fighting for a broken-hearted generation
Tom Christmas
I’ve been praying this summer that we would be a broken-hearted generation.
Three years ago I spent a chunk of my summer in South Africa. We spent a lot of time with kids who were living on the streets; searching for a missing girl who we thought might be a victim of trafficking; talking to people who were homeless and, they told us, close to death as a result of severe addiction to a deadly new drug, whoonga – while the wealthy dealers crawled past in their expensive BMWs; hearing about how the police would beat the ‘street kids’, put them in vans, and dump them outside the city so that the streets would be ‘clean’ for the western tourists who brought in money.
This summer has been quite different. Strategic ‘vision days’ with boards and new staff teams; partnership meetings with various charities; conversations with students at new universities; encouraging people to give to Just Love; writing up resources ranging from theology to leadership to impact assessment; planning and running training days for Just Love committees.
This year doesn’t quite have the same front-line, highly-emotionally-charged, staring-injustice-in-the-face kind of vibe that South Africa three years ago had. Having said that, I am so excited about what I’ve been doing this summer, and what the year ahead holds. Because I believe that this behind-the-scenes, justice-facilitation work will one day turn into the front-line change I have longed to see more of since I went to South Africa.
Just Love is really starting to grow and spread across the country – new groups in Exeter and St Andrews are in the process of starting up, and in 5 years we want to have 50 groups, with at least 50 students involved in each. We believe that this will lead to thousands of events being run; tens of thousands of volunteer hours being mobilised for the local community; hundreds of thousands of pounds being raised for other charities. We believe that this will lead to a culture shift among Christian students towards a greater prioritisation of social justice and sacrificial love - an immensely powerful and biblical witness. We believe that this will help to inspire and release a generation of Christian leaders and innovators in the charity sector; a generation of Christians bringing integrity and change to politics; a generation of Christians setting up ethical businesses and giving their profits away.
‘Social justice’ is not a phase we are going through as students. This is a lifelong fight. It will never be ok that people are victims of violence, that people are going hungry, that people have nowhere to live – and we want God to break our hearts for this. Psalm 97 tells us that ‘righteousness and justice are the foundations of His throne’, and we want them to be foundations of our lives. We want every Christian student to be committed to social justice and doing something about it, but not just while they’re at uni – as a national team we’re developing some things that will help you take the next step into a lifelong pursuit of justice. Watch this space!
We will be a brokenhearted generation.