Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

This year’s issue is poverty. Let’s be honest… poverty sucks. Nobody who’s in poverty wants to be there. So why is anyone in poverty? What’s the root cause of poverty? Can we do anything about it?

Talking about poverty in the United States seems a little like talking about electricity within the Amish community — we have it, but not much of it (relative to the world), and in seemingly different flavors and for different reasons. I’ve seen some poverty both in the US and in other countries… and frankly, our poverty appears lame by comparison. My wife, who volunteers in a local shelter and has also been to many more regions of the world than I have, has an even clearer perspective. My lineage comes from Armenia… a place with serious, serious poverty. My wife and I support a little girl in Bolivia through Compassion International. And there are of course many, many more places around the globe that are so poor it makes Western poverty look like the Hamptons. I guess it’s relative. Is it?

So how do we end poverty? Well… we don’t. For me as a Christ-follower I’m called to fight poverty, but not to END it. We’re NEVER going to end poverty. You can’t end poverty any more than you can end indigestion or greed. Poverty is the result of humanity’s fallen-ness and depravity. We are by nature very clever and slightly evil. Anyone who’s spent any time at a homeless shelter knows that some people, no matter how much wealth they’re given, will be impoverished again eventually.

Ok, so how do we fight poverty? And even more importantly for Christ-followers like me… how do we fight poverty in a way that glorifies God, rather than in a way that glorifies secular humanism. One of the best scriptural assessments I’ve found anywhere addressing this issue was this article here, titled The Cause and Cure of Poverty, written by John Armstrong for Mark Driscoll’s TheResurgence blog. My own attempt to directly word-tackle this issue would seem pathetic next to John’s article… so just read his! Seriously!

Some excerpts:

What causes poverty? The question presently plagues many serious Christian thinkers and leaders. The answers vary but the proposed solutions are the stuff of our political campaigns every four years. We can already hear the discussion from the various candidates for the presidency in 2008, both Republican and Democrat.

[...]

…Capitalism is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian moral code. (This is not to defend all that Adam Smith, the so-called father of modern capitalism, wrote since Smith made mistakes as any theorist will.) …Capitalism is not rooted in greed at all, as is falsely argued by numerous Christian activists today. …Capitalism, when it is rightly understood, is rooted in altruism. And it is fundamentally based upon creativity, the creativity of both service and wealth. …Wealth is good, something many pious Christians have a hard time appreciating.

[...]

Simply put, capitalism creates new wealth, it doesn’t simply capture it or steal it from others.

Think about the much-maligned Wal-Mart chain. Politicians, and the various critics of modern forms of American capitalism, routinely attack Wal-Mart even though their overall record as a company is generally one of helping create jobs, of providing goods at cheaper prices and of stimulating creative economic changes. Yes, mom and pop stores do suffer when Wal-Mart moves to town. But that is the nature of the system. Mom and pop will have to adjust. The spirit of freedom allows them to do exactly that if they become creative enough to work better within the free-market system.

[...]

Socialism always destroys personal freedoms by trying to plan for other lives through a central government system that watches out for you. (This is why President Reagan once quipped that the worst words you could ever hear were these: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you!”) Capitalism allows you to plan for yourself. It allows for creativity and enterprise. Furthermore, it encourages people to provide for others in order to express their creativity through goods and services. Greed is, in reality, inimical to capitalism. Greed drives the welfare state more than it does capitalism since greedy people want unearned rewards to be given to them by a benevolent government that levels the playing field. Such a system directly causes people to petition governments to solve their personal problems, and the bigger the government’s role becomes the worse the nightmare.

The problem with liberal economic state-based solutions is that they undermine this cycle of personal success and initiative. Capitalism allows even “the wretched of the earth” to succeed. Envy and greed create wars and revolutions. Witness the great twentieth century bloodbaths, most of which revolved around economic thoughts and the role of government in engineering material possession and seeking to level the playing field economically.

[...]

