Life is a series of battles against the world. Left to our own devices, we usually end up losing the battles: against the temptation to eat too much, against the temptation to be lazy, against the temptation to make the easy choice instead of the right one, against the temptation to be cowardly rather than courageous. But we can win instead of losing if we draw on a power that is greater than ourselves. In chapter 5 of his first letter, John says:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Everyone who loves the parent also loves the child. We know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. Loving God means obeying his commandments, and his commandments are not oppressive. Anyone who is a child of God defeats the world. Our faith is the victory that has defeated the world. Who is it that defeats the world? It is someone who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

The person who has faith in Jesus enlists Jesus to fight the battles on his or her behalf. Jesus has already overcome the world through his victory over death and sin on the cross, so that when we enlist Jesus to fight on our behalf we cannot lose. We make be weak, fragile, cowardly, lazy and susceptible to temptation without Jesus, but when Jesus is in control victory over the world is guaranteed.

It is impertinent to question the effectiveness of charitable efforts, and this makes it difficult for anyone to raise doubts about the practice of microcredit, which involves lending small sums of money to the poor at high interest rates. But if the purpose of the charitable efforts is to help the poor, rather than to gratify the donors, then someone really does need to investigate whether the practice actually works. That person is David Roodman in his book Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance.

The quick – and for most donors very disappointing – answer is that there is no convincing evidence that microcredit is an effective tool for bringing people out of poverty. There are many stories of people who have indeed worked their way out of poverty after accessing microcredit loans, but there are also many stories of people who have worked their way further into debt. According to the author, the most reliable research into the effectiveness of microcredit does not indicate any net positive effect on the incidence of poverty. Microfinance as a whole, however, particularly microsavings accounts, does provide a very useful means for the poor to manage their money.

Intuitively these findings make sense. In Western countries, poor people who save money tend to improve their lot, whereas poor people who max out their credit cards tend to stay poor. Poor people tend to borrow money more often to meet today’s needs than to invest in high-return business enterprises. Finding food for today is a more pressing concern than repaying a loan tomorrow.

The surprising thing about the findings is that they tend to contradict the virtually unanimous voice of microcredit proponents over many years. Presumably the microcredit myth has lasted so long because it appeals to our paternalistic instincts as donors, romantically portraying the poorest of the poor as skilled entrepreneurs just needing access to capital (when what they really need is opportunities for decent employment), portraying women as better managers of money than men (when in reality they are perhaps more susceptible to coercive demands for repayment), and suggesting that poverty can be solved through a simple commercial transaction (when much more complex structural change is required).

The author does not confine himself to investigating the effect of microfinance on financial poverty. He also considers the impact on freedom and industry building. He presents his observations in a measured and impartial but very engaging and readable manner. I highly recommend the book to anyone who is concerned about serving the poor effectively.

Your job as you know it and your business as it is currently run will eventually change; the only chance any of us have for prosperity is to constantly reimagine, rethink and reinvent everything we do and how we do it in order to remain relevant, according to Jason Jennings in his book The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change. My full review of the book is available at my business blog.

Jesus did not march on Rome; he never called together a zealot army; he never wrote a political manifesto; he simply announced that because he had come, the kingdom had come – and it would move out from Jerusalem in surprising ways, according to Ed Stetzer in his book Subversive Kingdom: Living as Agents of Gospel Transformation. We can now see this kingdom happening in our own lives when we act under his orders in the everyday places we are called to serve as ambassadors.

The church in the United States – and other Western countries – is currently in an awkward position. Attendances are declining, strident opposition is increasing, and to outsiders the church is more strongly associated with a stale political agenda than with good news. For too many church attenders, a commitment to the Christian faith involves little more than turning up to a building for a show on Sundays. Something needs to be done to recapture the true essence of following Jesus.

The author encourages us not to run and hide, or to declare open warfare, but to engage in a subversive way of thinking and acting, using the same methods as Jesus. Our mission is to share Jesus with a broken world, alleviate the needs around us, and focus on both the local community and the larger world. Like the servants in the parable of the talents, we are accountable for the callings that we have been given. We are called to display uncommon integrity, to turn the other cheek, to give more than what we are asked for, and to love our enemies. We are called to eliminate the idols in our lives, instead living our lives in authentic worship of the one true God.

Many of Ed Stetzer’s books are heavily footnoted and have an academic tone. This one is not like that. It is a passionate description of his views on the way forward for the church in the West. In many ways there is little new about what he has to say: it is all in the Bible and has been preached many times before. The book is more a timely call for us to recapture our essential calling to make a redemptive difference in the world.

Major-General Kahinda Otafiire, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs in Uganda, is reported to have come up with a bold way to end poverty: “I will arrest those who are poor and do not want to work.” Undoubtedly idleness does eventually lead to poverty; as Proverbs 10:4 says, “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.” However, is poverty in Uganda attributable primarily to idleness, or to something else?

Poverty, at least of the financial type, arises when a person’s outgoings exceed his or her income. If a person lives in an environment where there are no opportunities to make an income exceeding the cost of living, then the person will be trapped in poverty regardless of how hard he or she works. For many of the world’s poor, the cost of living is high because of exploitation by officials, and goods are often expensive because the poor do not have access to supermarkets and other low-cost distribution networks.

Undoubtedly some poor families suffer because the man of the household spends his time in bars rather than working. But will arresting such people help to cure the general problem of poverty? Ugandan prisons are already overcrowded. Imprisoning people increases the burden on society without creating any advantages. The real (but very difficult) way to reduce poverty is to change the ecosystem in which people live, so that there are plenty of opportunities for them to earn income exceeding their outgoings.

