ONE Step to Take Now

Coming out of the Richard Curtis interview, my mind is racing. Bill's comments, Brian McLaren's thoughts...not to mention what I feel God is saying to me. There are so many things we can do, so many things our churches can do and/or re-think. And some of that takes time, time to think through your strategy and plan on how to make a true long-term difference. If you are looking for just one step you could take now, then I encourage you, if you are a U.S. citizen, to check out the ONE campaign. It is something each person can do from their own computer. It takes no money, just a few minutes on your computer to explain to the people that represent you in our government where you would like your money spent. 

Please take a moment or two and read this post from our friends at the ONE campaign:

Hi, this is Aaron Banks from the ONE Campaign sending out a big hello to everyone at Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2007 from all of us at the ONE Campaign. ONE is a nationwide movement of 2.4 million Americans working as ONE to take on the great moral challenge of our time, the fight against extreme global poverty and disease. 

Your motto, Lead Where You Are, gets right at what the ONE Campaign does. We’re asking Americans from all walks of life and in all places to be leaders on these issues. To challenge their friends and neighbors to see the plight of the billion people living in poverty around the globe not as a burden, but as a chance to act out our belief that we are all our brother’s keeper. 

In just a few years, ONE members have had tremendous success and shown what committed people working together can accomplish. Together we’ve sent thousands of e-mails to Congress, asking for full funding for the fight against global disease and extreme poverty. In June and July 2007, the House and Senate appropriated over $2 billion in poverty-fighting development assistance over last year -- a historic increase. Last fall ONE members delivered over 250,000 letters to Capitol Hill, requesting that Congress help up to 300,000 Africans make a living through renewal of a special trade provision within the African Growth and Opportunity Act called the “third country fabric provision.” Congress responded and extended the trade provision until 2012, securing jobs for tens of thousands of hard-working men and women in some of the poorest countries of Africa. And in 2005, ONE generated over 500,000 e-letters to President Bush asking for a historic deal for Africa. In response, President Bush and other world leaders promised $25 billion more for Africa and $50 billion more globally by 2010.

I hope you’ll visit www.one.org and join the ONE campaign. 

I’ll leave you with a few words from the sermon our founder Bono gave at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2006:

“God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. ‘If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places.”’

We hear that call in the ONE Campaign, a growing movement of more than 2 million Americans, left and right together, united in the belief that where you live should no longer determine whether you live or whether you die.

If any of you are already part of ONE, let us all know what your experience is!