This is an article I found to be so clear in its expression of a truth that I've discovered along with the author over the past years...I do truly never see more clearly than when I have tears in my eyes...as my heart breaks to the point of physically crying, my Spirit becomes much like our suffering Savior who wept at the pain He saw in lives and the world as He walked among us...I'm still not crazy about shedding tears in front of others, but am certain that they often bring the vision God has been wanting me to see when everything seemed just fine...may we together see with the eyes of Jesus...
Clarity came just as things got blurry.
My vision has never been good. I've worn eyeglasses since second grade and contact lenses since high school. Once during a Little League game, a line drive smacked me right on the nose, splitting my glasses' plastic frames neatly in half. My vision was so bad that at optometrists' exams, the only letter I could see on the eye chart was the big E—and then only because I knew it was an E.
For several years, I pondered whether I should have laser surgery to correct my vision. Friends and colleagues gave the procedure glowing reviews, and I read positive testimonies on websites and blogs. My main stumbling block was justifying the cost. Was it a vanity expense, like a facelift or a tummy tuck? But after losing yet another contact, I calculated that I'd spent enough money on lost lenses, contact fluid, and other supplies that it might be better stewardship to get my vision corrected.
Last year, I took the plunge. Encouraged by a 25 percent-off coupon given to me by a friend, I went ahead and had the surgery. My corneas were too thin for the normal slice-a-flap procedure, so I underwent a different procedure (which was more expensive, of course).
It didn't quite take. The doctor said that when you throw a football from 50 yards, it's harder to be on target than it is from 5 yards. My vision had been something like 20/400, and he was able to bring it to 20/40—tantalizingly close to clear vision, but still fuzzy.
The doctor scheduled follow-up "enhancement" procedures. For the next several months, my vision remained in an in-between state, far better than it had been for decades, but still not quite as sharp as I would have liked. I sat closer to my computer screen and increased the zoom on Microsoft Word to 125 percent. When I spoke at a conference, my notes were punched up to a 16-point font size.
Then I happened to attend an InterVarsity Asian American staff conference. During corporate worship, I squinted to make out lyrics on the far wall. In one particular session, we sang "God of Justice":
Live to feed the hungry
Stand beside the broken
We must go
Stepping forward
Keep us from just singing
Move us into action
We must go
I closed my eyes as we repeated the chorus, praying that God would direct me. How might I move into action? I live in such a cerebral world of books and ideas—what might I do to become more active in pursuing global mission?
The song cycled back to an earlier verse, and I opened my watering eyes. The lyrics on the screen shimmered slightly, then came crisply into focus.
I could see. Clearly. Wow. I could read every word easily, without squinting.
Had God just healed me? My innards fluttered, and I suddenly understood all those clichés about feeling your heart race and pound. Had I just experienced a miracle?
I blinked several times, and my vision wavered back and forth. Clear, blurry, clear, blurry. Then I realized what was happening. While singing I had been tearing up, moved by God's call, and the thin layer of water on my eyeballs functioned like contact lenses. The tears had been making my vision clearer.
I immediately asked a friend to pray with me for clarity of vision, both literally and spiritually. There is so much I do not see. I am blind to the needs of my neighbors down the block and around the world. I do not see the plight of the enslaved child laborer, the trapped sex worker, the communities wracked by aids or genocide, the people around the world who still lack witness to the gospel.
I do not act because I do not see. I am blinded by insularity, privilege, and affluence, which give me the luxury of having laser surgery when countless millions around the world lack basic medical care. But when God moves me to tears, I begin to see more clearly. And I have a clearer vision for how he calls me to participate in his work as an agent of shalom at home and around the world.
I've now had follow-up enhancements on my eyes, and my vision clocks in at 20/20 for each individual eye and 20/15 when using them together. I'm grateful. But I hope that God will continue to make my eyes water for the sake of his kingdom. I suspect that I will never see as clearly as I do when I have tears in my eyes.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
An Unusual Prayer for God's People
Here is a prayer I have found and continue to pray for my life and the incredible team of folks God has called me to serve with in the body of Christ...
May God bless you with discomfort
at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships
so that you may live deep within your heart
May God bless you with anger
at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people
so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace
May God bless you with tears
to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
to turn their pain into joy
And may God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in the world
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done
to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
A Franciscan Benediction
May God bless you with discomfort
at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships
so that you may live deep within your heart
May God bless you with anger
at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people
so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace
May God bless you with tears
to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
to turn their pain into joy
And may God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in the world
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done
to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
A Franciscan Benediction
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The Lima Bean Gospel by Mark Labberton from Christianity Today
The Good News is so much bigger than we make it out to be.
Why does the gospel look to so many like a bowl of lima beans?
For those who find the grace and truth of Jesus Christ convincing and compelling, such a question may seem absurd, if not blasphemous. But compared to the spiciness of the cultural concoctions that swirl around us in our globalized world, Jesus can seem like bland fare. Many have the impression that the gospel is small, smooth, and tasteless. They have a culturally conditioned disdain for any homogeneous answer to a heterogeneous world. And they have seen too little evidence to the contrary.
How could it be, some believers might balk, that "the hope of the world," the One given "the name above every name," could ever seem bland? Well, because often the church is bland. Pale. Gullible. Pasty. Just there. The fruit of this vine appears to be lima beans. If bland is the flavor of the church, then it is presumed to be the flavor of the One the church calls Lord.
