 
 Today’s scripture from Ginghamsburg’s Transformation Journal was about the story of the age-old conflict between farmers (Cain) and herders (Abel). My thoughts went immediately to the ongoing conflict in Darfur, where much of our church’s energy and resources have been going since 2004 (www.thesudanproject.org). The Scripture reminded me how murder can be a result of our own indifference and failure to continually act against the “evil that is crouching at the door.” “Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” (Gen.4:9).
More...
 One of the children being served by The Sudan Project in Darfur.
(Picture by Jonathan Slaughter)
Our sisters’ and brothers’ “blood cries out from the ground.” Last month the Sudanese government pursued “scorched earth” bomb attacks on western Darfur. The joint United Nations (U.N.)/African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur that is both undermanned and under-funded said they could have done something if they had the needed helicopters. They have none. China is preparing for the eyes of the world to be turned on Beijing this summer as they focus the spotlight on the 2008 Summer Olympics. This is a strategic time for the world, as well as the Church, to call attention to China’s abuse of human rights in Tibet and China’s failure to pressure the government of Sudan to end the violence in Darfur. China purchases 71% of Sudan’s oil, pumping tens of millions of dollars in support of Sudan’s government. They maintain an active partnership in Sudan’s military by selling arms and weapons, including an estimated $100 million worth of fighter planes and troop transport helicopters. The Chinese have enormous leverage over what happens in Darfur. How can we take action for our sisters and brothers who cannot speak out for themselves? Senator Clinton called on President Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said that the U.S. should boycott the games entirely. Steven Spielberg resigned as the creative director for the opening ceremonies, citing China’s failure to influence the Sudanese government to admit the full, much-needed U.N. peacekeeping force. George Clooney, who set up the NOT ON OUR WATCH organization to help provide humanitarian relief, just gave $5.6 million to the U.N./AU peacekeeping force to buy sorely needed helicopters. He put his money where his mouth is! On Saturday, April 19, there will be a rally for Darfur in Dayton, Ohio from 1-4 p.m. The rally will start at Dayton Courthouse Square and then march to the Dayton Convention Center. At both locations, participants will hear messages from Nick Clooney, Darfuri refugee Ibrahim Musa Adam, Dayton City Commissioner Dean Lovelace and my son Jonathan Slaughter. If you live near or in southwestern Ohio, I encourage you to attend this rally. Help increase public awareness of the crisis in Darfur, encouraging all Americans to speak out on behalf of those who have no voice.  In this picture of a Darfuri mother with her child, the orange tint to the baby's hair reveals the serious problem of protein deficiency prevalent among refugee children in Darfur.
(Picture by Jonathan Slaughter)
Yes, we ARE our brothers and sisters keepers, and we must not grow weary in doing the Lord’s work. Ginghamsburg Church has just allocated almost $200,000 from the most recent miracle offering to expand our agriculture project to an additional 2000 families, which represents an additional 11,000 people to the 65,000 already being served. This is in addition to continuing the 2008 funding needed to expand the child protection and safe water projects. We are beginning preparations for a November 13-20 return to Darfur to report on our projects and visit the people. As we prepare for the next Christmas Miracle Offering, all of us must continue to ask ourselves how we will live more simply throughout 2008, so that others in Darfur may simply live.
God bless,
Posted By: Pastor Mike Slaughter on Apr 08, 2008 03:57PM
Add Comment
 Many have asked if racism were to blame for the slow Hurricane Katrina relief response.
I have had emails and phone calls asking why my words in the Dayton Daily News last week were not condemning the angry statements circulating from Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. Do I believe such statements as the U.S. government used HIV against its own people? Absolutely not. Then why am I not speaking out against this angry pastor?
Many white Americans are oblivious to the problems and feelings concerning race that are not only still prevalent, but immense. Easter week I was speaking at a small college in eastern Iowa. I was in the hotel lobby waiting for my host to pick me up to take me to the evening event when an African American truck driver came into the lobby with his roll bag and asked the desk clerk for a room. The desk manager informed him that all the rooms were booked for the night. I thought nothing about it until I returned about 10 p.m. and noticed there were only six cars in the parking lot. My worst fears were confirmed when I was the only guest in the breakfast room the next morning.
More...
How can this form of blatant racism still be going on in 2008 America? This should enrage all who name the name of Jesus. There are more black men in prison than college in this country. This should cause pain in us all! "For even Christ did not please himself but as it is written: 'The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me'" (Romans 15:3). Mike Huckabee, former Republican presidential candidate, offered an interesting perspective on Pastor Wright’s words: "As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, 'That's a terrible statement,' I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I'm going to be probably the only conservative in America who's going to say something like this, but I'm just telling you: We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, 'You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus.' And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had ... more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me."
Why am I not condemning the words of Jeremiah Wright that I disagree with? One of the emails I received last week said it best. "It is when what we have in conflict is dominant, that what we have in common must be emphasized." God bless,
Posted By: Pastor Mike Slaughter on Mar 31, 2008 12:01PM
Add Comment
 Mother Teresa experienced long periods of “God's absence.”
