live 8 & the absent church

i watched a little bit of live 8 today with a range of emotion. there was a bit of nostalgia--i remember live aid and band aid in '85. it was the first time i was really aware of U2. there was a bit of awe--elton john, madonna, U2, paul mccartney, greenday, the blackeyed peas, all performing in the same day. and of course, my heart caught at the 3 second snaps video and crowd snaps that will smith led.

according to the world health organization, in 2005 more than 11 million children will die before reaching the age of five this year. this breaks down to more than 30,000 children each day, 1,250 each hour, 20 per hour. every three minutes a child dies from preventable causes...they're just born into poverty where due to a lack of clean water and proper nutrition, they won't survive. this is the same statistic that was true in the late 80's and early 90's when i did fundraising for a health care & relief organization. it's hard to believe that the statistic remains unchanged 20 years later. during that time, the hardest groups to work with were church groups.

today, the thing that kept bothering me about live 8 is where is the church? i guess what bothers me is that we can find christians willing to unite to protest against music and movies that are considered profane. there's plenty of christians willing to speak out about the politically left media. we can find christians willing to denounce homosexuality and homosexuals. but where are the christians denouncing poverty? did that die with mother theresa? she didn't even want to be in the spotlight...she just sought to be obedient and to 'do unto the least' as jesus would have. and in the process she gave a voice, an image of christians doing something for the least.

now i know that many churches have great missions and outreach programs and i'm not criticizing that at all. i think that's important and that we should be doing those things in our churches. i just wonder why we as christians can't come together to coordinate our efforts in fighting poverty; i wonder if we are as concerned with taking care of a person's physical needs as we are their spiritual needs. i wonder why it is that a bunch of celebrities who are often notorious for leading decadent lifestyles can manage to come together to make a stand. and i wonder why the church can't set aside the denominational and politcal lines that divide us long enough to show the world that we care more about the people in the world than we do our own differences. and i wonder how and where to start...