In addition to helping with the CSA at the church in Burlington, I’ve been working with the Boston Faith and Justice Network (BFJN) as their "Food Justice and Simple Living Skills Coordinator" (what a mouthful).  Two days a week I shadow and assist the Executive Director, Ryan, or on occasion I get to hang out with other people involved with BFJN on their various food-related works.  In addition to helping plan events, editing grant proposals, and doing the clerical tasks of running a non-profit, I’ve been learning and exploring the concept of economic discipleship which is the central message of BFJN.  BFJN is “a community of Christians practicing simple living for generous giving,” and economic discipleship is “following Jesus with our money.”  Through events and teaching the Lazarus atthe Gate curriculum (--an 8 week bible study) to churches the message is for Christians to recognize the blessing of the wealth we have and be intentional on our spending for ourselves so that we can better help our neighbor through giving and sharing the blessing of wealth. 

So yes, I am working with BFJN to get Christians to sit down in a group and talk about money and how we are spending it.  As my fellow YAV Libby said, “I’m from south Georgia where we don’t talk about money in Church” That’s been partly my experience in Virginia and in a recent meeting about the Lazarus at the Gate curriculum here in Massachusettes, one person said that money is typically as much a taboo in church as sex.  It is a very touchy subject for conversation and we don't take it lighlty in how we present the curriculum.  In fact we are never prescriptive on how people should spend their money and share their wealth, that is between each person, or each family and God.

The fact of the matter is on a global scale, all americans are rich.  Most of the world lives on an income of only $2.00 per day, so even my modest stipend of $400 per month is wealthy.  The Lazarus Curriculum which I will eventually help teach at my host church in Burlington, MA encourages each person to make their own lifestyle and spending changes to free up more of their own wealth to help the many people who have much less.  The lifestyle changes we encourage focus on simple living.

BFJN also teaches through skillshare events, workshops, and online publication.   I’ve been writing on the BFJN Blog on what it means to live simply as a Christian and why it’s important.  I’ve written about some ways to repurpose trash to extend it’s life, and how we can use our gifts as tools for ministry like our vehicles to bring food to our neighbors.  Please take a look and follow us on Tumblr!  Coming from my background of simple living as a personal growing tool, or as a way to help the environment, I've found it very enriching to learn how simple living is a way to live out our faith as Christians.  Finding value in relationships, and simple things, and just being purposeful and intentional in things that have become routine.

Through work with BFJN and the CSA, I get to see people from different tax brackets, and living in Boston, I see people from different ethnic and cultural heritages.  But on a daily basis, I see many more upper-middle class white christian families with this work.  As a missionary I expected I'd be sitting down with the homeless, the lonely, and the poor everyday, but that is not the case. My work is more brain work on working on larger economic issues than just being the typical band-aid charity.  The temporary missions like food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters are extremely important, people need something to fall back on at times, but it treats the symptoms of our economy, not the problems.  We must touch deeper into the systems around us to make these changes happen.  We need to examine our entire food system all the way from production to consumption and waste disposal to understand how to fight hunger.  And we need to understand how each of our own actions contribute to the problems or how they can help solve them.

As my close friend Gus once taught me, people need to listen to Michael Jackson and Ghandi more about changing the world.  "If you want to make the world a better place/ take a look at yourself and make a change." This next year  will be full of opportunities to change myself in order to better the world, and in my job I get to help people make changes to their lives and that just might change the world.