Micah Challenge Prayers for MDG's

This is from the Micah Challenge, a global Christian campaign to achieve the MDGs. Part of their mission is a weekly prayer emailing like the one you see below. You can receive it in your email box every week if you send a blank email to regine.nagel@micahchallenge.org with the words 'subscribe prayer' in the subject line.

Micah Challenge International

Micah Challenge USA

"If it was not for the women, you wouldn’t have a church."

This bold statement is made by Nyambura J Njoroge in the Africa Bible Commentary on the role of women in the church.

‘There can be no denying that women and men are created equal in the image of God. Thus we must not focus on the gender roles that society, church and African cultures have assigned to women. The focus should fall on the biblical call for all human beings to discern what is the will of God in their lives.’

Please reflect on Romans 12:1-8 where the apostle Paul urges both brothers and sisters to be available to God as an act of worship.

‘Women have a critical and prophetic role to play in ‘stirring the waters’ and ‘speaking the truth’ by asserting their God-given humanity and gifts – not for their own sake but for the sake of the integrity of the gospel.’

Prayer

Let us pray:

* Nyambura J Njoroge says: ‘Women still face a daunting task in advocating and modelling gender justice in the church and in society.’ - Please pray for sensitivity and wisdom as women and men around the world boldly work towards achieving this task.

* Reflecting on the statistic below: we praise God for a closing of the gender gap in health and education. We pray that political and economic leaders will increase their efforts to decrease the gender gap in women’s economic participation and political empowerment.

* Micah Challenge coordinator in Bolivia, Roxana Villarroel, asks for prayer for the large number of poor families affected by climate change in the country. She writes:

We are expecting another year with bad news due to the Niña Phenomenon (a climatic phenomenon which causes the waters of the pacific ocean to become unusually cold and as a result produces storms; in recent decades this has been the cause of major climatic disasters) and thousands of families will be affected. A recently released government report has registered 13,883 families whose houses were damaged and at least 18 people have died.

This news must call us to reflect and to mobilize as, as so often, the affected people are those with little opportunity to protect themselves. As people of God we must learn to practice justice. Let us be sure that the church is there to act with love and compassion.

Please pray for our campaign plans this year and the challenges that we face. May God in his mercy help us to be faithful in the ministry.

* Micah Challenge Haiti is organizing a seminar on Integral Mission for all theological seminaries and bible schools in the country.

o Please pray that the participants will be enthusiastic to learn and be motivated to apply what they have learnt in the curricula of their colleges.

o Dr Elaine Storkey as she teaches the main sessions. Please pray for clarity and wisdom so that her teaching can be easily applied in the Haitian context.

Meditate on the Statistics

As you spend time in prayer and reflection, you may like to take a moment to silently understand with your heart the focus statistic we include each week (see below). Our hope is that you will find this series of statistics a useful resource in preparing presentations.

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

Indicator 10: Ratio of literate women to men, 15-24 years old
Indicator 11: Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector
Indicator 12: Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament

The global overview of the Gender gap ‘shows that the 128 countries covered, representing over 90% of the world’s population, are close to eliminating the gap between women and men’s health and education outcomes: almost 92% of the educational outcomes gap and 96% of the health outcomes gap has been closed. However the gap between women and men on economic participation and political empowerment remains wide: only 58% of the economic outcomes gap and only 14% of the political outcomes gap has been closed.’

Source: The Global Gender Gap Report 2007, World Economic Forum 2007

The Global Gender Gap Report 2007 is based on a new methodology and includes detailed profiles that provide insight into the economic, legal and social aspects of the gender gap in each country. The Report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women:

1) Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2) Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3) Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4) Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio

Yours in Christ,
Regine and MC team

Please view all the Friday Prayer statistics we’ve used to date at Index of Millennium Development Goal Statistics.xls

Please see Index of Reflections on Integral Mission.xls