This anemic image of Jesus has many adherents, both in and outside the church. Their innocuous Jesus is the result of social, political, economic, and spiritual accommodation. Who needs more from Jesus than some simple stories of a loving example? To go further would be zealous, and to be religiously zealous is definitely not a current cultural ideal. Those in the church who stand out are often seen as intolerant and intolerable. Better the disdainfully bland than the dangerously zealous.
It's a misstep, some would say, to take Jesus—his example and his teaching—too seriously. To do so is to get too close to all those details that hound religious specialists, breed religious acrimony, and cause war. Jesus from 10,000 feet away is close enough. The Google Earth view of Jesus identifies only the most prominent features of his life and teachings, bringing nothing too close and taking nothing too seriously. Such a Jesus may be vaguely interesting, but he is consigned to blandness and faint praise.
Jesus Christ, the Lord of Creation, Redemption, and Fulfillment, calls the church the salt and light of the world. Jesus seems to have had in mind a community engaged in vigorous, self-sacrificing mission that goes to great lengths to enact costly love, that inconveniences itself regularly to seek justice for the oppressed, that creatively serves the forgotten, all to portray that the kingdom of God is at hand.
Depending on where we look in the world, however, that church seems to have gone missing.
Rather than seek the God who spoke from the burning bush, we have decided the real drama is found in debating whether to podcast our services. Rather than encounter the God who sees idolatry as a pervasive, life-threatening temptation, we decorate Pottery Barn lives with our tasteful collections of favored godlings. Rather than follow the God who burns for justice for the needy, we are more likely to ask the Lord to give us our own fair share. A bland God for a bland church, with a mission that is at best innocuous and quaint—in a tumultuous world.
Is it hard to explain why many look at the church and see a small bowl of lima beans? Where is the evidence that the reality is otherwise, that the gospel really matters?
The Homogeneous Gospel
Others take a different point of view, and think the gospel is too small because its claims in a multicultural, multireligious world are just too particular. Christian orthodoxy's affirmation—that through a promise to one people fulfilled through one man, the one true God reconciled the world to himself—seems by definition too small because it is just too homogenizing a solution. Too small to be worthy of the Creator of the universe, and too "one-size-fits-all" to be the Good News for our enormously varied world.
Postmoderns are keenly aware that we live in a vastly heterogeneous world—of cultures within cultures, of languages within languages, of religions within religions. They are likely to find it extremely counterintuitive that a single religion or deity could possibly reflect reality. In this world of variety, uniform solutions in politics, economics, and culture are unappealing, undesirable, and unworkable. How can that be any less so when it comes to matters of religion and spirituality?
From a theological point of view, they might go on, how could such particularity be consistent with the Bible's own depiction of God's expansive character and nature? Would such a god deserve to be called God, if it all boils down to one way or no way? How could a God who reputedly created a world with 300 kinds of hummingbirds be the same God who requires religious conformity?
Isn't this alleged particularity of God scandalously less nuanced than the enormously varied created order he is supposed to have made? Further, if those reputedly bearing the image of this God are called to one religious vision, doesn't that diminish their created diversity, homogenizing what God has made varied? If there are over 500 varieties of bananas, how could God offer the world one bowl of lima beans?
The Evidence of Love
The love of Jesus Christ, through whom God is reconciling the whole world to himself, is no lima bean. And the only adequate answer to these objections will require us to consider again that very thing Jesus says is central to God's kingdom, the most life-enlarging and non-homogenizing reality: love.
The primary evidence that the gospel is no lima bean is meant to be the compelling, sacrificial love and justice vividly lived and humbly witnessed to by Christ's body. "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). Such love is meant, at the very least, to make our lives more truth-bearing, more soul-enlarging, more justice-evidencing. To give ourselves in love is to devote ourselves to "the more important matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness," rather than fiddling with our "mint and dill and cumin" (Matt. 23:23).
Of course, this does not mean our gospel will be more immediately attractive or more easily accepted. A gospel whose evidence is this kind of love may still be accused of being small, but it will be small like the pearl of great price, not like some cheap imitation of the real gem.
We have to give up the small gospel that simply confirms what C. S. Lewis called "our congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities." The freedom of grace grants us many gifts, including that there is "therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). This assurance of grace is meant to set us on the road of faithful discipleship, not just to assure us of grace at the finish line. Such freedom enables Christ's disciples to love because we have first been loved (1 John 4:19). The grace that settles our account with God is meant to set us free from self-interest for the sake of loving others with abandon.
The apparent smallness of our gospel is directly related to the smallness of the church's love. When prominent Christian voices call for protests and boycotts over things like our freedom to say "Merry Christmas," the gospel seems very small indeed. If, by contrast, such voices called the church in America to give away its Christmas billions to the poor and needy around the world—as an act of incarnational love—that would leave a very different impression of the faith we profess, and offer a far greater hope for a love-hungry world.
It would be a new day for our testimony to the immensity and scope of the gospel if we lived out persevering, sacrificial love for people near and far, especially for those without power, without money, without education, without food, without sanitation, without safety, without faith. If this counterintuitive, servant love moved us out of our middle-class enclaves, drew the poor to be included in our family values, brought us to worry more about the need for consumption of those who have nothing than the consumptive fantasies of those who have too much, the gospel would be more nearly the life-enlarging gift it is.
