The Micah Challenge

The Forester lecture on the Micah Challenge was very interesting. The Micah challenge is based off of the scripture found in Micah 6:8: “He has showed you, oh man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To ACT JUSTLY, LOVE MERCY, and to WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD.” So true. What problems could be solved if everyone lived by that verse! Anyway, Peter Meulen also related the Micah Challenge to a promotion of the new Narnia movie: Real World. Real Lion. Real Church. To this he added =Real Integral Missions. He talked a lot about the idea of integral missions. Integral missions are the “proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other.” Basically, we have to SHOW the message of the gospel as we present it. This is the key to ending social injustice. I think this is something a lot of churches struggle with. Yes, most churches sponsor missionaries, but a lot of them get too comfy in their rituals and traditions and then don’t work on reaching out in missions in their own community – except maybe during the holidays with various food and gift drives. We need to get out of our comfy box and really try to demonstrate what we say we believe. That would certainly have huge consequences – I mean, I know several people who will not believe the gospel because the churches and the people in the churches, the “Christians,” are not doing what we say were suppose to be doing. I need to work on that myself – I think we all do in some way or another.