I promised a few weeks ago to spend more time thinking and writing about ecclesiology. Doing so requires reflection on the story of God and his people.

I am in the midst of a great ongoing discussion with thewalrus about whether evangelism is an OK thing to do to people. I am arguing that it is, under certain conditions. One of those conditions came up wihen Amy and I were talking with our church planting mentor recently.

He asked us which churches in Seattle are growing, and I said that I was hesitant to answer conclusively because I think some churches are growing at the expense of the Kingdom as a whole. Their theology says that what’s good news for us is bad news for everyone else.

In one sense, this is understandable. If we have The Truth and you don’t, too bad for you, right?

If someone declines to get in on our way of life, then yes, they are missing out, and that’s too bad for them. But that doesn’t mean the Good News has to be bad news for them.

I believe in a way of life in Jesus, in covenant with the Creator God, that is good for the whole world, even for those who don’t buy in.

Say there’s a sale at Macy’s, the best sale ever. I’m going, and I want all the pople I care about to benefit from the amazing prices. I invite people to come with me, offer to give them a ride, even to loan them money if they’re short on cash. Anything so they don’t miss this opportunity.

Let’s say my friend Bob isn’t into shopping, and says he probably won’t go to the sale, even though I know he needs some new clothes and will save money. (Never mind how I know this - stick with me.)

When I hear Bob’s response, what are my options?

1. Do nothing. Enjoy the benefits of the sale for myself, but don’t worry about Bob. After all, it’s his life.

2. Tell Bob he’s a fool, and go on and on about the horrible consequences of his choice. Tell him he’ll suffer if he doesn’t go to the sale, then write him off. Don’t talk to him again, except to remind him of the sale.

Most churches take one of these first two approaches, neither of which embodies God’s promise to make the people of Abraham - and ultimately the church - a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.

How can the church bless those who have not accepted its message? There is a third option in our fable.

3. Go to the sale, enjoy it fully, and get something for Bob.

Amy and I were on the Harding campus today and were interviewed about our church planting efforts for a video that will be shown in chapel.

Afterward, we ate lunch in the student center. The sandwich shop’s fare was quite good. As we got ready to leave, though, we noticed that there was no place to recycle our glass and plastic beverage bottles. Not in the student center, not in the Heritage Center, not in the caf lobby. Nowhere outside, either.

We drove past the freshman girls’ dorm (Sears Hall) and saw a huge dumpster outside to hold all the move-in trash such as cardboard boxes from new microwaves. A huge amount of this material is recyclable - probably over 50 percent of move-in trash, which is mostly packaging.

I don’t know the economics of recycling vs. garbage in Searcy, but generally it’s cheaper to get rid of recycling than garbage - not to mention the environmental impact of all that unnecessary landfill-bound material.

It’s the 21st century. Is recycling really all that much to ask, even in a very red part of a very red state? We did it when we lived off-campus in Searcy our junior and senior years. Recycling is not exactly left-wing or fringe any more.

What would be a good way to get HU to recycle?

When I was in college, the student body leadership started a bike-sharing program to let people without their own bikes get to class faster. They were called ‘Bison Bikes’ after our school mascot, and painted in gold and black, the school colors.

Back then, the motive was to reduce driving from class to class and mitigate parking and traffic issues. Today, we’re more concerned about the environmental impact of too much driving.

Paris has started a bike-sharing program similar to Harding’s. The 10,000 bikes the’ve made available are being used around six times a day, for over a million trips so far.

The Bison Bikes were all stolen or destroyed within a month. After that, they became something of a campus joke. Let’s hope the Paris program(me) is more sustainable.

Of course, Paris has trains and a subway. T’would be nice.

A few months ago, I blogged about a loan I helped fund for Sikinanene Sauyi, an entrepreneur in Kenya who used the $450 she borrowed from Kiva to buy some steers to raise.

Many other people contributed to Sikinanene’s loan; she received the funds a few weeks later and used the funds to purchase the steers.

Now, she has paid back the loan in full - $450 in ten months. This is the first loan in my Kiva portfolio to be fully repaid, and now I am loaning the $75 to three other borrowers. For me, this is a gratifying proof that the concept works. I don’t know how much better off Sikinanene is, but I assume the loan made a difference, and I know the money is being used properly and is being paid back.

