We have a mandate to be God's agents of change

Direction caught up with Dominic and Catherine De Souza, who chair Elim’s new Justice Forum

What is the Elim Justice Forum, and why has it been launched?

Catherine: The Forum was launched out of a desire to speak and work collectively across Elim on issues of justice. We want to help develop churches’ understanding of a range of issues and resource them to be part of tackling the problems. We want to make sure we are listening and responding to issues such as racial justice, climate change, gender justice, poverty and human trafficking.

Dominic: As part of the Elim Justice Forum we will launch taskforces focusing on specific issues as and when it’s appropriate. We launched our first one – our Racial Justice Taskforce – in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd. The taskforces will bring together people in the Elim family who are passionate about these areas.

Why do we need the Forum?

Dominic: There’s a biblical mandate to pursue justice, and while it is not the totality of the gospel, the gospel without justice is not authentic. Elim collectively is very good at doing charity – and that’s very important – but to make a lasting difference we have to move beyond charity to justice. To use the example of the Good Samaritan, charity is doing what that Samaritan did in terms of helping the man who was beaten, and justice is looking at the conditions on the road to Jericho that allowed something like that to happen in the first place.

Catherine: Justice is part of God’s character; it isn’t something that’s an optional extra to the gospel. As the church we have a mandate to be God’s agents of change in the world.