I just had the priviledge to sit down at a small breakfast with John Perkins. He is a man, who's passions have been rooted in justice and reconciliation. Last night he addressed the topic of "When the foundation is being destroyed what can the righteous do?" So many good things were said in such a short amount of time.
Perkins stated that we have become an individualistic institution...even the mere fact of driving 30 minutes or miles to go to our churches. Values are related through individuals in society and we have lost sense of those values and relationships. One of the most important problems is the community and those families in the communities--are families not suppost to help families out, but we have become so diconnected. Even looking at the churches within the communities, Perkins stated, "How can the church go forward in this homogeneous state?" At breakfast this morning he stated that we need to have a common goal a common problem to work together. I am relating this to four church within downtown "ghetto" Beaver Falls, an oppressed community that has and is suffering, that are gettting together and talking about reconciliation. Perkins made it known to us that we will find stuff we do not like about each other when we work together, but we must find a common problem within the community to work thoughly. In other words, there will always be differences.
Taken all of this into account, I question. If i want to do family and marriage counseling, why not do community and family development? That seems to be more where I am headed. I see the importance of family and yet a huge stress or benifactor of the family is the community in which they live. A felt need and a solid one, which i think would be challenging to work on.
Any thoughts would be great.
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