We have just celebrated the event that stands at the center of Christian faith and underlies the claim of exclusiveness to Jesus' ultimate universal authority. Almost 38 years ago, I made the commitment to order everything from my personal moral code to social-global responsibility around this supernatural deviation from the norm. I have bet everything in my life on the testimony of the four Gospels. I must admit, however, that it is still a hard intellectual pill to swallow.
Many other faithful disciples have also struggled through lifelong periods of doubt and dark nights of the soul. When Mother Teresa’s diaries were released last year, they revealed that she went through years where she felt God’s silence and absence. She wrote a letter to her archbishop asking, “Please pray especially for me that I may not spoil Jesus’ work and that our Lord may show himself--for there is such a terrible darkness within me as if everything is dead.” The early Christians had a name for this silence of God that they called the “via negativa.”
More...
The prophet Elijah went through a similar experience after his great victory over the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. He suffered through a time of great depression when it seemed like God was nowhere to be found. Elijah finally recognized the presence of God in utter stillness. Perhaps Mother Teresa meant the same when she wrote, “I have come to love the darkness.” Faith is not the absence of doubt. People of faith act on the promises and purpose of God regardless of intellectual or emotional obstacles. I can so relate to the father who came to Jesus asking him if he could help his sick child. “'If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father replied, “I believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” I see the power of the resurrection operative all through my life, ministry, marriage and in the active faith of our children. Long ago I decided to act daily on my faith, however limited or challenged, and not allow doubt to impede the powerful purpose of the mysterious God. God bless,
Posted By: Pastor Mike Slaughter on Mar 26, 2008 02:49PM
Add Comment
 Dr. Jeremiah Wright has had a powerful ministry at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He has been Barak Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years. Barak made a commitment to follow Jesus under Dr. Wright’s ministry 20 years ago. Jeremiah has initiated many vital social programs in the Chicago area. Numerous young men and women have heard God’s call to preach under his ministry. Frank Thomas, who has spoken at Ginghamsburg on numerous occasions, is but one.
A few isolated clips from Rev. Wright’s sermons are being circulated regularly through the media and on YouTube. They reveal controversial and divisive remarks. So is Dr. Wright a racist, divisive radical or an angry righteous prophet?
Anointed prophets of God are guilty of sometimes saying the wrong thing. I speak from personal experience. Boy, do I ever wish I could take some things back that I have spoken in a rash of anger or in a moment when the inspiration came from some other source than heaven. In an age of Internet and sermon podcasts, those statements continue to play into eternity. I can’t get them back! You could take some of those isolated clips and make me, and anyone associated with me, look like a real jackass, and sometimes for righteous reasons.
More...
Jeremiah and I worked on our doctorates together. We have traveled together and worked on the same Jesus causes. I have never heard a racist statement or seen an unchristian attitude toward any person group in all of my encounters with him. Perhaps Jeremiah is living up to the anointing of his namesake, the prophet activist who ministered in the 6th century BC. The prophet Jeremiah lived during the last days of the Jewish Empire through the Babylonian captivity. Jeremiah was the “angry” prophet who prophesized the demise of his own nation for forsaking God, the Torah and turning to idolatry. He was considered a traitor and declared an outlaw during the reign of Zedekiah for declaring that Judah’s idolatry had been the cause of Babylon’s impending terrorist attack. He was arrested and held as an enemy of the state. All of God’s prophets have a bit of “Balaam’s ass” in us. Forgive us when we are wrong, but listen carefully for what is right!
Posted By: Pastor Mike Slaughter on Mar 18, 2008 09:10AM
Add Comment
 How many times have you seen this picture during the past week? Former governor Eliot Spitzer has become the latest self-inflicted casualty for the blatant disregard of sacred trust that others placed in him. His brokenness has made him a spectacle for late night TV ridicule as well as global media humiliation. I was in New York City last Monday when Spitzer’s world came tumbling down. The outcry on the street was, “The crusader of ethical politics who campaigned on the promise to end public corruption has betrayed our trust!”
Don’t think that I am throwing stones. I live in a glass house. I am not so much enraged as I am warned. Far better persons than myself have succumbed to the broken desires that lurk inside us all. Leonard Pitts, Jr. of The Miami Herald pointed out the astonishingly long list of high public officials and self-appointed moralists who have preached one set of values while living another (Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Larry Craig, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, former Spokane Mayor James West, Rev. Ted Haggard, Newt Gingrich, numerous Catholic priests, Strom Thurmond, Mark Foley, Rudy Giuliani, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, Gary Condit, Dan Burton, Bob Packwood, Henry Hyde, Jim Baker, Wilbur Mills, Gary Hart, Jimmy Swaggart, John Kennedy and Thomas Jefferson to name just a few). To feel superiority or indignation when I know that I have the same capabilities for self-destruction is neither helpful nor appropriate. More...
My prayers go out to the Spitzer family at this time while I become even more focused on dealing with the log jam in my own soul (see James 1:12-16). In Jesus we can find mercy, grace and strength to both name and deal with our personal demons on a daily basis. If we fail to deal with our duplicity on the inside, it will be brought out into the light for all to see. (For more on this topic, view my weekend message on " Temptation and Trust.")
Pray for me as I pray for you!
Posted By: Pastor Mike Slaughter on Mar 17, 2008 09:10AM
Add Comment
|
