Ekklesia Inner City Ministries

Martin Luther King Jr., writing from a Birmingham, Alabama jail said, "We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of social injustice to the solid rock of human dignity".

I sat with an old friend this past week drinking fair trade coffee in a funky downtown Hamilton Christian coffee house. It was a wonderful time of theological and philosophical reflection and in only a few hours we had identified the worlds problems and talked about the church's response to them. If only we ran the world what a better place it would be ... or maybe not.

A number of things challenged me after that meeting, and I began to think about King's letter from a Birmingham jail. First of all, King's comment regarding time. I think as I get older I am more aware of time, more so than I have ever been in my life. King's challenge is to be creative and to know that now is the right time to do what is right. I have found myself experiencing a level of frustration regarding the creativity of our past ministry involvement and the seeming plateau I feel that we are on now. At times it feels like we have not done anything new or creative for a while, and yet we serve a God who is the most creative being of all. We strive for God's likeness in our lives or "to be like Jesus" as the old chorus reminds us. Thus our living out that call must be to be creative, however, we have settled for the comfort of modern Christianity and all the cultural baggage that it calls for.

Have we moved from being creative to settling for the next Christian fad to come along? What has happened to the transformative people of God, have we been assimilated into the Willow-world, Saddleback, pre-packaged Christianity? Have we forgotten our roots that call us from the complacency of a directionless life without God to a radical love of God? Have we become self absorbed and forgotten the world for which Christ died?

I believe that to be like Jesus is to be radical in embodying a type of love that firstly challenges the Church from an existence of cultural withdrawal and mediocrity. Secondly, it challenges the world to see a radical love that will not just placate to the religious and worldly power, but will stand for justice and human dignity.

As I look back over the years, we have had many creative ventures in the kingdom of God. I can look back and say that we have challenged the church and some of its members to think differently about issues of justice and yet I feel the journey has only just began, for the world around us is still full of injustice. Children living in poverty, humans are still bought and sold as if they were no more than cattle and First Nations people here in Canada struggle to have a voice. While the church struggles with empty seats and an aging population, searching for identity and relevance. And while we struggle with what to do next, King's words ring truer than ever:

"Now is the time to do what is right. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of social injustice to the solid rock of human dignity".

This is the call of the church, not to seek relevance, but to seek to be creative radical extremists for love.

Blessings and prayers;

Joe Elkerton,

Executive Director, 

Project417, Toronto

Joe's Thoughts on Transformational Values