The Size of Love
Love is central in responding to the charge of particularity as well. What do we say to those who claim our gospel of one way, one truth, and one life is too small? The biblical argument is that God's very particular actions are precisely what give us the greatest access to the universal scope of God's heart and purposes. When God's work is most intensive, the implications are the most extensive: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." God in Jesus Christ does the most particular thing for the most universal end.
We must make the case that the particularity of love is like the proper use of a telescope: through the small end of the telescope (i.e., God was in Christ), we are given a glimpse into the cosmic heart of God (i.e., God is love). Through the particularity of the small lens, we are given a way to see the larger reality. The specificity of the gospel is the way God leads us to see what is universal.
This is obvious in ordinary experience. We come to know the meaning of love by loving and being loved by particular people in particular places and times. We don't come to know love first as a broad category and then as a particular instance. Rather, only if we are loved in particular do we gradually come to love more broadly. The absence of the particular leads most likely to the absence of the general ability.
It is true that being loved in particular does not necessarily lead us to love more widely. Still, the more noteworthy this absence of love in people's lives, the more we suspect a deficit of an experience of being loved. And that is precisely what millions of unchurched people suspect about Christians, and therefore about the gospel we proclaim: without more-evident fruit of self-sacrificing love, not least when we are affirming the God of love, the more our claim of particularity seems corrupt, bankrupt, or worse.
The particularity of our Sun is not a problem, because it shines on the just and on the unjust. So does God's particular love in Christ. The church cannot afford to give the impression that the particularity of the gospel only shines on us. If we love as we have been loved, the immensity and scope of God's intimate and cosmic gospel in Jesus Christ will be more evidently the salt and light of the world. We will be far more like Jesus described us—tangy and tangible Good News. And that is no lima bean gospel.
Mark Labberton is senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, and a senior fellow of International Justice Mission.
Why does the gospel look to so many like a bowl of lima beans?
For those who find the grace and truth of Jesus Christ convincing and compelling, such a question may seem absurd, if not blasphemous. But compared to the spiciness of the cultural concoctions that swirl around us in our globalized world, Jesus can seem like bland fare. Many have the impression that the gospel is small, smooth, and tasteless. They have a culturally conditioned disdain for any homogeneous answer to a heterogeneous world. And they have seen too little evidence to the contrary.
How could it be, some believers might balk, that "the hope of the world," the One given "the name above every name," could ever seem bland? Well, because often the church is bland. Pale. Gullible. Pasty. Just there. The fruit of this vine appears to be lima beans. If bland is the flavor of the church, then it is presumed to be the flavor of the One the church calls Lord.
This anemic image of Jesus has many adherents, both in and outside the church. Their innocuous Jesus is the result of social, political, economic, and spiritual accommodation. Who needs more from Jesus than some simple stories of a loving example? To go further would be zealous, and to be religiously zealous is definitely not a current cultural ideal. Those in the church who stand out are often seen as intolerant and intolerable. Better the disdainfully bland than the dangerously zealous.
It's a misstep, some would say, to take Jesus—his example and his teaching—too seriously. To do so is to get too close to all those details that hound religious specialists, breed religious acrimony, and cause war. Jesus from 10,000 feet away is close enough. The Google Earth view of Jesus identifies only the most prominent features of his life and teachings, bringing nothing too close and taking nothing too seriously. Such a Jesus may be vaguely interesting, but he is consigned to blandness and faint praise.
Jesus Christ, the Lord of Creation, Redemption, and Fulfillment, calls the church the salt and light of the world. Jesus seems to have had in mind a community engaged in vigorous, self-sacrificing mission that goes to great lengths to enact costly love, that inconveniences itself regularly to seek justice for the oppressed, that creatively serves the forgotten, all to portray that the kingdom of God is at hand.
Depending on where we look in the world, however, that church seems to have gone missing.
Rather than seek the God who spoke from the burning bush, we have decided the real drama is found in debating whether to podcast our services. Rather than encounter the God who sees idolatry as a pervasive, life-threatening temptation, we decorate Pottery Barn lives with our tasteful collections of favored godlings. Rather than follow the God who burns for justice for the needy, we are more likely to ask the Lord to give us our own fair share. A bland God for a bland church, with a mission that is at best innocuous and quaint—in a tumultuous world.
Is it hard to explain why many look at the church and see a small bowl of lima beans? Where is the evidence that the reality is otherwise, that the gospel really matters?
The Homogeneous Gospel
Others take a different point of view, and think the gospel is too small because its claims in a multicultural, multireligious world are just too particular. Christian orthodoxy's affirmation—that through a promise to one people fulfilled through one man, the one true God reconciled the world to himself—seems by definition too small because it is just too homogenizing a solution. Too small to be worthy of the Creator of the universe, and too "one-size-fits-all" to be the Good News for our enormously varied world.
Postmoderns are keenly aware that we live in a vastly heterogeneous world—of cultures within cultures, of languages within languages, of religions within religions. They are likely to find it extremely counterintuitive that a single religion or deity could possibly reflect reality. In this world of variety, uniform solutions in politics, economics, and culture are unappealing, undesirable, and unworkable. How can that be any less so when it comes to matters of religion and spirituality?
From a theological point of view, they might go on, how could such particularity be consistent with the Bible's own depiction of God's expansive character and nature? Would such a god deserve to be called God, if it all boils down to one way or no way? How could a God who reputedly created a world with 300 kinds of hummingbirds be the same God who requires religious conformity?