Celebrations accompanying the recent discoveries of oil in Kenya may have been somewhat premature, according to Bill Page of Deloitte Consulting, writing in the East African. Gas was discovered in Tanzania at the Songo Songo field in 1974, but commercial production did not begin until some thirty years later. The delay was largely caused because there was insufficient local demand to justify exploitation, and the costs of transport to other markets was too high.

East African oil suffers from similar potential problems. East African infrastructure is underdeveloped, and East Africa is a long way from the main energy consumers in Europe, North America and Asia, so that transport costs are very high. While demand for oil in East Africa has been increasing rapidly, the total quantity required by that market is very small by global standards and perhaps not sufficient to justify substantial development and infrastructure costs.

In the case of Uganda, the cost of development is estimated at $10 billion. To make a reasonable return on this sized investment, production would need to be around 200,000 barrels per day. Ugandan demand is currently around 15,000 barrels per day, so almost all of the oil produced would have to be exported via a pipeline through another country, thereby subjecting the success of the development to the whims of the government of another country.

Almost three weeks ago the East African Legislative Assembly passed a resolution calling for the trials of four prominent Kenyans charged with orchestrating post-election violence to be transferred from the International Criminal Court to the East African Court of Justice. In an article in this week’s The East African, Mary Wandia outlines some difficulties with this proposal, not the least of which is the fact that the EACJ jurisdiction is limited to interpreting and applying the East African Community Treaty.

Another difficulty with the proposal is the fact that the East African countries do not necessarily see themselves as bound by the decisions of the EACJ. Six years ago, the EACJ found that Kenya had failed to comply with the EAC Treaty in electing members for the East African Legislative Assembly. and Kenya was ordered to pay costs. According to Wandia, Kenya has failed to comply with the costs order. Wandia cites various other instances in which Kenya has allegedly misused the EACJ.

A further difficulty with the proposal is that it is hard to see what might have prompted the Kenyan government to put forward the proposal other than the fear that the ICC will hold the four prominent Kenyans who are currently on trial to account for the crimes which they are alleged to have committed. Perhaps it seems unfair that only a few are being charged when many were guilty; but if that is so, why have no efforts been made to investigate and charge others?

On this day 64 years ago the Jewish People’s Council approved a proclamation which declared the establishment of the State of Israel. Some 6 months previously, the United Nations had recommended adoption of a plan to partition Palestine, with the British Mandate to be replaced by independent Arab and Jewish states, but the plan was opposed by the Arab community, and civil war broke out after the UN resolution, so the plan was never fully implemented.

In December 1947 Britain announced that the Mandate would end at midnight on 14 May 1948, so it was on that day that the proclamation establishing the State of Israel was made. The Arab States invaded on the next day, starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The war carried on, with some interruptions, until the following year when Israel signed a series of Armistice Agreements with neighbouring countries, establishing the Green Line between Israel and surrounding countries.

Several more Arab-Israeli wars followed in ensuing years, with Israel being mostly successful. Israel is a prosperous country, with the highest living standard in the Middle East and one of the highest life expectancies in the world. 75% of the almost 8 million inhabitants are Jewish, although there is a broad spectrum of religious beliefs amongst them, ranging from secularism to ultra-Orthodox.

For some people, love is partly about emotional attraction and partly about a social exchange. It starts when two people are attracted to each other. I say nice thing about you, and you say nice things about me. This type of love thrives in fair weather, but it falls apart when the emotional attraction starts to fade or when one of the parties stops reciprocating. The Bible has a completely different take on love, as exemplified by the fourth chapter of John’s first letter:

Dear friends, we must love each other, because love comes from God, and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God. Someone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God demonstrated his love for us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we can live through him. Real love is not about us loving God, but him loving us. He sent his Son as the sacrifice by which our sins are forgiven. Dear friends, if God loved us so much, we must also love each other. No one has ever seen God, but if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love becomes complete in us.

This is an extraordinary kind of love, owned by a community of people for whom love is not something that you try to earn or steal, or something that you barter for with other people. It is something that you give away for nothing. The goal is not for you to get other people to love you; it is for you to love other people, particularly people whom nobody else loves.

Vision: Lost and Found: The Story of a Church That Got Stuck But Didn’t Stay There by Tim Stevens describes the interesting direction which Granger Community Church has taken over the past few years. Granger has developed a reputation for finding innovative ways of attracting people to church, and as such it has become well known throughout the church world as an archetype of the “attractional” model of church. However, the church’s new direction is something different.

Over the past decade US culture has been changing in a less-church-friendly way. Many people say that it is harder to get friends to agree to come to church. One estimate is that only 40% of people are ever likely to accept an invitation to go to a church; the other 60% are therefore unlikely ever to be reached by existing types of churches. The only way to reach the other 60% is by going to where they are and finding ways of intersecting the gospel with their lives: this is the “missional” model of church.

Granger’s new vision is to become a church which is both attractional and missional. According to the vision statement, the number of people being the Church in their communities seven days a week will outnumber the number of casual Christians just going to church; the Granger campus and programs will be remodelled to help not just the congregation but also the greater community, with Jesus at the centre; and every follower of Jesus will be a reproducing follower of Jesus and every church will be a reproducing church.

In some ways Granger’s new vision is like a reality show. Right at the start of its attempts to redefine itself, the church has put its vision out for public scrutiny. Now we get to watch and see whether it works out as planned. Can people who have become pew-sitters be converted into local missionaries? Can ordinary Christians find effective ways of carrying the gospel to the 60% who are not interested in attending church? Are the targets which have been set achievable?

Something does need to change in the North American church, and plenty of church leaders are grateful to Granger for leading the way in discovering whether “attractional and missional” is a good model to follow.