Posted 94 days ago
Practicing Our Values
By Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates
One of the greatest challenges we always face as we start to plan a conference is how to convey the kingdom values that are central to who we are in Mustard Seed Associates. I teach a class on urban ministry and cross-cultural adaptation, and one of the questions I like to ask is: “What will the culture of the kingdom of God look like?” Most of us have no idea. I believe that God’s love and compassion, justice for the poor, concern for those at the margins, freedom from oppression and good stewardship of God’s creation will be at the center of God’s kingdom. Many people will probably get a shock when they enter the kingdom because it will be a real cross-cultural experience for them.
It is the vision of this “shalom kingdom” that is at the center of all we are and do at Mustard Seed Associates, in which God’s eternal family from every tribe and nation—rich and poor, young and old—live together in the midst of a restored creation in harmony, mutual care and peace, not just with God but with all who are part of God’s international community.
Here are some of our struggling attempts to bring this vision and the values of God’s kingdom into our upcoming conference:
First, we are grappling with how to emphasize the concept of Biblical wholeness and the values of God’s shalom kingdom. We are attempting to bring together a richly diverse group of men and women, young and old, to form, at least for a couple of days, a community that is representative of God’s richly diverse eternal family. Also, we hope that the conference itself will provide a rhythm of worship, prayer, community and work that gives us a glimpse of the rhythms of God’s kingdom. We want to connect participants to resources that enable them to develop rhythms of wholeness for their own lives and communities. At the same time, we hope the conference will provide an environment in which to create models of life and ministry that reflect God’s kingdom values of wholeness and community.
As addition to that, we want this conference to reflect our concern for marginalized people. A number of the workshops will highlight this, and on Friday afternoon, we will all participate in an urban experience that will take us into different neighborhoods in Seattle to interact with people, including the homeless and the marginalized. Our concern for those at the margins will be reflected in other aspects of the conference too. We will serve fair trade tea and coffee at breaks—though we are not sure which brand yet. There are so many options available here in Seattle.
Reflecting this value in how we provide meals is a little more challenging. We don’t want to do box lunches; that would create a mountain of waste, which is not at all good for the environment (and environmental concern is another one of our strong values). At this point, we are still researching several options. We would love to have catering from FareStart, a job training and placement program for homeless and disadvantaged individuals. However, we are not sure if they will be able to provide the number of meals we require. We may end up providing cheaper meals and making a donation to organizations that work with the marginalized. If you have any ideas, we would love to hear from you.
Even though this is not a conference on environmentalism, we want to express our concerns for environmental stewardship. This will be reflected in the registration packs as well as in several of the organizational displays. We plan to use green bags that are recyclable and will use the same mugs made from recycled plastic we used at the last conference. Each person gets one mug to last them through the conference—no paper cups and certainly no Styrofoam will be available. This should cut down on the amount of garbage that normally occurs at an event like this.
We would like, however, to challenge participants to show concern for their environment in other ways, too. We wish we could make this a zero carbon event, but I am not sure that is possible. When Shane Claiborne travels, he asks people at his destination to cut back on their driving in order to save the amount of fuel required to jet him from home to that destination. Maybe that is something that all of us should consider doing. In fact, if you would be willing to cut back on your driving to counteract the carbon output of some that are travelling from a distance, let us know. We also encourage you to explore the Evangelical Climate Initiative website, and sign up to take action to help solve global warming. At the very least, we want to encourage participants to carpool, walk, cycle or use public transport as much as possible.
Examining our values and grappling with the implications for our lives is always challenging, but it is so important for all. It has consequences for everything we do—even for our participation in conferences. What values of God’s kingdom are you struggling with as you read this article? We would appreciate any comments you may have on what other values we should seek to represent and how we can express these effectively during our conference.
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