Isn't this alleged particularity of God scandalously less nuanced than the enormously varied created order he is supposed to have made? Further, if those reputedly bearing the image of this God are called to one religious vision, doesn't that diminish their created diversity, homogenizing what God has made varied? If there are over 500 varieties of bananas, how could God offer the world one bowl of lima beans?
The Evidence of Love
The love of Jesus Christ, through whom God is reconciling the whole world to himself, is no lima bean. And the only adequate answer to these objections will require us to consider again that very thing Jesus says is central to God's kingdom, the most life-enlarging and non-homogenizing reality: love.
The primary evidence that the gospel is no lima bean is meant to be the compelling, sacrificial love and justice vividly lived and humbly witnessed to by Christ's body. "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). Such love is meant, at the very least, to make our lives more truth-bearing, more soul-enlarging, more justice-evidencing. To give ourselves in love is to devote ourselves to "the more important matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness," rather than fiddling with our "mint and dill and cumin" (Matt. 23:23).
Of course, this does not mean our gospel will be more immediately attractive or more easily accepted. A gospel whose evidence is this kind of love may still be accused of being small, but it will be small like the pearl of great price, not like some cheap imitation of the real gem.
We have to give up the small gospel that simply confirms what C. S. Lewis called "our congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities." The freedom of grace grants us many gifts, including that there is "therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). This assurance of grace is meant to set us on the road of faithful discipleship, not just to assure us of grace at the finish line. Such freedom enables Christ's disciples to love because we have first been loved (1 John 4:19). The grace that settles our account with God is meant to set us free from self-interest for the sake of loving others with abandon.
The apparent smallness of our gospel is directly related to the smallness of the church's love. When prominent Christian voices call for protests and boycotts over things like our freedom to say "Merry Christmas," the gospel seems very small indeed. If, by contrast, such voices called the church in America to give away its Christmas billions to the poor and needy around the world—as an act of incarnational love—that would leave a very different impression of the faith we profess, and offer a far greater hope for a love-hungry world.
It would be a new day for our testimony to the immensity and scope of the gospel if we lived out persevering, sacrificial love for people near and far, especially for those without power, without money, without education, without food, without sanitation, without safety, without faith. If this counterintuitive, servant love moved us out of our middle-class enclaves, drew the poor to be included in our family values, brought us to worry more about the need for consumption of those who have nothing than the consumptive fantasies of those who have too much, the gospel would be more nearly the life-enlarging gift it is.
The Size of Love
Love is central in responding to the charge of particularity as well. What do we say to those who claim our gospel of one way, one truth, and one life is too small? The biblical argument is that God's very particular actions are precisely what give us the greatest access to the universal scope of God's heart and purposes. When God's work is most intensive, the implications are the most extensive: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." God in Jesus Christ does the most particular thing for the most universal end.
We must make the case that the particularity of love is like the proper use of a telescope: through the small end of the telescope (i.e., God was in Christ), we are given a glimpse into the cosmic heart of God (i.e., God is love). Through the particularity of the small lens, we are given a way to see the larger reality. The specificity of the gospel is the way God leads us to see what is universal.
This is obvious in ordinary experience. We come to know the meaning of love by loving and being loved by particular people in particular places and times. We don't come to know love first as a broad category and then as a particular instance. Rather, only if we are loved in particular do we gradually come to love more broadly. The absence of the particular leads most likely to the absence of the general ability.
It is true that being loved in particular does not necessarily lead us to love more widely. Still, the more noteworthy this absence of love in people's lives, the more we suspect a deficit of an experience of being loved. And that is precisely what millions of unchurched people suspect about Christians, and therefore about the gospel we proclaim: without more-evident fruit of self-sacrificing love, not least when we are affirming the God of love, the more our claim of particularity seems corrupt, bankrupt, or worse.
The particularity of our Sun is not a problem, because it shines on the just and on the unjust. So does God's particular love in Christ. The church cannot afford to give the impression that the particularity of the gospel only shines on us. If we love as we have been loved, the immensity and scope of God's intimate and cosmic gospel in Jesus Christ will be more evidently the salt and light of the world. We will be far more like Jesus described us—tangy and tangible Good News. And that is no lima bean gospel.
Mark Labberton is senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, and a senior fellow of International Justice Mission.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Bottom Line for (Red) by Ron Nixon, NEW YORK TIMES
Here's an interesting article about the Project RED campaign and its costs and impact...I am fascinated by the notion that businesses can create a "Double Bottom Line" and help change the world...and I must admit, I have a red Ipod, Ingrid has some red Gap apparel, and I might buy a Dell Red Computer when I need to replace my laptop in the next year...
KIGALI, Rwanda — A year ago, staff members at the Treatment and Research AIDS Center could barely cope. Patients, unable to find care elsewhere, flowed in from every corner of the country. And if one of them was fortunate enough to find a bed here, she often had to share it.
Today, a dozen patients, mostly women, sit in neat waiting rooms, laughing and talking as children play around them. Doctors greet one another as they make their rounds, and take all the time they need to explain the complicated schedule H.I.V. drugs require.
According to the center’s managing director, Dr. Anita Asiimwe, doctors spend less time on crises and more time researching how to slow H.I.V. transmission in this tiny African nation, still recovering from a genocide in 1994.
