For those of you eagerly following the adventures of Wesport Road Baptist Church’s softball team, we played another game last night. Now, those folks from Watkins Methodist cat hit. We lost 19-0, or something like that. I played left field for the first time since Little League. Maybe I had more energy back then or something, because I didn’t remember running that much the last time I was out there. We actually had nine players, though, which is a step up from the first week.

I’m going on the road again this weekend, but only for a few days. Chicago is my destination this time, for the Interfaith Worker Justice conference. There I’m looking forward to learning about fundraising for non-profits (a valuable skill indeed, in my line of work), Wal-Mart, and other aspects of activism. I will also build contacts with Interfaith Worker Justice, one of the four social agencies that participants at the NNPCW Leadership Event this summer will be able to visit. Plus, I’ll see my pal Kurt, who is infamous in national Presbyterian circles as the guy from Midland, TX with the funky accent, the flaming, shoulder-length red hair, and a love for Scandinavian death metal. Good times for all, I can assure you.

Interfaith Worker Justice is a national organization with ties to the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Office of Urban Ministry. Since 1996, this organization has worked with religious communities to improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for all workers, particularly low-income workers. The PC(USA) has a history of working with such organizations that has been well-documented on this blog (check out some early archived posts, where I highlighted the successful Taco Bell Boycott). This is, in my opinion, the church at its best.

Why do we, as a church, get involved in such issues, though? When I was growing up, I saw church an otherworldly realm, somewhat divorced from the world. As Christians, we separated from the world in order to remain pure. Yet Presbyterians are Reformed, meaning we really like that John Calvin guy. And for Calvin, Christians were to actively engage the world in dialogue, challenging it as we all moved closer toward what God intended for creation.

More than anything else, perhaps, this idea attracted me theologically to the Presbyterian tradition. At their best, Presbyterians (and other churches as well—I don’t mean to be exclusive here) meet the world head on, working to bring the Good News of God’s healing grace and God’s relevant justice to broken humanity. We get involved because we honestly believe that this is how God calls us to show that we are Christian.

So off I go to the Interfaith Worker Justice conference, hoping that it will better equip me to engage the world as a Christian.

“It is unthinkable that God would do wrong, that the Almighty would pervert justice.” --Job 34:12

Kelsey