As youngsters (and, strangely, many adults) prepare to don weird costumes and troll their communities this week-end for "trick or treat," it occurred to me that there is another Halloween going on, but it's not limited to one day of the year. It's the horror of world poverty. For instance, one-sixth of the world's human beings live on less than $1 a day. Fifty-percent of all people live on less than $2/day. That's 3 billion people, with a B. According to UNICEF, 25,0000-30,000 children die each day due to poverty-related illnesses and malnutrition. Almost one-half of all children in the world live in poverty.
One rule of thumb for defining what it means to be poor is to belong to a household with income less than 1/2 the national average for that particular country. By that measure, 60% of all the households in the world are poor.
Poverty in the USA is rising, too. In 2006 the poverty rate in the US was 12.6%, 36.5 million people. In 2009 the rate was 14.3%, 43.9 million residents of the US.
Jesus came to preach good news to the poor, to declare the Kingdom of God. What does this mean for our missional thinking today?
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