Dr. Asiimwe thanks an unlikely benefactor for all these improvements: the American shopper.
Just over a year ago, the rock star Bono started Red, a campaign that combined consumerism and altruism. Since then, consumers have generated more than $22 million to fight H.I.V. and AIDS in Rwanda by buying iPods, T-shirts, watches, cologne and most recently — as anyone who watched the Super Bowl knows — laptops, with all of them branded “(Product)RED.”
According to Rwandan officials, Red contributions have built 33 testing and treatment centers, supplied medicine for more than 6,000 women to keep them from transmitting H.I.V. to their babies, and financed counseling and testing for thousands more patients.
Yet detractors say Red has fallen short. They criticize a lack of transparency at the company and its partners over how much they make from Red products, and whether they spend more money on Africa or advertising.
“Look at all the promotions they’ve put out,” said Inger L. Stole, a communications professor at the University of Illinois. “The ads seem to be more about promoting the companies and how good they are than the issue of AIDS.”
In the Super Bowl ad Sunday, which promoted Dell’s recent Red debut, a man buys a Red laptop and finds himself cheered in the street by strangers and kissed by a beautiful woman. At the end of the commercial, three screens flash in rapid succession: “Buy Dell. Join (RED). Save Lives.”
In its March 2007 issue, Advertising Age magazine reported that Red companies had collectively spent as much as $100 million in advertising and raised only $18 million. Officials of the campaign said then that the companies had spent $50 million on advertising and that the amount raised was $25 million. Advertising Age stood by its article.
The Red campaign itself does not advertise, said Susan Smith Ellis, the chief executive. Instead, companies pay Red a licensing fee to label one or more of their products “(RED).” Then, they pay a portion of sales from those products to the Global Fund, a public-private charity set up six years ago to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa. The fund sends the money to three countries — Rwanda, Ghana and Swaziland — to help women and children infected with H.I.V. and to educate those who are uninfected in how to stay that way.
The percentage of profit that goes to the fund depends on the item and the company. For instance, 1 percent of all spending on American Express’s Red cards goes to the fund, as do 50 percent of net profits from the sale of Gap Red items and $8.50 from each sale of a Motorola Red Motorazr.
In return, the companies can market themselves as socially conscious and, ideally, increase sales. (Neither Red nor the companies would disclose revenue or total contributions by company or product.)
According to a 2006 poll by Cone Inc., a marketing agency in Boston, 89 percent of Americans between 13 and 25 would switch from one brand to another associated with a “good cause,” if products and prices were comparable.
Over all, more than $59 million has been contributed by Red and its corporate partners to the Global Fund. Red-financed projects have helped put more than 30,000 people on antiretroviral treatment and provided more than 300,000 H.I.V.-positive pregnant women with counseling and treatment, according to data from Red and the fund.
Red and its donors have contributed nearly all the corporate money that has gone to the fund, which had $2.4 billion in 2007. This made Red the 15th-largest donor — more than Russia has given so far, and more than China, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland have pledged.
Officials at Gap and Hallmark Cards say the two companies financed African H.I.V. programs even before joining Red.
All told, Red’s contributions make up less than 2 percent of the Global Fund’s total. And the money from Red does not increase funding for the Global Fund programs it is directed to; instead, it allows the fund to shift money to other programs. Red’s contributions also do not necessarily go to the countries hardest hit by H.I.V. and AIDS; they go only to programs with proven success records.
Christoph Benn, an official at the Global Fund, said Red contributions allowed the fund to divert money to programs in 136 other countries and to increase its visibility.
Marketing centered on social causes is not new. American Express began the first “cause marketing” campaign in 1983, for the Statue of Liberty restoration project. Donating a penny to the project for every cardholder purchase, the company raised $1.7 million. American Express card use increased 27 percent, and card applications rose 45 percent.
Other companies were quick to follow suit.
But Red has taken the merger of marketing and philanthropy to new levels, becoming one of the largest consumer-based income-generating initiatives by the private sector for an international humanitarian cause.
The Red co-founder Bobby Shriver, a nephew of John F. Kennedy, said Red was an extension of his efforts to address financial and health problems in Africa. Bono and Mr. Shriver also founded Debt AIDS Trade Africa, known as DATA, an organization that lobbies for debt relief as well as AIDS funds.
When the two men decided to tackle H.I.V. and AIDS and the dearth of access to antiretroviral drugs, they wanted to take a different approach to raising funds.
“I hate begging for money,” Mr. Shriver said. “In most cases when you go and ask for a corporate donation, they’ll cut you a check and that’s it. We wanted something that was more sustainable.”
But that argument has not impressed some activists and bloggers, who say the primary beneficiaries of cause-marketing campaigns are businesses.
Ben Davis of San Francisco, who created a Red parody online that says “Buy(Less),” is encouraging consumers to give more directly to nonprofits that support AIDS programs in Africa.
“I just think that increased consumption in America can’t be the only way to solve Africa’s problem,” Mr. Davis said.
Mark H. Rosenman, a professor of public service at Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, noted a more basic objection to Red and cause marketing.
“There is a broadening concern that business marketing is taking on the patina of philanthropy and crowding out philanthropic activity and even substituting for it,” he said.
Indeed, according to a survey by the Conference Board, a business research organization, business leaders are increasingly aligning their giving with business needs. In a 2007 survey of companies, 77 percent said that this was the most critical factor affecting their giving.
