Tuesday, February 06, 2007

an economy of the church

this excerpt is from a new book by ash barker, "make poverty personal.' he's an aussie from melbourne working with his family in the slums of bangkok with the organization UNOH. john smith wrote the forward and we are just diving into it.

"the bible too often has been reduced to children's entertainment rather than the greatest revelation to respond to poverty and injustice ever written. for when it comes to understanding and responding to poverty the best book to read is still the bible. taken collectively, its threads show us how to respond to the suffering and tragedy that causes and leaves humans in poverty, both in bible times and today. yet this library of insights and pleas is rarely appreciated and even more rarely acted upon. this can be attested to by the fact thta 99 per cent of western church income is spent on itself."

1 comment:

billy said...

Geoff,

What a great excerpt from a book that looks fascinating, thanks sharing it. I can't believe that statistic about how the income of the church is spent. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement in that respect. I'm trying to finish a short story at the moment that picks up on that topic a little bit. I'll forward a draft of it to you when I get it finished. Keep going......