Prepping for “The World is our Parish”

This weekend in all our worship services we will be marking a very important day that is coming up in December, World AIDS Day. World AIDS day was started in 1988 to increase awareness and focus media and politics’ attention on AIDS, to fight prejudice, improve education and raise money for researches. This year marks the 20th anniversary of this effort. 

Why are we participating in this? 

Because In our world today… 

• Over 30 million people worldwide are infected with HIV/AIDS
• In the year 2007, 2.5 million more people became infected with HIV/AIDS
• As of the year 2005, 15.2 million children were orphaned around the world because of HIV/AIDS

But we’re also participating fora  deeper reason… Because we believe that as a community of people who are devoted to becoming deeply committed followers of Jesus, it is not acceptable to God for us to turn a blind eye to the suffering of our world. And if these numbers tell us anything, they are a vivid reminder of the suffering that AIDS is causing around the world. 

John Wesley said it this way. “The World is my Parish.” Now, the language of “the parish” is not something you probably hear everyday. I had an idea of what it meant, but I decided to look the word up anyway. What I found was, “a small administrative district typically having its own church and a priest or pastor,” and consulting the Thesaurus yielded a similar word that we do use on a consistent basis; a community. 

Perhaps this is just another example of how Wesley was ahead of his time, or an insight into the unique place we are in the history of our world today. What I mean by that is this. Today, we truly do live in a global community, and as participants in that global community we have the ability to bring about positive change on a scale unprecedented in the history of humanity. 

Amazingly enough, it is how God has always seen the world, and I believe the invitation of faith encourages us to see it the same. The great social upheaval that is happening in Africa because of AIDS today may be happening on the other side of the world… but it’s still my world… and even more importantly, it’s still God’s world. 

And because God cares about the world, I believe followers of Jesus should as well. 

I hope to see you on Saturday.

Related posts:

1. How do you see the world?
2. Church Mission Statements
3. General Conference Opening Worship
4. The world of normalcy
5. A new way of engaging the world…

Tags: Africa, AIDS, John Wesley

Category: Faith & Culture, Leadership