Q & R: How would you get started?

Here’s the Q:

I read Everything Must Change a few years back and followed up with A Generous Orthodoxy, and they have been reverberating through my soul and my small church community since then. I had the incredible opportunity to attend the Wild Goose festival and hear you in person and it really drove me to go back and look at my response to your work. I keep feeling this push to find a way to be a wrench in the cogs of the “suicidal system” in my local context.
I live in ultra-conservative [town in] Texas and my faith community is trying to get started with a more active role in exposing injustice. I’ve had a couple of great conversations since being back from Wild Goose and the question of how to start keeps coming up. There aren’t many (if any at all) groups protesting the city’s very poor treatment of the homeless, or the completely unfair treatment of the LGBTQ community. If you were going to try to organize and get started from what might be scratch, how would you go about getting others involved and finding the most effective actions?

Here’s the R:


First, I’m so glad that EMC is having its desired effect! In many ways, all my other books are prequels or sequels to EMC.
Here are five suggestions in response to your question – a question I hope lots of other people will start asking too!
1. Discern …
The two issues you mentioned are both important, so I don’t think you need to choose which you do: you can do both as a group. But that will mean either a) focusing on one first, and then addressing the other, or b) seeing which members of your group would feel more called to which issue. This is the kind of thing you can set a period of time to pray about … and then see how the Spirit leads.
2. Discover …
Discover who is already engaged. There are state or local officials, for example, who might be shocked to have a faith community make an appointment – not to complain, not to criticize, but to say, “We care. How can we help?” There are nonprofits who have these issues as part of their vocation … it would be great to collaborate with them. I wouldn’t care whether they were overtly “Christian” or not – I would trust that the Holy Spirit is at work through all collaboration on behalf of those in need. The web will, of course, be an invaluable resource here, as it will for the next suggestion …
3. Dig …
As you proceed, you’ll need to do some research. Books, online resources, news archives, interviews … The Bible has a lot to say about wisdom coming from many counselors, so this is an essential step. Some of your members will especially excel here – depend on them. But get everyone involved. The learning process is essential to your effectiveness.
4. Dive in …
Eventually, you’ll have a sense of some first steps to take – still part of your learning process, but also part of your practical engagement. As your experience expands, you’ll go back to step one to discern what to do next, and so on.
5.Develop your spiritual lives in the process …
Keep integrating and expanding your spiritual practices in with this kind of action … the two go together perfectly. I think that Naked Spirituality will provide some resources for your group as you seek to serve God’s children in the power of the Spirit, following the example of Jesus.
Please let us know what transpires!