Hey Evolving Church! We hope you're getting as excited for the conference as we are.

We were reflecting on a response Brian McLaren (Evolving Church, '06) gave a week ago at the 'Why Everything Must Change' conference to a question and thought we'd share it with you. As he was answering he commented on how the Church, as of late, has been great on engaging issues of 'mercy' but has not done so well engaging issues of 'justice.' Mclaren remarked how the Church often talks about justice but what we really mean is mercy. He describes mercy as caring for the hurting and oppressed. In comparison, justice is resisting the forces and powers that oppress people.

To better make his point McLaren quoted Jim Wallis (Evolving Church, '07), as he described a scenario. "Imagine yourself standing near a waterfall enjoying the view and the beauty of God's creation when suddenly you hear a voice crying for help and you see upstream there is someone floating, helpless, towards the waterfall. You and your friends grab a branch and whatever else might help and you go in and pull this person to the shore. As everyone is rejoicing at the disaster that was averted and the life that was saved, you hear another voice in the water; they too are floating helpless towards the waterfall. Once more everyone grabs the branch and links arms, eventually grabing the person and pulling them to shore. Yet a third time you hear another voice and as you look upstream you see person after person bobbing up and down, floating helplessly towards the waterfall." Mercy, as McLaren points out, is pulling these people out of the water. Justice is marching up the river and finding out who is throwing these people in the water and putting a stop to it. The Church is good at doing mercy but not as good at doing justice. We need to continue to do mercy, but it's problematic when when show mercy without justice, thereby enabling powers to continue throwing people into the river.

We'll be grappling with these issues at the Evolving Church: Amidst the Powers. How do we bring justice to the forces in our world that are using their power to oppress not liberate; to bring death not life? How does the Church bring justice to those powers of injustice?

If you have any questions or comments feel free to head over to our Facebook page and post them up on our Wall and generate some discussion about them.

The Evolving Church: Amidst the Powers
March 21, 2009
Stanley Hauerwas, Marva Dawn, Walter Wink