Kiva continues to expand, and struggles to post enough loan requests to keep up with the funding demand that follows each big media story on their operation. ABC News had a story on Kiva in June, shortly after they started offering loans to Iraqis. Over 1,000 people signed up with Kiva within 24 hours, donating over $100,000:

The first Iraq entrepreneurs to join this lending service went up on the Kiva Web site just two weeks ago. Photographs of their faces were blurred to protect their identities…

“A lot of people had the same reaction I did, which was, ‘This is my chance!’” said Christian Conti of Washington, D.C., who loaned $25 to a mobile phone shop owner in Kirkuk. “As someone who watches the news play out day to day & and all you hear is the negative news & you say, ‘Man, I wish I could do something.’”
…
“Right now the Iraqis are going to quickest. I think they all got funded in half a day, which is the fastest sector on our site right now,” [Kiva spokesperson Matt] Flannery added.

Some of the Americans who responded told ABC news the loans were their way of helping with Iraq’s reconstruction, lifting an economy left in tatters by the U.S. invasion.

It’s working - all 411 loans listed in the Middle East region, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan, have been fully funded (if more loans in the Middle East are posted and still in need of funding, they’ll show up here).

Kiva has also managed to do a great job of ensuring people pay back their loans by working closely with local lending agents:

Only one out of 9,000 borrowers has defaulted on a Kiva loan; all others have paid back or started to pay back their lenders. While the individual lenders on Kiva don’t collect interest on their loan, the borrowers do pay interest to Kiva’s field partners at a rate of roughly 13 percent to help cover their operating expenses. That’s usually far less than the interest charged by banks or other institutions that are available to make loans.

Kiva provides people like you and me - people with PayPal accounts and a little cash we can spare - the opportunity to invest in others, making a sustainable difference in their lives. This is not charity; it is microfinance.

Loan money to entrepreneurs around the world with Kiva

Inspired by my friend Lukas and by Mark Elrod’s Signs of the Impending Apocalypse (which is basically wacky Friday news), I am starting a new serial feature called the Kick In The Neck Awards (or KITNA, archived here), celebrating those whose accomplishments/antics are worthy of nothing less than a kick in the neck. Think of it as an ig-Nobel Prize.

Our first winner is Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health & Human Services, who said recently that expanding the S-CHIP program, which provides health care coverage for children from low- and moderate-income families and is currently up for debate in congress, would be bad because it would cause longer lines at the doctor’s office:

If you increase the … number of people who are covered by government insurance, you’re ultimately going to see higher taxes, you’re going to see long waiting lines, and you’re going to see lower quality. link

The expansion would be funded by a $0.61 per pack cigarette tax, in case you’re wondering exactly which taxes Mr. Leavitt is talking about.

Let me get this straight: If we provide free healthcare for more children, the children of America will suffer because the lines will be longer, and doctors will magically reduce the quality of treatment they provide, presumably because they are being paid by the government instead of a private insurance company or the parent.

Let’s sharpen that comparison a bit: Mr. Leavitt is saying it would be better for some kids to receive no medical care at all than to wait in longer lines due to the increased number of people with access to medical care. I assume he means the lines will be longer for those who currently have medical coverage, since the rest can’t even get in the line.

It sounds like Mr. Leavitt subscribes to Richard Nixon’s theory of healthcare: the less, the better. You can hear the audio tape of Mr. Nixon discussing the benefits of private health insurance in Michael Moore’s film SiCKO.

It seems as if people assume that medical care is like candy - if you make it free, people will take too much, and it will be bad for them as well as too costly for taxpayers. Is that really what medical care is like? While I realize that there are hypochondriacs who may seek unnecessary medical care, the DSM-IV says that only 1-5% of the population suffers from this disorder, and at any rate, the medical decisions are made by competent doctors. We should never have a goal of minimizing the amount of medical care we provide; we should provide what is necessary according to sound medical judgment, not economics.

So, Mr. Leavitt, congratulations on being the first person declared by this website to be worthy of a kick in the neck.

*Disclaimer: I am not actually advocating violence against any public figure; I am simply pointing out that if an action movie were made about a KITNA laureate’s life, and Matt Damon were to kick said individual in the neck, I would enjoy watching that particular scene.

Note: If you were to make a logo for the KITNA, I would be most amused.