Q & A With Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Hartgrove

I've included a very good Q & A with two authors who are living, breathing, and working towards seeing the marginalized and poor communities rise up with the involvement of everyday, ordinary people. [Check out the full article here.] The Q & A is a bit a read, but its well worth it. Both authors share recent experiences and begin to offer some answers to the questions of: God, economy, the Church's role, and the opportunity we have upset the skewed and screwed patterns of this world. Here's a snippet from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove:

"It’s interesting that poor people seem to get the tactics of Jesus a little better than people who have resources because they know that you have to take care of each other if you’re gonna make it in this world. So when Jesus says things like "Give to whoever asks," that makes sense to people who’ve learned how to survive on the margins and in the cracks. In some ways, I think in the midst of an economic crisis, especially in the Church, we might look to learn from our brothers and sisters who’ve lived in poverty what it means to really be God’s economy and receive that as good news here in the midst of an economy that might be going down. I mean, after all, if you’ve invested everything in your 401k, things aren’t looking so good. But if you’ve invested in friendships, you’ve still got those friends"

And a snippet from Shane Claiborne:

"Jonathan and I’s story is that we both had to leave some of where we came from in order to grow closer to people who were suffering. That’s not necessarily true of everyone—for some people it means remaining in the neighborhoods they came from if they came from tough neighborhoods, or returning to them after they’ve gone to college and come back to their neighborhood to be a lawyer or a teacher. Those are incredibly heroic callings and vocations. But for us, I think Jonathan and I suffered from many of the patterns of our culture that separate from the poor or the marginalized or people who look different from us. That’s where I think Jesus is saying to the Church, "Go into the world." Jesus is not saying to the poor, “Come find the Church,” but He’s saying to us, “Get out—go into the world, go into the prison. Find me in prison, find me where I’m hungry.” In that, there’s a call to community, where we’ll do that together, where we’re not just lone rangers, but we’ll go on this journey together to move closer to the suffering in our world."