I recently returned from Mississauga where I attended a National Strategy Session for the Micah Challenge Canada held at the World Vision Canada national office. I had not heard much about the Micah Challenge before being asked to be one of the representatives of YWAM Canada, so I was intrigued to see what the deal was. The Micah Challenge is the official (affiliated) Evangelical branch of the Make Poverty History movement. Let me give you a brief intro from their site:
The Micah Challenge has been developed by the Micah Network and the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) in response to a groundswell among evangelical Christian churches wanting to contribute at all levels to the alleviation of poverty and to greater justice for poor communities.
Evangelical Christian organizations and local churches have made a major contribution to direct delivery of community development and relief programmes but have largely been invisible as a political force on poverty and justice issues. Notable exceptions are the role played by churches and church organizations worldwide, in the Jubilee 2000 debt campaign, and their growing involvement in the trade justice movement. In the economically poorer countries of the South, a number of church-based organizations have advocated successfully on human rights issues and for constitutional reform. However, these courageous stances taken by local and national churches, have seldom been linked across borders.
This is particularly true of evangelical churches and evangelical parts of the major Christian denominations. The WEA represents approximately 2 million evangelical Christians worldwide, many of whom are in the South. These tend to have very strong local roots and local accountability as a result of their decentralized and less hierarchical structures. However, they have also been less able, as a result, to develop multi-country campaigns on poverty issues.
The Micah Network is made up of 260 Christian-based community development agencies, also predominantly from the South. The Micah Network aims to empower this global community to become involved in advocacy for poor communities, from whom they come and with whom they work.
As the emerging church is calling for a theology of justice and a deeply informed praxis of compassion for the poor, this is an exciting development from within the larger Evangelical church. To that end, we need to get behind this in any way we can. While we may find differences in theological understandings and response to these issues, this unprecidented move from within Evangelicalism should not be discouraged, but invested in, shaped from within. Please get involved.
Micah Challenge Canada is part of the larger Micah Challenge International. Here are some other important expressions of the movement (including Micah Morphosis, the youth track):
Emerging Church