Brook K. Baker, a Northeastern University professor and chairman of Health GAP, a network of nonprofit groups seeking greater H.I.V. and AIDS funding, says that is the problem. “Do we really want something as important as H.I.V.-AIDS to be funded by holiday shoppers?” he asked.
In an interview in Rwanda, Tamsin Smith, president of Red, said such criticism missed the point. “We’re not encouraging people to buy more, but if they’re going to buy a pair of Armani sunglasses, we’re trying to get a cut of that for a good cause,” she said.
Ms. Smith, who formerly led Gap’s government affairs department, also takes issue with those who criticize Red advertising.
“Red is not a charity; it’s a business,” she said.
At the Treatment and Research AIDS Center in Kigali, Dr. Asiimwe said that whatever the motivations of the Red companies, the spillover of American spending has made a real difference.
“When I was going to medical school a few years back, we would see patients and send them home knowing they were going to die without medication,” she said. “I don’t feel that way now. The money we get from Red through the Global Fund is helping to save lives. That’s the important thing.”
Ron Nixon reported from Rwanda last year and added updated information from New York.
KIGALI, Rwanda — A year ago, staff members at the Treatment and Research AIDS Center could barely cope. Patients, unable to find care elsewhere, flowed in from every corner of the country. And if one of them was fortunate enough to find a bed here, she often had to share it.
Today, a dozen patients, mostly women, sit in neat waiting rooms, laughing and talking as children play around them. Doctors greet one another as they make their rounds, and take all the time they need to explain the complicated schedule H.I.V. drugs require.
According to the center’s managing director, Dr. Anita Asiimwe, doctors spend less time on crises and more time researching how to slow H.I.V. transmission in this tiny African nation, still recovering from a genocide in 1994.
Dr. Asiimwe thanks an unlikely benefactor for all these improvements: the American shopper.
Just over a year ago, the rock star Bono started Red, a campaign that combined consumerism and altruism. Since then, consumers have generated more than $22 million to fight H.I.V. and AIDS in Rwanda by buying iPods, T-shirts, watches, cologne and most recently — as anyone who watched the Super Bowl knows — laptops, with all of them branded “(Product)RED.”
According to Rwandan officials, Red contributions have built 33 testing and treatment centers, supplied medicine for more than 6,000 women to keep them from transmitting H.I.V. to their babies, and financed counseling and testing for thousands more patients.
Yet detractors say Red has fallen short. They criticize a lack of transparency at the company and its partners over how much they make from Red products, and whether they spend more money on Africa or advertising.
“Look at all the promotions they’ve put out,” said Inger L. Stole, a communications professor at the University of Illinois. “The ads seem to be more about promoting the companies and how good they are than the issue of AIDS.”
In the Super Bowl ad Sunday, which promoted Dell’s recent Red debut, a man buys a Red laptop and finds himself cheered in the street by strangers and kissed by a beautiful woman. At the end of the commercial, three screens flash in rapid succession: “Buy Dell. Join (RED). Save Lives.”
In its March 2007 issue, Advertising Age magazine reported that Red companies had collectively spent as much as $100 million in advertising and raised only $18 million. Officials of the campaign said then that the companies had spent $50 million on advertising and that the amount raised was $25 million. Advertising Age stood by its article.
The Red campaign itself does not advertise, said Susan Smith Ellis, the chief executive. Instead, companies pay Red a licensing fee to label one or more of their products “(RED).” Then, they pay a portion of sales from those products to the Global Fund, a public-private charity set up six years ago to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa. The fund sends the money to three countries — Rwanda, Ghana and Swaziland — to help women and children infected with H.I.V. and to educate those who are uninfected in how to stay that way.
The percentage of profit that goes to the fund depends on the item and the company. For instance, 1 percent of all spending on American Express’s Red cards goes to the fund, as do 50 percent of net profits from the sale of Gap Red items and $8.50 from each sale of a Motorola Red Motorazr.
In return, the companies can market themselves as socially conscious and, ideally, increase sales. (Neither Red nor the companies would disclose revenue or total contributions by company or product.)
According to a 2006 poll by Cone Inc., a marketing agency in Boston, 89 percent of Americans between 13 and 25 would switch from one brand to another associated with a “good cause,” if products and prices were comparable.
Over all, more than $59 million has been contributed by Red and its corporate partners to the Global Fund. Red-financed projects have helped put more than 30,000 people on antiretroviral treatment and provided more than 300,000 H.I.V.-positive pregnant women with counseling and treatment, according to data from Red and the fund.
Red and its donors have contributed nearly all the corporate money that has gone to the fund, which had $2.4 billion in 2007. This made Red the 15th-largest donor — more than Russia has given so far, and more than China, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland have pledged.
Officials at Gap and Hallmark Cards say the two companies financed African H.I.V. programs even before joining Red.
All told, Red’s contributions make up less than 2 percent of the Global Fund’s total. And the money from Red does not increase funding for the Global Fund programs it is directed to; instead, it allows the fund to shift money to other programs. Red’s contributions also do not necessarily go to the countries hardest hit by H.I.V. and AIDS; they go only to programs with proven success records.
Christoph Benn, an official at the Global Fund, said Red contributions allowed the fund to divert money to programs in 136 other countries and to increase its visibility.
