One of the threads drawing me to the emergent conversation is the interest in God’s heart for the poor. Tim recently posted an entry on his representation of emergent to the Micah Challenge-USA board over on the emergent-us blog. It is encouraging to see emergent involved in the struggle to end poverty.

The Micah Challenge is based on the call from Micah 6:8:

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

The goals of the Micah challenge are to deepen christian engagement with the poor and to challenge world leaders to work towards halving global poverty by 2015 by meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Here is an excerpt from the Micah call. You can sign the call here.

We commit ourselves, as followers of Jesus, to work together for the holistic transformation of our communities, to pursue justice, be passionate about kindness and to walk humbly with God.

Jeffery Sachs headed the development of the Millennium Development Goals. You can read more about him and the MDGs over at mother jones. For more info, see the Micah Challenge site, and the global call to end poverty site.