Modern day slavery in Georgia is happening now. Most alarming is the rate of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) – approximately 400-500 girls are trafficked EACH MONTH in Georgia.  90% of these girls are African American and the age of first incidence is getting younger – some as young as 10 or 11 years old.  Isolation, manipulation, physical and verbal abuse are all used to coerce these girls into believing they have no alternative and no safe place to go.

One of my greatest frustrations with this particular brand of cruelty is that I feel helpless to protect these girls.  But there are ways to help.  Recently, we have come into contact with several organizations that are working to fight CSEC in Georgia.  This month Edgewood Church will be helping to support the work of these organizations in two ways: promoting awareness of the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) that goes on in Atlanta and collecting needed items for women and girls in recovery housing.

We need your help! On July 17^th we will be canvassing the Edgewood neighborhood to leave doorknockers inviting our neighbors to learn more about CSEC and to help us collect items for shelters.  Then during the week of July 19^th – 24^th, we will be collecting these items at the Whitefoord Community Program in Edgewood.  Come out and help on July 17^th – and bring a friend!

Click here for more details.

Other ways you can help:

• Become informed.  Start here: Street Grace, Juvenille Justice Fund, A Future Not a Past.
• Commit to mentor at-risk teens.
• Pray for: the breakdown of the systematic exploitation of children, the rescue and restoration of victims, the protection of potential victims, the redemption of pimps, traffickers and customers, and our policy makers to pass effective legislation to ultimately eradicate child sex trafficking.. (Prayer from Street Grace)
  

Statistical information gathered from Street Grace and Hidden in Plain View: 2005 Mayor’s Report.

If you find happiness in simple physical tasks like setting up chairs…

Join our hospitality team as we prepare for our first two preview worship services on August 29th and September 26th, 2010!

Click here and send us an email so we can send you more information.

In our patriarchal culture we typically default to the male pronoun “He” when referring to God, but most of us know that is not quite right.  After all, who believes that God is anatomically, chromosomally, and hormonally one particular gender or the other?  I have known a few diehards on this issue, but most of them tend to lose their rhetorical footing when you begin asking them about the purpose of their God’s reproductive organs.  I know this might sound crass, but it does point to the ridiculousness of viewing the creator of the cosmos through a gendered lens.

Beyond ridiculous, a gendered view of God is often implicitly or explicitly demeaning to the gender that is not perceived as best representing the divine.  I remember a teenager that came to me for spiritual guidance several years ago.  I remember her telling me with tears in her eyes that she really wanted to have a close relationship with God but she felt like she could never be as close to God as a man.  This wasn’t a girl who was struggling under the yoke of religious fundamentalism.  She grew up in a very moderate church and in a family that very likely had never even considered the issue.  She had just grown up in an environment where God was always referred to as male and where almost all of the spiritual leaders who performed the holiest rites and rituals in her church were male.  The church that loved her and believed in her had unintentionally taught her that she was spiritually second-class.

That being said, I am also not comfortable with using the non-gendered pronoun “It” for God, as this is typical the pronoun used for an object.  So the question remains, what would be a good pronoun for God?  Maybe you’ll think of one.