The latest issue of Rev! magazine features an article by our National Director of Church Mobilization, Jim Martin. Through sharing his own experience from The River Church Community in San Jose, California, Jim offers great encouragement and practical next steps for leading others beyond mercy ministry and into the work of also seeking justice for our neighbors who are suffering abuse and oppression today.

Here’s a short excerpt - for the full article, go to www.rev.org and click on “Why Mercy Isn’t Enough” under Extras.

Thankfully, despite the challenge and the cost, many church leaders over the last 50 years have chosen to open their eyes to God’s concern for the poor. And in engaging the issue, their churches have found not ruin, but restoration. They have discovered the secret that engaging in ministries of mercy provides not just hope for the poor and vulnerable, but also hope for their own tired congregations...The challenging truth, however, is that in a world so ravaged by evil as ours, mercy ministry is simply not enough.

...In the midst of these mercy ministries, we experienced the presence and power of God in very profound ways… Our isolation from the depths of evil and suffering in our world left us unequipped to answer the very persistent and difficult questions of oppression and injustice we encountered: Why were the people we were serving so vulnerable? Could anything be done to protect them before they were abused, or should we confine ourselves to binding up the wounds caused by the abuse? Treating the symptoms of oppression, while a mercy to those suffering, does not solve their problems. What the oppressed need is for justice to roll down like water. But is that the job of the church?