Month: January 2010

Categories
Poverty

Human Trafficking in Africa

For many people living in poverty, the choices are grim: stay where you are, and see your life ebb away through hunger, illness and insecurity, with no obvious prospect of ever bettering yourself; or seek to become an economic refugee in some wealthier part of the world. Those who become economic refugees often risk everything, including all their money and their personal safety, in the hope of eventually finding a better life.

In Africa, there are plenty of black-market vendors of hope running people smuggling operations. The nearest wealthy country for many Africans is South Africa, and many people entrust their lives and their life’s savings to networks of human traffickers in the hope of finding a path through Africa to a new life of prosperity in the south. Human trafficking has become a multi-million dollar business, and those who become ensnared by the networks often end up being sexually exploited and subject to forced labour.

The Nairobi suburb of Eastleigh has become a centre of human trafficking. Refugees from Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Kenya start their journeys and pay most of their money there. They are sent via long and difficult routes to other countries, crossing borders in obscure places, and constantly being targeted for bribes by corrupt officials. When they reach their hoped-for destinations, they are usually unwelcome, and they are frequently imprisoned and then deported back to where they came from.

Categories
Future

The church in the next ten years

The church in the West has seen a number of significant changes and innovations over the past decade; what further changes is it likely to see in the next ten years? Brady Boyd, senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, has made four predictions about what the church will look like in ten years. He says that the church will become smaller, the church will become more missional, the church will become more ancient, and the church will become more supernatural.

On a global basis, the church has been getting bigger, with rapid gains in Asia and Africa offsetting any losses in the West, and I think that trend will continue. In America, the church has been getting bigger and smaller at the same time, with the number of megachurches increasing at the same time the number of mid-size churches has been decreasing. Many people are disillusioned by the “stadium worship experience”, but many are not.

I think it remains to be seen whether the significant decline in doctrinal teaching over the past decade will result in the church becoming more “missional” in the next decade or just less biblically literate. If “more supernatural” means that the church will become more reliant on God, then that is certainly something to hope for, but if it means claiming more fake miracles and healings, then that would be a serious step backwards.

Categories
Present

Politics for personal enrichment at public expense

Former Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi is said to have amassed a personal fortune worth around $1 billion during his presidency. One of his assets is said to be the Kiptagich Tea Factory in the Mau Forest (he claims he only owns a one-quarter share), one of many large tracts of land in the Mau Forest that was illegally allocated when he was president. Unfortunately for Kenya, the Mau Forest is the country’s main water catchment, and the destruction of the Mau Forest is having a serious effect on the country’s rivers, lakes, hydro-electric power and water supply.

Mr Moi says that he was given the land by the Narok County Council some twenty years ago. He says that he did not use his position as head of state to grab the land. He says that the Maasai gave him the land as a way of conserving the Mau Complex by stopping encroachers and that land neighbouring various water towers was allocated to various individuals to act as buffer zones. He did not explain exactly how the Mau Complex could be “conserved” by clearing the land and creating a tea farm.

Perhaps there is a fine line between free-will gifts and compulsory gifts received by the head of state in a single-party country. Perhaps it was thought that a corrupt allocation of land to the president would help smooth the way for corrupt allocations of land to numerous other individuals. There does not seem to have been much thought given to the impropriety of a person holding political office receiving a gift. Now Kenya is faced with the very difficult task of trying to evict the Mau Forest encroachers including the former president.

Categories
Past

How Christianity has changed

How has Christianity changed over the past decade? The opinions of a number of people have recently been published by Christianity Today. Some of the ideas: the emerging church movement has dissipated; the Christian consensus against homosexual marriage in North America has collapsed; there has been a huge surge of Christianity in China; nearly every religious group in America has become involved in faith-based politics.

Islam has re-emerged as a political and religious force, and there is now a much more pragmatic engagement between the West and the Muslim world. Evangelicals are trying to rediscover who they should be and what they should stand for. The global centre of Christianity has moved from North America to Africa, Asia and South America. Knowledge of and commitment to Christian doctrines has declined rapidly.

Are these trends good for Christianity or bad for it? On the whole, I think that they show that Christianity is struggling in North America while at the same time it is thriving in many other parts of the world. Is American Christianity inevitably following the decline of European Christianity? Not necessarily. God moves in miraculous and unexpected ways, and it is therefore almost impossible to predict what the future may hold.

Categories
Faith

Leveraging your citizenship

Jesus did not possess powerful relatives; he did not hold an official position conferring power; he did not have patronage from powerful people; he did not have access to a stash of wealth. His power came entirely from within, and that makes it seem somehow wrong for one of his followers to attempt to take advantage of any sort of power other than power which comes directly from Jesus and the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

On the other hand, it also seems wrong for us to refuse to use in God’s service the tools and talents which God has given us, including any earthly sources of power. On several occasions, the apostle Paul was able to use his Roman citizenship to his advantage, including the occasion reported in Acts chapter 22, when he exercised his right as a Roman citizen to avoid being flogged without first being found guilty of an offence.

Earlier, in chapter 16, Paul and Silas had also proclaimed their Roman citizenship, but surprisingly on that occasion they had waited until after their beating and imprisonment before saying anything. What, if anything, can be drawn from these two incidents? Perhaps the conclusion that there is nothing wrong about using worldly sources of power, but those worldly powers are unlikely to have any significant influence on the advancement of God’s kingdom, which relies exclusively on heavenly power.

Categories
Books

2009 Book of the Year

Out of the 51 books that I reviewed in 2009, which is the best? There were many good books. The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier provides a scientific but readable treatment of the reasons why the world’s poorest countries are failing. Sticky Church by Larry Osborne demonstrates the importance of small groups as a retention strategy for churches. Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo provided a strongly-worded and controversial call to change in the way we help the poor.

It’s Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong provides a gripping account of the recent history of corruption in Kenya. The Monkey and the Fish by Dave Gibbons shows how important it is for churches to embrace third-culture attitudes. A Sense of Urgency by John Kotter provides a well-written guide for overcoming obstacles to organisational change. Africa by Richard Dowden gives extraordinary insights into many African countries.

But the winner of this year’s Choosethecross.com Book of the Year award is Servolution: Starting a Church Revolution Through Serving, by Dino Rizzo. When you start a new church, how do you get people to show up? Dino and his wife DeLynn decided to reach the poor and hurting by doing whatever they could to serve them. The book has an inspiring story line while also providing great advice which can be followed by any church.