Marketing centered on social causes is not new. American Express began the first “cause marketing” campaign in 1983, for the Statue of Liberty restoration project. Donating a penny to the project for every cardholder purchase, the company raised $1.7 million. American Express card use increased 27 percent, and card applications rose 45 percent.
Other companies were quick to follow suit.
But Red has taken the merger of marketing and philanthropy to new levels, becoming one of the largest consumer-based income-generating initiatives by the private sector for an international humanitarian cause.
The Red co-founder Bobby Shriver, a nephew of John F. Kennedy, said Red was an extension of his efforts to address financial and health problems in Africa. Bono and Mr. Shriver also founded Debt AIDS Trade Africa, known as DATA, an organization that lobbies for debt relief as well as AIDS funds.
When the two men decided to tackle H.I.V. and AIDS and the dearth of access to antiretroviral drugs, they wanted to take a different approach to raising funds.
“I hate begging for money,” Mr. Shriver said. “In most cases when you go and ask for a corporate donation, they’ll cut you a check and that’s it. We wanted something that was more sustainable.”
But that argument has not impressed some activists and bloggers, who say the primary beneficiaries of cause-marketing campaigns are businesses.
Ben Davis of San Francisco, who created a Red parody online that says “Buy(Less),” is encouraging consumers to give more directly to nonprofits that support AIDS programs in Africa.
“I just think that increased consumption in America can’t be the only way to solve Africa’s problem,” Mr. Davis said.
Mark H. Rosenman, a professor of public service at Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, noted a more basic objection to Red and cause marketing.
“There is a broadening concern that business marketing is taking on the patina of philanthropy and crowding out philanthropic activity and even substituting for it,” he said.
Indeed, according to a survey by the Conference Board, a business research organization, business leaders are increasingly aligning their giving with business needs. In a 2007 survey of companies, 77 percent said that this was the most critical factor affecting their giving.
Brook K. Baker, a Northeastern University professor and chairman of Health GAP, a network of nonprofit groups seeking greater H.I.V. and AIDS funding, says that is the problem. “Do we really want something as important as H.I.V.-AIDS to be funded by holiday shoppers?” he asked.
In an interview in Rwanda, Tamsin Smith, president of Red, said such criticism missed the point. “We’re not encouraging people to buy more, but if they’re going to buy a pair of Armani sunglasses, we’re trying to get a cut of that for a good cause,” she said.
Ms. Smith, who formerly led Gap’s government affairs department, also takes issue with those who criticize Red advertising.
“Red is not a charity; it’s a business,” she said.
At the Treatment and Research AIDS Center in Kigali, Dr. Asiimwe said that whatever the motivations of the Red companies, the spillover of American spending has made a real difference.
“When I was going to medical school a few years back, we would see patients and send them home knowing they were going to die without medication,” she said. “I don’t feel that way now. The money we get from Red through the Global Fund is helping to save lives. That’s the important thing.”
Ron Nixon reported from Rwanda last year and added updated information from New York.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Primary Day Thoughts
Here's an interesting article on Super Tuesday as we look forward to new leadership for our country...
Jesus on the Campaign Trail
Rob Ryerse
Relevant Magazine
Imagine what followers of Jesus Christ can do in the 2008 election. Don’t imagine taking America back for Christ. Don’t imagine flexing our muscle as a voting bloc. And don’t imagine voting our values at the ballot box. Imagine changing the way Christians involved in politics are perceived.
For too long, followers of Jesus on our TV screens and radios have given the impression that all we care about is winning elections. They’ve slung mud and engaged in the politics of personal destruction, buying into the lie that the ends justify the means as long as our guy gets elected. And we’ve refused to demand more from them or our candidates.
But this scene hasn’t just played out on our TV screens and radios. It’s played out in coffee shops and across dinner tables. We–average followers of Jesus who have never been on TV or been called by a pollster–have gossiped about candidates. We’ve called them names, impugned their character and thought less of those who supported someone candidate other than ours. We’ve rationalized our sin by telling ourselves that we can say what we want as long as it is true. We’ve refused to demand more from ourselves.
The result of our undisciplined political posturing is that the name and reputation of Jesus has been damaged far more severely than the name and reputation of any politician. It is time for that to change. It is time for me to change.
This year, I am taking a pledge, making a commitment. And I am asking you to join me. I am committing myself to reflect the values of Jesus throughout the campaign, not just to vote them on Election Day. In my heart, in my mind and on my lips, I want the ideals of Jesus to be present and obvious. It is Jesus and his reputation that will be most important to me in 2008.
Like any politician today, Jesus’ personal approval ratings during His time on earth would have varied depending on who you talked to. Some thought that He was a prophet reincarnated. Others thought He was a trouble-maker. The establishment was threatened by His rhetoric. And the populist throngs loved His bread-and-fish-for-everyone displays. It seemed like few understood Him, but everyone took notice of Him.
One of His followers, John, tells us what people noticed about Jesus: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 TNIV). Jesus was full of grace and truth. He was not known for His political savvy or for how connected He was. He was not defined by a list of policy positions. Jesus was defined by grace and truth.
How different this is from the current state of American politics. People gravitate to those who agree with them. Anyone with a different perspective is held with suspicion rather than respect. Vitriol has replaced common decency. Name-calling has supplanted civility. And, in this regard, there is not a shred of difference between followers of Jesus and those who are not.
