{"id":113,"date":"2011-02-21T18:14:59","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T18:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/activistfaith\/2011\/02\/great-post-on-the-growth.html"},"modified":"2011-02-21T18:14:59","modified_gmt":"2011-02-21T18:14:59","slug":"great-post-on-the-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2011\/02\/great-post-on-the-growth.html","title":{"rendered":"My Activist Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Great post on the growth of the Activist Faith movement by <a href=\"bibledude.net\">Dan King<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>+++<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/35919843@N07\/3591036326\/in\/set-72157620542465798\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-9521\" src=\"https:\/\/bibledude.net\/teaching-in-kenya-590x442.jpg\" alt=\"\" height=\"442\" width=\"590\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a LOT lately about what it means to be a Christian.<\/p>\n<p>I remember a time when I worked&nbsp;in the youth group&nbsp;with a bunch of<br \/>\n8th-grade guys, and I asked them what it meant to be a Christian. I was<br \/>\npretty new to this whole church thing at the time, and I really wanted<br \/>\nto figure out what to do with it.<\/p>\n<p>Their responses were pretty typical, but they somewhat disturbed me. They rattled off a list of things like&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t swear<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t drink (hmm&#8230; coming from 8th-graders? really?)<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t smoke (again, hmm&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t be mean to people<\/li>\n<li>etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Okay, so they told me a whole bunch of things that they <em>DON&#8217;T<\/em> do, but I wanted to know what they <em>DO<\/em> that shows what it means to be a Christian. That part stumped them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A New Project<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m really excited about a new project that I&#8217;m taking on with authors <a href=\"http:\/\/activistfaith.org\/about\/dillon-burroughs\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dillon Burroughs<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/activistfaith.org\/about\/daniel-darling\/\" target=\"_blank\">Daniel Darling<\/a>.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s a project that we&#8217;re calling Activist Faith. The foundation of it<br \/>\nis a book that we&#8217;re co-authoring together. Another part of it is a<br \/>\nwebsite (<a href=\"http:\/\/activistfaith.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">ActivistFaith.org<\/a>)<br \/>\nthat we&#8217;re developing as ongoing support for the idea. But more than<br \/>\nanything else, this project is talking about a movement. Not one that<br \/>\nwe&#8217;re trying to create, but one that we already see happening.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/activistfaith.org\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-9514\" src=\"https:\/\/bibledude.net\/activist-faith-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" height=\"225\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a>I&#8217;ve recently been working on and just submitted my little piece of the Introduction for the book. It goes something like this&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>One of the best thing about this movement in my mind is<br \/>\nthat it&#8217;s for everyone. This isn&#8217;t about a couple &#8216;important&#8217; people<br \/>\nmaking their voices heard and making things happen. It&#8217;s about every<br \/>\nsingle man and woman that sits in a church pew on Sunday mornings (and<br \/>\nseveral who don&#8217;t) doing something awesome in response to the amazing<br \/>\ngift that we&#8217;ve been given.<\/p>\n<p>If I&#8217;m completely honest, I was a little intimidated about taking on a<br \/>\nproject like this with guys like Daniel and Dillon. I&#8217;m the only guy on<br \/>\nthis team that&#8217;s not fully seminary trained and in some major<br \/>\nleadership role in the ministry. I&#8217;m the epitome of the term &#8216;laity&#8217; in<br \/>\nthe church. But I&#8217;ve come to realize that this is the beauty of my role<br \/>\non this team. I represent the &#8216;everyday activist&#8217;, because that&#8217;s<br \/>\nexactly what I am.<\/p>\n<p>Being an everyday activist doesn&#8217;t mean that you need to quit your<br \/>\njob, sell all of you possessions, and move to a third world country to<br \/>\nfeed starving children. In fact, once might even argue that staying in<br \/>\nyour job while finding ways to impact the world around you may even give<br \/>\nyou greater opportunities to discuss your faith with co-workers.<\/p>\n<p>Being an everyday activist simply means that you&#8217;re taking advantage<br \/>\nof the opportunities that are right in front of you. And when you do, to<br \/>\ndo it with the full devotion that you would give if you were serving<br \/>\nJesus Himself. I see my role in this as being a support to you, and<br \/>\nproviding you the information and tools you need to succeed in the work<br \/>\nyou do.<\/p>\n<p>This Activist Faith thing is a movement that really excites me! And I<br \/>\nmean it excites me down to the core of my being. The opportunity to<br \/>\nshow the love, grace and compassion that&#8217;s been given freely to me is an<br \/>\nact of worship that seems equal to little else.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>What drives you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So what does it mean to you to be an activist with your faith? Do you<br \/>\nfeel like you have a responsibility to impact the world around you?<br \/>\nWhat issues are important to you? Which ones do you think are important<br \/>\nto God?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be sharing much more over the coming months related to what I&#8217;m<br \/>\ndoing with this project. The issues that I&#8217;m specifically writing about<br \/>\nare:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Poverty<\/li>\n<li>Orphan Care<\/li>\n<li>Disaster Relief<\/li>\n<li>War, Terrorism, and Genocide<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;d love to hear the stories about the work that you&#8217;re doing. It<br \/>\ndoesn&#8217;t matter if you are &#8216;only&#8217; sponsoring a child through an<br \/>\norganization like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.compassion.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Compassion<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hopechest.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Children&#8217;s Hope Chest<\/a>.<br \/>\nIf you&#8217;re doing something to change the world because of your faith, I<br \/>\nwant to hear about it (especially if it&#8217;s in one of the four areas that I<br \/>\njust listed).<\/p>\n<p>I pray that God raises up &#8216;everyday activists&#8217; like you and me all<br \/>\naround the world to do His will, and make a greater difference for the<br \/>\nsake of the Gospel. Amen.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Great post on the growth of the Activist Faith movement by Dan King. +++ I&#8217;ve been thinking a LOT lately about what it means to be a Christian. I remember a time when I worked&nbsp;in the youth group&nbsp;with a bunch of 8th-grade guys, and I asked them what it meant to be a Christian. I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-christianity","category-church-in-action"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>My Activist Faith - Activist Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2011\/02\/great-post-on-the-growth.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Activist Faith - Activist Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Great post on the growth of the Activist Faith movement by Dan King. +++ I&#8217;ve been thinking a LOT lately about what it means to be a Christian. 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I remember a time when I worked&nbsp;in the youth group&nbsp;with a bunch of 8th-grade guys, and I asked them what it meant to be a Christian. 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