Many young Christians are being sold a bill of goods about the evils of capitalism by evangelical writers such as Ron Sider, Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis. The intentions of these men are generally good. They desire equality, which is good. They also hate injustice and racism. This is also very good. But the equality of means and income is not the basis of real freedom. Even lifting everyone out of poverty is not possible since poverty is rooted in much more than access to more money.

Indeed, it seems too many Christian folks are buying into a form of humanist socialism as a means to address society’s social justice issues. Their heart may be in the right place… but Christ tells us that WE (His followers) are the ones who are supposed to be doing that work IN HIS NAME, so that HE get’s the glory rather than some socialist system. So rather than pay higher taxes into an impersonal, godless system of idiotic wealth redistribution we should be supporting free markets and lower taxes so that not only is new wealth is created for all, but so we have more personal income to directly invest (both with our money and volunteer time) into Christ-honoring ministries that fight poverty and win souls.

Free market capitalism and lower taxation actually become a major part of the Christ-follower’s fight against poverty — surprise surprise.

The blessing of the bar isn’t a pagan ritual, nor is the bar (called The Taproom) unholy in some inherent way. In fact, since Terra Nova Church meets right next door it is a great spot for us Terra Nova types to gather. Some of us even meet there once a month for Theology at the Taproom. The folks at The Taproom are our neighbors and Ed Marcelle would readily call it an honor to call God’s rich blessing down upon a great gathering place with great ales. There are many principles at work here, but I think chief among them is the calling to affect our culture. This is a clear Biblical command and articulated most clearly in Mark Driscoll‘s outstanding book The Radical Reformission.

Inevitably, there’ll always be the chorus of legalists, isolationists, and curmudgeonly saints who invoke one of many false dogmas to not-so-nicely disparage this “blessing of the bar”. To these confused folk either the ale is evil, or the bar is evil, or the people in the bar are evil… blah blah blah. Whatever. I can’t help but want to suggest they read a Bible in their own language for a change of pace (yes, that was a subtle KJV dig).

Anyways, without further blabber, here is the video from the St. Patty’s Day 2007 blessing of the bar by Ed Marcelle. I wouldn’t have missed this anti-legalistic pilgrimage for anything… I was there on the second floor and you can hear me in the video yell “MARCELLE!” when he is introduced.

Thankfully, the resurgence of microbrewing in the United States is helping to overcome the great loss and to resurrect the art of brewing. I personally long for the return to the glory days of Christian pubs where God’s men gather to drink beer and talk theology.
- Mark Driscoll, The Radical Reformission

Now, many Protestant Christian churches in America have been near-continually lying to their congregations for almost a century about what the Bible says on wine and alcohol. They deny that Christ both made and drank wine with his apostles despite overwhelming scriptural evidence. Not until fairly recently in US history has the newer church generation been mature and powerful enough to start casting out the feminism-driven romance with prohibitionism (alcohol is sin) and abstentionism (it’s not a sin but Christians should abstain) that has been perpetuated by “nearly-false” prophets. To be fair, not EVERYONE preaching such blasphemy does so from a Satanic heart… some are merely ignorant or mentally blocked by their legalistic upbringing… but never-the-less it is a sin to declare a sin something that is not.

Diligently do everything I command you, the way I command you: don’t add to it; don’t subtract from it.
- Deuteronomy 12:32 (The Message Bible)

It never ceases to amaze me how anyone (even people trying to pass off as Christ-followers) will re-write and re-interpret history and scripture to suit their own purposes. I’ve expanded on such in my previous post Chardonnay and Lean Pockets. Here’s a link regarding what the Bible says about alcohol [LINK] and a link that even specifically addresses Jesus drinking beer [LINK]. And yet another link on the history of beer in the Christian-influenced world [LINK].

