Mission Statement

We will serve as a God-centered, Bible-based team that will help people at Madison and in the community become educated about social justice issues and we will be a proactive force that breaks down barriers and helps create a more just community and society.

Current Status and Planned Future Direction of Social Justice at Madison

"Social justice" names what is often a broad and vague concern, difficult to pin down and susceptible to a lot of talk and little action. The range of injustices encountered in society is broad and diverse. Without some focusing strategy, attempts to address social justice concerns may yield only dissipation of energy and rapid disillusionment. We propose adopting three broad areas of engagement to give shape to Madison's engagement with social justice. They are not watertight compartments: each is related to the others. They do not exhaust social justice issues, but they do name clusters of concern that are recognizable to most people. We may therefore be able to focus in one area for a specific period of time while keeping the bigger picture in view, and to rotate the focus in order to keep our engagement fresh. The three areas proposed are:

1. Poverty - Scripture is replete with commands not only to give to the poor, but to attend to the injustices that lead to poverty and that are perpetrated on the poor because of their lack of social leverage. Attentiveness to poverty is frequently associated with godliness in Scripture.
2. Identity - Injustice often occurs when groups or individuals are treated unfairly because of their identity, especially in terms of ethnicity and gender. Christian insistence that all humans are made in God's image offers grounds for resisting.
3. Creation Care - Many are increasingly aware of the ways in which we have mistreated the creation and of the resulting social effects (for instance current debates connecting the promotion of ethanol with rising global food prices). Scripture calls us to care for God's world and seek the well-being of those who live in it.

Schedule and Contact Info

The Social Justice Team meets on the first Monday of each month from 7:00 - 9:00 PM. All are welcome to join us in the work we are doing!

Contact Person: Kate Kooyman via email

Planned Sponsored Activities

The Social Justice committee will be informing the congregation about quarterly opportunities for service and action. Advance notification of these activites will be placed in the bulletin, church announcements, and email. The committee is still working on which activities will be included in the next year. As soon as details are finalized, we will add them to this page.

Links

• Micah Challenge
• Christian Reformed Church Justice Seekers
• Madison at the CRC Justice Seekers website
• Social Justice at the CRC North America website

Madison Square "Stands Against Poverty"! Madison members joined the global movement of standing to hold our leaders accuntable to keeping their promise to meet the Millennium Development Goals. In 2007, Madison's 27 people contributed to the 43 million around the world who participated in this record-breaking demonstration of solidarity with the world's poor.

One of the eight prayer stations to highlight each of the eight Millennium Development Goals. At this station, Madison members learned about the importance of improving maternal health, and MDG number 5, which aims to reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.

At this prayer station, Madison members petitioned God for an end to extreme poverty and hunger. The Millennium Development Goal #1 is to halve the number of people whose income is less than $1 a day and who suffer from hunger.