Church and Fair Trade markets

I spent a good part of Saturday at the Fair Trade Markets at my church. Last year I was asked if I wanted to be on the committee for these markets, to help run the actual events and dream up new possibilities for things to do. For me it was one of options that you go away and pray about and wonder what exactly you are looking for in an answer. In the end I couldn’t come up with a reason to say no, I had the capacity to do it, so I said yes. That perhaps sounds unenthusiastic, but does anyone else wonder what exactly they are looking for as an “answer” sometimes?

I know there are various criticisms of Fair Trade (I’ve read this post and (most of) the comments) and using it as outreach, but it is working for us and I think my church is doing a good job of being present in, and engaging, our community. We time the markets with the local markets across the street so there are lots of people milling about (and we have the blessing of having a church building that is almost on the footpath of one of the main streets of the suburb), we have church folk come and hang around and be ready for conversations, there’s live (cool) music playing for some of the time, and part of the aim is just to show that the church is alive and happening and not just a building that only opens on Sundays. The Fair Trade products also give us conversation openers (even if people want to argue about it). We source ours from Tribes and Nations, which is run by people who used to be missionaries, and also have selected Care and Share products and on Saturday we had some products bought back the Habitat for Humanity team that went to Nepal last year. To get an understanding on why we’re doing what we’re doing it’s been suggested that we read Generous Justice by Tim Keller, so I am part way into that. (And we also ran Community Lunch on Sunday, in which we fed about 80 people a sit-down two-course lunch in the church hall, mostly people from the housing commission estate down the road.)

I’ve gone along to the markets before, but not been involved in their organisation, so Saturday was our kick off and opportunity to take stock and think about things to do differently. It’s exciting.