If self-righteousness were an art form, many Protestants’ work would be in the Guggenheim!
- Brad Stine

Here is a little history refresher (taken from The Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll) that I like to bring up every now and then:

• Saint Gall was a missionary to the Celts and a renowned brewer
• After Charlemagne’s reign, the church became Europe’s exclusive brewer
• When a young woman was preparing for marriage, her church brewed a special bridal ale, from which we derive the word bridal
• Pastor John Calvin’s annual salary included upwards of 250 gallons of wine to be enjoyed by him and his guests
• Martin Luther once wrote of the Reformation, “While I sat still and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow.”
• Luther’s wife Catherine was a skilled brewer, and his love letters to her when they were apart lamented his inability to drink her beer
• When the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, the first permanent structure they erected was a brewery

It is a striking truth how scarce the above facts are within Protestant sermons in the US. And as if our myopic faith had no limit to its hypocrisy… our “teachers” often neglect the fellow brothers and sisters in Christ across the ocean who live in cultures not plagued by relics of abstentionism and having no temptation to re-write the Bible. They regularly drink beer and wine with such Christ-given freedom that American visitors from legalistic backgrounds often express great shock and discomfort, a testament to the false doctrine they were force fed from birth.

Some Methodist minister by the name of Welch invents grape juice in 1869 to replace communion wine and we’ve been suckling it ever since.
- Steve Mooradian

I’m no liberal Christian… I’m a politically conservative, theologically fundamental Christ-follower who happens to drink beer and worship in blue jeans playing electric guitar. And now I will brew… but with so many choices of fine ales and lagers I am left to ask myself… what would Jesus brew?

So what is it about this book? First of all… this is not a highfalutin and boring diatribe on Christian blah blah blah. In fact, nowhere are the words highfalutin or diatribe used. But the book is written very well, and with a straight-forward no-nonsense manner that breathes honesty… and is injected with a poignant wit that can only come from sincerity. In effect, Mark Driscoll writes perfectly.

“Reaching Out Without Selling Out” is the tagline for this tome of relevancy. And indeed, being relevant (and theologically sound) is what makes modern missions effective (see my previous post on relevance). If ever there was an instruction manual on how to be a Christ-follower carrying out the great commission right where you are… surely this is it! Most of our present approaches to reach the world fail… and we need a radical change in how we share the truth to reach our post-Christian culture. That radical change is what Driscoll calls “reformission”.

We are all on a mission with Jesus everyday, and we are either good missionaries or bad.

I could write for days on the topics expressed in this book, but you’d assassinate me or my wife would leave me, so I’ll be pithy. Driscoll makes clear that effective churches need to have the message of Jesus (the gospel), a true gathering of believers, and hearts in tune with the culture they reside in. Missing any of these three creates a ministry that lacks a vital component of who Christ told us to be. The balanced blending of all three of these, built on the foundation of the Bible, is what being a reformission Christian is all about.

What most churches and Christians seem to have the problem with is “culture”. Reaching the world actually means you have to go in the world… and if you think that’s intuitively obvious you haven’t been to many churches lately. Most church leaders will pay out mad duckets to send someone to an unpronounceable wasteland thousands of miles away to spend years learning and embracing the language and culture and music. Yet these same “leaders” won’t learn the music of their own culture a mere one mile away. You can’t make this stuff up. Driscoll calls the Christians that ignore their own culture “traditionalists”.

…Traditionalism fails to distinguish between Biblical principles for ministry and cultural methods for implementing those principles. Traditionalism clings to dated ineffective methods in the name of staying truer to tradition than to Scripture. The result of traditionalism is a Christianity that has all of the right answers to all of the wrong questions…

I remember a good friend who was the Principal of a school in Michigan. He would watch the show Dawson’s Creek religiously. As adult male to adult male I would toss him the obligatory hardship for devoting his time to such a teeny-bopper diversion. But you know what he told me? When asked why he watches it he responded in a tone similar to someone answering a trivia question they already knew the answer to… “All my students are watching it.” That really stuck with me… that short sentence spoke volumes.

Reformission Christians and churches exist to perpetuate the gospel and should be swift to change their cultural forms if they are not the most beneficial for achieving that goal. This is what Paul told the Corinthians about being all things to all people and using all means to see as many people as possible saved (1 Cor. 9:19-23). Reformission churches have to continually examine and adjust their musical styles, websites, aesthetics, acoustics, programming, and just about everything but their Bible in an effort to effectively communicate the gospel to as many people as possible in the cultures around them.

