sunday at Redeemer we gave our entire offering to support the relief efforts of The Global Orphan Project in Haiti. By God's grace, our people responded with staggering generosity and gave $22,600 toward relief efforts.
We also started to talk as a church about taking the long view with Haiti-- realizing that restoration there involves decades, not merely one time financial gifts. As such, we are presently working to make our people aware of immediate opportunities to travel to Haiti while we strategize how we might take teams of our own. You can follow this dialogue here.
As requests for information continue to pour in, I'm humbled by the passion of our people and their willingness to respond. I was also reminded of the following section from one of my favorite books:
Religious social activism not rooted in love for God is driven by love for idols. It pretends to come from concern for others or for God's kingdom, but actually it is motivated by the worship of humanity or disguised forms of self-glorification (Richard Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life 31).
My prayer for our people as we grieve, pray, and mobilize in response to this tragedy and others is that we will remain relentlessly God-centered in our efforts.
this is a good example of one of the reasons i was always challenged and provoked (in the best sense of the word) by your preaching at DGV. you always seem to cut right to the heart of the matter.
Posted by: Metal Dad | January 19, 2010 at 05:26 PM
wow! that's awesome kevin. so glad to be a part of such an incredible church family.
Posted by: kristin fulghum | January 19, 2010 at 06:52 PM
Yes on Lovelace. And yes on the danger of doing good as a substitute for loving and following Christ.
Posted by: dan d | January 19, 2010 at 07:38 PM