Indonesian farmers carry buckets of water onto a dried up rice field in Lamongan East Java Indonesia.
(AP)
Churches were encouraged to stand up and renew their commitment to working for justice and creation care, and asking MPs to take action on poverty and climate issues, as part of the Stand Up campaign by the Bond alliance of NGOs.
They also spent time praying together for global economic justice, raising awareness of the Millennium Development Goals to halve extreme global poverty by 2015, and taking action to cancel the debts of impoverished countries.
Stand Up was the campaign action for Micah Sunday, part of the World Evangelical Alliance’s Micah Challenge movement to end global poverty.
Christians taking part in the day were asked to renew their commitment to the principles of Micah 6.8 in the Old Testament, to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God”.
For this year’s Micah Sunday, churches were encouraged to create new links or build on existing ones with a community in a low-income country either by way of missionary presence or a formal twinning arrangement.
The Executive Director of Micah Challenge UK, Andy Clasper, said that every Christian could play a part in eradicating global poverty.
“There is tremendous power in the realisation that we are connected to others across the other side of the world and form part of the same body - all made in God’s image.
We have a critical role to play,” he said.
“Even if we only feel our actions are as tiny as a mustard seed, collectively God can use them to bring transformation and justice to his world.”
The Church of Scotland observed the UN’s World Poverty Day on Saturday with a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown urging him to tackle childhood poverty in the UK, particularly in the midst of the credit crunch.
The focus on children for this year’s World Poverty Day reflected the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Convener of the Church and Society Council of the Church of Scotland, the Rev Ian Galloway, urged Brown in his letter to show “real leadership” in ending childhood poverty and warned that eradicating poverty was the “central moral challenge to our generation”.
“The potential of too many young people is destroyed simply because of the poverty in which they grow up,” he said.
“To put it simply, eradicating poverty is the central moral challenge to our generation.”
Rev Galloway said the eradication of poverty could not remain a job for the powerful, but had to become a calling to everyone.
He said: “With the challenges of climate change and the credit crunch echoing around us, more than ever we are discovering our interdependence as human beings. One person’s suffering affects us all.”