At the end of each chapter in the book Driscoll includes an interview with a reformission Christian. These people span the full spectrum for sure… Hollywood insider, secular radio host, former exotic dancer turned office administrator, secular band manager, television broadcaster, pub & brewery owner and operator… and my favorite, the tattoo and piercing studio owner, operator, and artist (who also owns his own tattoo magazine).

The tattoo guy’s remarks showed more insight than a dozen Christian Sociologists could journal together in a week, and packed more truthful punch than a 100mph Gideons King James taken in the belly. When asked about his ministry…

[I'm] revealing the truth of the gospel to everyone I come in contact with, primarily people between eighteen and thirty-five, and many who are very unlikely to set foot in a traditional church setting.

[...]

I feel I was put in this particular profession for the purpose of reaching this postmodern generation with the truth of the gospel in the arena of a desperate, lost, and angry culture. My goal every day is not to target and convert anyone but to look for opportunities when I might be able to show Christ’s love to people who have never once been shown what the real message of the gospel is. What they have been told, and what they’ve seen themselves, are the lies of legalism masquerading as the gospel, and “quick to judge and condemn” Christians pointing their fingers at them.

[...]

From what I see in the Gospels, Jesus preached to a society from within the culture of his day, not from above it as the Pharisees did. In my opinion, the majority of churches today are more concerned with converting one cultural image into their own cultural image, with the implication that theirs is “Christian” (where no one drinks alcohol or listens to secular music and everyone dresses in business attire), while those cultures which differ from their view are not. Once again, this is definitely pharisaical. Unfortunately, I find this sums up the majority of the church world all too well.

Wow! How true is that!

Driscoll deftly crafts the path to reformission, and it involves breaking down several myths that have been injected by the enemy into churches over the years (and no, this does NOT involve the Da Vinci Code). The biggest myth to me was “culture equals worldliness”. The fact that Christians have regarded to two as synonyms has nearly killed reformission.

There are elements in every culture that could be used to oppose God and His work on the Earth but that are in and of themselves neutral and useable for either sin or worship. Examples include tasty food that could be used for either sinful gluttony or holy feasting, music that could be used for either idolatry or worship, and stylish clothing that could be used for either lust or beauty.

And of course, what book on being culturally relevant would be complete without a quick refresher on alcohol. Our feminism-driven romance with prohibitionism (alcohol is sin) and abstentionism (it’s not a sin but Christians should abstain) has sickeningly not only produced a couple generations of pussified church leaders, but has made them dangerously close to being liars. Indeed, the enemy has been using this lie to mislead an entire nation of believers. So, compliments of Mark Driscoll, let’s have a history lesson, shall we?

• Saint Gall was a missionary to the Celts and a renowned brewer
• After Charlemagne’s reign, the church became Europe’s exclusive brewer
• When a young woman was preparing for marriage, her church brewed a special bridal ale, from which we derive the word bridal
• Pastor John Calvin’s annual salary included upwards of 250 gallons of wine to be enjoyed by him and his guests
• Martin Luther once wrote of the Reformation, “While I sat still and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow.”
• Luther’s wife Catherine was a skilled brewer, and his love letters to her when they were apart lamented his inability to drink her beer
• When the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, the first permanent structure they erected was a brewery

Most of those facts I did not previously know. Indeed I have cause to believe much Biblical truth on alcohol has been obscured from many a pulpit for many years. Some Methodist minister by the name of Welch invents grape juice in 1869 to replace communion wine and we’ve been suckling it ever since.

Thankfully, the resurgence of microbrewing in the United States is helping to overcome the great loss and to resurrect the art of brewing. I personally long for the return to the glory days of Christian pubs where God’s men gather to drink beer and talk theology.

Fortunately where I worship is inside a nightclub operated by (and right nextdoor to) Brown’s Brewing Company, a great local pub and microbrewery. But why does the alcohol thing matter? Driscoll explains this and much more in the book. I need to quit now or I’ll never stop… but maybe meet me for a Cherry Raspberry Ale at Brown’s and we can speak more on these things… as true Christians like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien would… over a beer.