Reflections from Pentecost 2008: Training For Change

I just returned from my first attendance at Pentecost, Training for Change http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=get_connected.pentecost08&item=pentecost08_main

Like many advocates for peace and justice, I struggle with the issue of poverty in terms of knowing what the exodus out of poverty leads to. I know that poverty is something that people are to exit out of but to what?

In Hip Hop, which I am called to be a prophetic voice in, a calling out of poverty is the reoccurring message of many rappers. However, a distinction exists between the earlier voices of Hip Hop and today’s hip hop voices. The former made known of the living conditions of the poor (Melle Mel and the Furious Five, Public Enemy) while the latter have indulged in materialism and hedonism ( Lil Wayne, 50cents,) as evidence of being saved out of poverty.

Yet, as one who shares in preaching a message of overcoming poverty, I can not do either of what the past and present voices in hip hop have done. I cannot merely make known that poverty exist nor preach materialism as a way out of poverty. I also have to take personal action amongst others who are doing the same while pointing to materialism as not a way out of poverty but expose it for what it has ironically done to many Americans–leaving them impoverished.

You ask how can materialism leave people impoverished? Before understanding this dynamic one has to re-understand poverty to be more than lack of material need. Poverty means lack of many other things. I have not yet figured what poverty also entails today and so I too am part of in re-understanding poverty. However, one thing that poverty does not lack is God and the Gospel(Psalm 140:12; Is 25:4;Luke 4:16-21,6:20-21) which is why I am left in befuddlement as to why the poor will attempt to replace God and the Good news of his ways with cars, mansions, jewelry, and other possible idols.

The two days I spend at Pentecost 2008, has help me to resurrect my own story which provides a footnote to why I want to be a part of eradicating poverty, and to be a part of the new story that sees poverty, in all of its forms, overpowered, a story known as the Gospel of and about Jesus Christ.