A Prison Epistle

Fifty years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr wrote his famous ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’.  It was a considered and poignant response to a number of white clergy who thought that his civil rights actions against segregation in America, was anti Christian.

Countdown to 2015

Today (5 April 2013) marks the 1000 days countdown to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - those 8 promises which the world made in September 2000 to halve extreme poverty by 2015. These promises ignited the work we are doing as Micah Challenge  - gathering Christians across 40 nations to hold our governments to the promises they have made. 

It’s been an amazing journey. And part of its amazement is the fact that as I travel around the world, I discover that so many people still have no idea what ‘MDGs’ mean.  And when they do, the next question is usually, "How is it going: are the promises going to be kept by 2015?"

Rush Hour Mystery

In case you haven't noticed it's Easter. The fact is that an increasing number of people have become distanced from its message and significance. And in our increasingly secular and multi-choice communities, Christians cannot afford to make the mistake of assuming that people know what it's all about. Just two days ago a friend told me of an incident where Christians were carrying out an Easter pilgrimage through their town and a small boy pointed to the cross and asked his father, "Dad, what's that?" 

In Jesus' day, everyone knew what a cross was. They also knew what it meant.

EXPOSED in Cape Town

If you want to launch a Christian response against corruption, South Africa is as good as any place to start and that's what we were doing last night as 150 people from the press, along with business and political leaders met to launch the resources of EXPOSED 2013. 

Admittedly the event was accompanied by a good deal of ambiguities. The very fact that we met in the Congo Room at the prestigious River Club in South Africa was ambiguous: why not have the event in the heart of one of the informal settlements of suburbia which hug the highways as you drive away from the city?