Music for the City is hosting a HOPE for HAITI Benefit Concert on Monday night @ The Parish. This immediate response is for the tremendous need for relief among Haitians. Plan on coming and supporting. Let’s show Haiti they are loved!
Proceeds will go to REAL HOPE for HAITI, a non-profit organization providing medical relief and care for severely malnourished children in Haiti.
As the statistics roll in, pictures cross our screens, and shivers go down our spines regarding the plight of the Haitians, we need somewhere to go with this immense suffering. I want to suggest three places:
1. Go to God in prayer for the Haitians to encounter true, whole gospel relief and attention–spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, socially, and physically. Pray, “Lord have Mercy on the Haitians!”
2. Before putting God in the dock, remember that although we all deserve death, God has graciously given some of us life. How are you using your life? Will you use it to bring blessing and hope to hurting Haitians? How will you live in response to Haiti? We will all suffer and die, perhaps not en masse or in great tragedy, but we will suffer and die. How will you suffer? How will you die?
3. Respond intelligently and deliberately to the plight of the poor.
This is a great opportunity for you make good culture, redeem social ill, and share a whole gospel. Don’t waste the opportunity.
We can’t plant a missional churches that don’t address Work. Most people spend the lion’s share of their time in their field of work. That field of work is not only a mission field, but it is a city field. It is an urban domain.
Cities are comprised of anywhere from 5-10 city domains: Government, Arts, Education, Social Services, Health Services, Technology, Family, etc. Missional Churches must do the hard work of helping their people see their vocation in urban domains in terms of missional calling, not merely for evangelism but for whole gospel living.
Although I’ve thought, worked, and taught on Work as Mission for a few years, this is only the third message on work in the past 20 months as Austin City Life. We need to continue to resource, inspire, equip, and release people into the Mission of Work. Over at Creation Project I’ve listed some practical ways to do this. Feel free to share yours!
Amiable Religion reporter, Joshunda Sanders, visited Austin City Life on Sunday and gave us a nice review in the Austin Statesman Of Sacred & Secular blog. I think she did a good job describing a Sunday for us. I’ve included an excerpt:
From Dodson’s wife to a couple whose bills had been paid anonymously by the church community, members addressed the congregation during the hour-long service in a spirit of love and gratitude. “It’s great to know that the Gospel is more than words on a page,” David Hampton, a member said. “The Gospel is a living God, not just an old guy on a cloud with a ZZ Top beard.
The rest of the article goes into greater detail. Thank you Lord for a good, gospel-reflecting review!
