James Pedrick

Starting the Week: What’s your calling? (video)

My heart breaks for Jason Russell, his family, and everyone at IC.

Over at ACT:S, we are focusing on what it means to “Sacrifice What Calls You” this week as part of Relentless ACT:S of Sacrifice. As someone who is paid to live my talents & calling toward connecting faith and justice, I’m having a hard time jumping into this challenge, but I know many of the other participants are students just at the beginning of defining their careers or vocations. The strange events surrounding Jason is bound to bring up thoughts and questions for our own life and what it means to sacrifice calling for God’s kingdom of love and justice.

In the midst of this, I am thankful for this inspiring video made by Scott Erickson.

Please watch it and add to the conversation. And please keep Jason, his family, and the fine folks at IC in your prayers.

My job is so cool!

Next week is going to be a fun week. We’re working on an exciting new project for World Vision ACT:S — that I can’t tell you about yet. But part of it entails being inspired by some amazing creative activists — like this guy!

Penn State & A Generation’s Failed Leadership

Thomas Day’s Washington Post op-ed, titled “Penn State, my final loss of faith,” hit me harder than anything I’ve read in a long time. Day introduces himself and his article like this:

I’m 31, an Iraq war veteran, a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, a native of State College, acquaintance of Jerry Sandusky’s, and a product of his Second Mile foundation.

And I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation.

Day then writes a blistering critique of our political leaders, Church leadership, and of course the failed leadership at Penn State. He later writes:

They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.

Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.

For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.

As witnessed by more than 500 comments and this enlightening Q&A the Washington Post arranged three days later, Day hit upon something that many young people are thinking: something is very wrong with the world and the way our parents’ generation are leading.

All I can say is: let’s do better.

(P.S. here’s a great way to start. Check out my friend’s post “Millions of Stories like Penn State”)

The 99%… and the Parable of the Lost Sheep

There is a resurgence of protests taking place in America. Whether it’s the strike in Wisconsin, a Tea Party rally, or the Occupy Wall Street protests happening now, people are looking to have their voices heard.

But I am a bit concerned with how many of these demonstrations model activism on issues of poverty and injustice.

People usually don’t respond well to threats or being told what to do. Activism that focuses on guilt or demands usually causes division and rarely creates unity.

In Luke 15, we see a different form of activism modeled. And “the 99 vs. the 1” in this case are sheep. In the passage, Pharisees question how Jesus is gathering and eating with sinners and tax collectors. They don’t believe Jesus should welcome these sinners until they meet the demands of their scriptures.

In response, Jesus shares this parable:

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

Christ’s response to his lost sheep isn’t to make threats or demands, but rather to make an invitation. He invites all of us, just as we are, to join him and his ministry.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, demand obedience first. But when we make demands or guilt others, we fail to help cultivate a heart or a world where injustice and gross inequality is intolerable.

This is the type of activism I hope we’ll live - where we invite, rather than require, others to be a part of God’s works of justice. Where rich and poor alike choose to make sacrifices to build a more just world.