Monday, June 27, 2005

Comment from Bill O'Brien

A few thots from yesterday's community-

Parables - perhaps the best evangelistic tool in 2000 years
Real live Christ-ones - the best evangelistic tool in 2000 years.

I like the idea of pursuing some outreach locally as a community - maybe praying for and seeing what else we can do for the Riverhaven people, the low income folks in Meiners Oaks, or helping the Bikers for Christ, or ???
Bill O'Brien

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay, what I'd really like to talk about is the "ONE" thing. It seems a little spineless to me. People, who's monthly salaries alone could feed a million people, asking us to tell the government to use more of the already failing budget to help Africa's poorest. (Note: It's one percent more than we already spend.) Don't get me wrong. It's a great idea, and helping the poor should be way higher on our countries list of priorities.
So how about this, lets tell Bush that we want him to raise taxes by one percent to be used expressly for helping Africa's poorest people. Now that's got some spine! Let's make it 2%!!

Ryan said...

So it is one percent more huh? That's pretty interesting. My biggest issue is that I have no idea what the committee looks like that would allocate those funds. I doubt that Bono is qualified or willing to head it up, and seeing as we have a hard enough time making bipartisan decisions regarding how to spend money in the U.S. to help the poor in the U.S. I'm not real sure how effective the 1 or 2% would be.
However, I still like the heart of the issue, even it is "spineless".

Anonymous said...

I just read your responce Ryan. I was pretty much writing from an emotional place.
Since then, I've seen more about ONE. The spots with Pitt were moving, and I'm so glad for him that he gets to experience the way one person can affect a helpless person. I hope he accomplishes a lot.
I still don't think ONE is the answer. We touched on the answer during the earliest part of our discussion at Community. God has given the responsibility of caring for the poor to the church.
In the past week, I have been moved to tears several times when I was thinking about all those suffering and starving around the world. What is God doing in this body of believers?

Anonymous said...

I haven't been paying attention, but my wife said they got what they wanted from the G8 summit.