In addition to being full of grace, Jesus was also full of truth. Jesus did not shy away from hard subjects or from saying things that might offend people. He told Nicodemus that Nicodemus' whole approach to pleasing God had to change. And to the woman by the well, he highlighted her serial marriages. Jesus said what He said because it needed to be heard. Facing the truth with honesty and humility is the path to faith and repentance.
Yet truth seems to be a forgotten commodity in today’s political culture. A scandalous rumor can be passed easily from the Drudge Report to a church’s small group without any verification. By the time the story is proven untrue, the damage has already been done. Unwanted and unwarranted labels are used to create a caricature of a candidate without concern for the fairness or validity. And again, followers of Jesus are not exempt from this behavior.
Imagine what would happen to the reputation of Jesus if millions of people who claim to be his followers refused to follow conventional political wisdom and instead followed the wisdom found in the example of their Lord? Could it be that if Christians refused to go negative, people might think more positively of Jesus? Could it be that the best way to change the country and the world is to change ourselves?
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I'm commiting myself to reflect the values of grace and truth throughout the 2008 political campaign.
In my heart, I will care more about what people think of Jesus than what they think of the candidate I support.
In my mind, I will focus on what is right, admirable and praise-worthy in each of the candidates.
With my lips, I will speak with truth and graciousness about all involved in the 2008 campaign, including every candidate and every candidate’s spouse, refusing to engage in gossip, rumor, sarcasm, innuendo or petty name-calling.
Regardless of political and policy difference, I will remain committed to living the values of Jesus throughout this campaign season.
What are you going to do?
Find out more about this campaign at www.jesus08campaign.com
Jesus on the Campaign Trail
Rob Ryerse
Relevant Magazine
Imagine what followers of Jesus Christ can do in the 2008 election. Don’t imagine taking America back for Christ. Don’t imagine flexing our muscle as a voting bloc. And don’t imagine voting our values at the ballot box. Imagine changing the way Christians involved in politics are perceived.
For too long, followers of Jesus on our TV screens and radios have given the impression that all we care about is winning elections. They’ve slung mud and engaged in the politics of personal destruction, buying into the lie that the ends justify the means as long as our guy gets elected. And we’ve refused to demand more from them or our candidates.
But this scene hasn’t just played out on our TV screens and radios. It’s played out in coffee shops and across dinner tables. We–average followers of Jesus who have never been on TV or been called by a pollster–have gossiped about candidates. We’ve called them names, impugned their character and thought less of those who supported someone candidate other than ours. We’ve rationalized our sin by telling ourselves that we can say what we want as long as it is true. We’ve refused to demand more from ourselves.
The result of our undisciplined political posturing is that the name and reputation of Jesus has been damaged far more severely than the name and reputation of any politician. It is time for that to change. It is time for me to change.
This year, I am taking a pledge, making a commitment. And I am asking you to join me. I am committing myself to reflect the values of Jesus throughout the campaign, not just to vote them on Election Day. In my heart, in my mind and on my lips, I want the ideals of Jesus to be present and obvious. It is Jesus and his reputation that will be most important to me in 2008.
Like any politician today, Jesus’ personal approval ratings during His time on earth would have varied depending on who you talked to. Some thought that He was a prophet reincarnated. Others thought He was a trouble-maker. The establishment was threatened by His rhetoric. And the populist throngs loved His bread-and-fish-for-everyone displays. It seemed like few understood Him, but everyone took notice of Him.
One of His followers, John, tells us what people noticed about Jesus: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 TNIV). Jesus was full of grace and truth. He was not known for His political savvy or for how connected He was. He was not defined by a list of policy positions. Jesus was defined by grace and truth.
How different this is from the current state of American politics. People gravitate to those who agree with them. Anyone with a different perspective is held with suspicion rather than respect. Vitriol has replaced common decency. Name-calling has supplanted civility. And, in this regard, there is not a shred of difference between followers of Jesus and those who are not.
In addition to being full of grace, Jesus was also full of truth. Jesus did not shy away from hard subjects or from saying things that might offend people. He told Nicodemus that Nicodemus' whole approach to pleasing God had to change. And to the woman by the well, he highlighted her serial marriages. Jesus said what He said because it needed to be heard. Facing the truth with honesty and humility is the path to faith and repentance.
Yet truth seems to be a forgotten commodity in today’s political culture. A scandalous rumor can be passed easily from the Drudge Report to a church’s small group without any verification. By the time the story is proven untrue, the damage has already been done. Unwanted and unwarranted labels are used to create a caricature of a candidate without concern for the fairness or validity. And again, followers of Jesus are not exempt from this behavior.
Imagine what would happen to the reputation of Jesus if millions of people who claim to be his followers refused to follow conventional political wisdom and instead followed the wisdom found in the example of their Lord? Could it be that if Christians refused to go negative, people might think more positively of Jesus? Could it be that the best way to change the country and the world is to change ourselves?
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I'm commiting myself to reflect the values of grace and truth throughout the 2008 political campaign.
In my heart, I will care more about what people think of Jesus than what they think of the candidate I support.
In my mind, I will focus on what is right, admirable and praise-worthy in each of the candidates.
With my lips, I will speak with truth and graciousness about all involved in the 2008 campaign, including every candidate and every candidate’s spouse, refusing to engage in gossip, rumor, sarcasm, innuendo or petty name-calling.
Regardless of political and policy difference, I will remain committed to living the values of Jesus throughout this campaign season.
What are you going to do?
Find out more about this campaign at www.jesus08campaign.com
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