Minority Report

The War is Won in the Trenches

Ryan Beutin talked briefly about the ‘sexy missions’ vs the more attainable missions e.g. going to Africa to save all the children from trafficking (think Machine Gun Preacher) vs taking care of poor children in your own neighborhood (think Salvation Army). He talked about how most Christians are not really called to go out and do the glamorous work that will get them the Nobel Peace Prize but rather doing the grunt work that will positively affect the people around you. The grunt work, working in the soup kitchen, serving at the church charity drive, or volunteering on a graffiti clean-up crew, isn’t going to win you any awards but it will positively impact the community you live in. I believe that helping your own community grow and flourish in the long is more important than worrying about people thousands of miles away for the short term. Very few people have the wealth, time, or ability to be long term missionaries and make a long lasting impact on a foreign community. It is difficult to be an outsider and come into make significant change. In fact, Ryan talked about how most of the time the people we are helping are actually making fun of us behind our backs because we don’t know exactly what the needs of that community or the best way to deal with them are. When we help our own community we are automatically more invested because it is in our own back yards. Most Christians would do better in an environment where we are helping our own neighbors because we would already know the people and know how they can best be helped.

This ideal ties into what Berry and co. have been talking about when discussing their views on agrarian farming. Small, local farms would be better suited to fulfilling the specific needs of the community they live in because they would know what the people want exactly. This would then lead to better use of the community’s land and preserve their resources. Which leads to a healthier community overall. Rather than trying to take down a global company by campaigning on TV or organizing a massive boycott most people should try to change their own community. If more and more people help their own community then more communities across the nation will grow and flourish and the better off our entire nation will be. This would be much simpler than trying to make huge sweeping changes to our entire nation’s food system right off the bat and most people would not be able to take that on. So more people are able to participate and the community becomes stronger as a whole. When we take on challenges that are incredibly huge and far away from home the harder it is to stay invested and to make significant change. When we keep things small the problem become more manageable and we tend to be able to do more meaningful work. Christians should also keep their goals smaller and more local so they can achieve them more easily. This would lead to stronger local communities with less problems which would then, in turn, lead to less problems nationwide and then all across the world. Few people has what it takes to be the great ‘sexy’ leaders doing all the glamorous things in life. The rest of us should do the ‘grunt’ work that doesn’t get noticed but is critical to the success of our mission in life. Remember the war is won in the trenches.