The annual One Great Hour of Sharing offering is on March 22. We will be accepting donations starting next week. Every year, since 1948, this offering has made it possible for our partner organizations to feed the hungry, clothe the poor and provide shelter for the homeless. Every effort is made to work through member churches and missions closest to those in need. Where our churches and missions are not present, we work through respected and responsible organizations such as the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, World Vision and Church World Services, all of them Christian, four star Charity Navigator recommended agencies. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be reminding you about this offering and providing real-life examples of ways in which OGHS has changed people’s lives.
Category: Habitat for Humanity
Mission Project Opportunity
I few weeks ago, the Rev. Charlie Magill was in worship, who is quite involved with mission work in his denomination, the United Methodist Church. He announced that he was heading up a mission trip to continue assistance to New Jersey, still suffering from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy.
Here is further information from him. You may click on his name at the bottom to contact him directly.
There are still 3000 families in New Jersey that have not been able to return to there homes because of the damages from hurricane Sandy. We are organizing a trip to help rebuilding efforts there.
The New Jersey Conference disaster recovery organization asks each volunteer to pay $15 per night for lodging and contribute $100 toward materials, so I’m estimating that the costs would be about $350 per person for the week. We would car pool down on Sunday, April 23 and return April 29.
Right now I need an approximate number of people who would like to go. As usual, we probably won’t know exactly what the work is until a week or two before we go, but it will be doing whatever needs to be done to get people back in their homes after the flooding and wind damage of hurricane Sandy.
Blessings to all,
Charlie Magill
HFH Ground Breaking
Isaiah 5:8-13
Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land! The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing: Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield a mere ephah. Ah, you who rise early in the morning in pursuit of strong drink, who linger in the evening to be inflamed by wine, whose feasts consist of lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine, but who do not regard the deeds of the Lord, or see the work of his hands! Therefore my people go into exile without knowledge; their nobles are dying of hunger, and their multitude is parched with thirst.910111213
Matthew 9: 9-13
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
And as he sat at dinner in the house many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” For I have come to call not the righteous but the sinner.”
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Habitat for Humanity is an explicitly Christian organization. But that statement, itself, is vague. For some Christianity has been an experience of oppression. For others Christianity seems more concerned with outward adherence to norms and rules, than with love.
For Millard Fillmore, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, Christianity was both an imperative to be neighborly and the actual experience of life not as a set of rule requiring neighborliness, but as a freedom in which neighborliness becomes our happiness.
This sounds easier than it is — for as Fuller often noted — even about his own organization Habitat for Humanity — we tend to be greedy and to want more than is needed and certainly more than can be sustained.
“God’s order of things holds no place for hoarding and greed,” he wrote. “There are sufficient resources in the world for the needs of everybody, but not enough for the greed of even a significant minority.”
Having said that, let me re-read the story from Matthew:
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a family huddled under the awning of a vacant building and he said to him, “Follow me.” And they got up and followed him.
And he took them out to dinner. And other homeless people joined them. And single mothers on welfare joined them. And men who hadn’t showered or shaved in weeks, were sitting with him and and his disciples. When the other middle-class diners saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with such problem people?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” For I have come to call not the already sufficient, but the person with great problems.”
When we build habitat houses, we cannot forget that we are building them for a family — for a family who, in the words of Millard Fuller, is not perfect. Fuller reminds us, who are engaged in the search, that choosing a family to own and occupy a habitat house is “one of the most difficult and challenging aspects of this ministry. How can the best, most deserving family be selected?” Fuller reviews the basic premises of the process. First, a family should be chosen who is already living in inadequate or substandard conditions. Next a family should be chosen that has an income too low for them to find other kinds of government assisted financing. And finally families must be willing to partner with the community in building the house. These three conditions are important. BUT they are not all.
Here Mr. Fuller again. “Perfect families do not exist!” And he means that they do not exist anywhere. We are humans and that’s in part what it means to be human. He is convinced, as am I, that there is one more condition that is important to remember — and that is that God’s love, God’s gift to the world, is in fact to the world, and not just to those who are able to hoard away more stuff than others, not just to those who are fortunate to have material abundance.
It is often assumed that it says in the bible that God helps those who help themselves. That may be Benjamin Franklin’s gospel. But it is not Jesus’. The gospel of Jesus is about the risk of asking someone that others have given up on, to be partners. The gospel of Jesus is about mercy and about the prophet’s justice, and not about the kind of self-sacrifice that so many who have “made-it” suggest is necessary to life.
Let me conclude by reading Fuller’s final paragraph of advice to us who search for a family. Except that I’m going to broaden the context to all of us who would volunteer our time, to build community and to serve all people, even those with “great problems.”
“So, keep diligently working with the right family, and know that no family, yours included, is perfect. And discover instead that all our families are loved by God as they are. And as your love is added to that love from above, you’ll become part of that wonderful, continuing, redeeming and transforming love that surpasses ever problem and every criticism.
Build. My friends – build.
Habitat for Humanity Land Purchased!
It is an exciting moment for those of us who have been slogging through board meetings for the past year with no land in sight to all of a sudden have an offer accepted. This Duxbury land is both affordable and appropriate to our mission and needs. We will begin work immediately spreading the news that we have found land and starting the groundwork that will allow the many, many people who have indicated they would help when we found land, to actually be put to work. We will be starting the search for homeowners who meet the criteria and begin preparing the land located on Morse Road, just off of Crossett Brook Road.
As excited as I am about the prospect of work ahead building a house and settling a family, I am intrigued by theologian Laura Stivers brave critique of Habitat. It must be said before I quote her that she and I both recognize the power and the beauty of Millard Fuller’s dream being realized. Hers is a larger concern that we not forget, even while we build habitat houses, that a systemic change is still required and that the enormous size of that change is most adequately suited to big government.
In some ways, Habitat helps well-off volunteers feel good about themselves by assisting the poor, but it fails to break down the we/them divide. . . The charitable response of Habitat is the kind of charitable response that will always be needed, but doesn’t help the poorest of the poor. It’s not really addressing homelessness. [1]
Her point is very well taken and not taken as a criticism of Habitat for Humanity nor of the thousands of volunteers who contribute so much time. Stivers asks instead whether we also ought to be prophetically addressing the “capitalist structures” that perpetuate huge income inequalities in our country and in our world. She worries whether the families being “served” by the Habitat program are in fact playing into a role (the “deserving poor”) instead of breaking out of poverty.
These are real and important criticisms to be aware of as we select a family and build a house together. If these thoughts and this process can spur us to hear in the prophet Isaiah’s words as words addressed to us Habitat volunteers then we come close to Millard Fuller’s dream:
And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry! Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you . . . Isaiah 5:3-8
Join us, won’t you, on this journey into discovery and service, of change and grace amidst change. And may the words of the prophets calls us to proper accounting.
1. Vital Theology, “Causes of Homelessness Left Untouched,” Laura Stivers, March 2009.