The MCC Mailing list

It's a lot easier getting on a mailing list than getting off. After the Tsunami, I sent relief money to the Mennonites, people I figured could be trusted to run a program economically and see that it got to the places that needed it most. Years ago I'd done some research and they seemed to have the lowest overhead, with the most dollars going to the neediest. Later, I found out that their money was co-mingled with a larger church organization, one that never presents Christ as an alternative. Forget rice-Christians! There'd be no Christian propaganda handed out with their food and blankets.

But the Common Place magazine, a bi-monthly that reports on the activities of the Mennonite Central Committee, sponsored by Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churchs in Canada and the USA, just keeps coming. I suppose I could e-mail them and ask to be taken off the list--after all, I want my funds to go to people who will preach, not just demonstrate, the good news of Jesus.

The latest issue reports that MCC is planning to grow its educational sponsorship program from $1.5 million a year to $5 million a year by 2017. Why? To help "children develop a sense of identity and history and thereby enables them to engage the stories and histories of others." Isn't that odd? Not so they can earn a living, or enjoy good literature, or read the instructions on their medicine, or read the Bible, but so that can "engage the stories and histories of others." Then further gooble-de-gook--education will enable children to "uncover the questions" and will happen "where love and curiosity are present." Huh?

From that, he's on to educating girls because they stay in the community and become leaders. I worked in the agriculture library in the 1970s on a government grant and the U.S. AID believed the same thing, so they were focusing small credit grants and water projects on the women, who were the farmers and gatherers. The men just waged war, hunted and watched the women work. I'm not sure what happened to those Department of State programs I helped with 30 years ago, but Africa is still terribly poor and the only countries moving ahead are those that have been able to attract investment and create stable governments, avoiding hand-outs.

Maybe the Mennonites have another magazine for the U.S., but I didn't see a single story here about the United States. I guess we've got poverty licked with all our government programs (actually, that's close to the truth). This issue includes Yasir and Kawthar Abed in northern Iraq; Amira Slawa whose father was slain by Iraqi police in 1987; Puja Rana in Kolkata, India; Priya Bhadani and her family in Kolkata, displaced 15 years ago; Ayesha Kader who works in an MCC office in Kolkata; Ismael Ramiro Cucul Rax of Guatemala who is in a Saturday school sponsored by MCC; and then shorter blurbs about school kits, puppets, scholarships, Hurricane Felix relief, farmers in Zimbabwe, ex-offenders in Saskatoon, suffering in Colombia because of a local war, helping children in North Korea with food shipments (note: the Communist government of N. Korea has killed millions of its own citizens by starvation, and now western countries and Christian programs are bailing them out); a garage sale in Winnepeg to pay for scholarships for children in India; and a Mennonite living in a seminary owned by the Chaldean Church in Iraq.

According to Matt 25, these people are Jesus, and so it is a wonderful privilege to serve Him (them). But then who will be Jesus for them? The Beatitudes are not a list of rules and guidelines for Christians to follow concerning the poor and down trodden. They are an announcement, based on the OT book of Isaiah, of who Jesus is. I didn't see a word about Jesus Christ in the entire issue.