Our friends can't wait another day. They need justice to come. Now. Our community, Word Made Flesh, lives among the dying. Though we are young people, it seems we routinely go to more funerals than weddings, visit more gravesites than delivery rooms. It's not uncommon for our friends to fall because of AIDS, police violence, street fights, or domestic abuse. We live in a world that cries out for justice - a world that needs God's Kingdom to come. We are sort of a peculiarity in mission. We are a community of over 200 board members, staff, interns and volunteers who have given ourselves to serving Jesus among the most vulnerable of the world’s poor. We have sought to fuse ministry and spirituality in such a way that our commitment to justice is an extension of our relationship with Christ. With communities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, India, Nepal, Peru, Romania, Sierra Leone and Thailand we marvel at the movement God has allowed this to become. When Word Made Flesh began its registration process nearly 20 years ago, those of us who are on staff now were just children. We were kids with dreams of becoming teachers, marine biologists, professional surfers and baseball players, doctors, fashion designers, astronauts, firefighters, rock stars and successful businesspersons. Very few of us ever thought we would be doing what we do now. Over the past 20 years we have grown up and become adults. We have grown up by giving ourselves to children who have been robbed of their childhood. We have become adults by learning from little ones who were forced to grow up too quickly. We have become adults by learning to help heal wounds that have been caused by adults who act wrecklessly in their disregard for justice. We have been called to give ourselves in selfless service among the poor. We have fallen so deeply in love with Jesus, that our love compels us to love Christ in this broken world.
Our vision statement reads: Word Made Flesh is called and committed to serve Jesus among the most vulnerable of the world’s poor. This calling is realized as a prophetic ministry for, and an incarnational, holistic mission among the poor. We focus our energy to make Jesus known among the poor while reconciling the Church with the poor. To find us you might need to search the trash heaps behind local businesses in GalaĊ£i, Romania where our staff go to find the children who have been pushed back to hidden places. To find us you might need to stumble down the narrow streets of some of Asia's most notorious red-light districts where our community goes to visit women and children enslaved in the commercial sex industry. To find us you might need to brave the darkest corners of some of South America's worst neighborhoods, the places where homeless youth smoke their paint or glue bags to forget their hunger and fear. Justice can and will be realized through a transformed community of faith. Injustice can only be confronted by a community that has been internally transformed so that it can take part in the external transformation of the world. We believe that Jesus said we'd do even greater things than he did when Christ was with us. We know that Christ wants to use us more than we want to be used. We believe that as Jesus transforms us he will complete this transformation by allowing us to see God’s world transformed through our lives. Our community has given itself to an intentional spirituality that we refer to as our Lifestyle Celebrations. Each quarter we publish a free journal focusing on one of these Lifestyle Celebrations and how we seek to live it incarnationally among the poor. In these theological and spiritual reflections you can read the musings of some of the church's greatest minds alongside testimonies of children struggling to live on the streets of some of the most violent cities in the world. We follow our friends who are poor to the heart of God. In this posture, the Word Made Flesh community shares our spiritual journey as it has been nurtured, sustained, and defined in our relationships with our friends who are poor. Our friends who can't wait another day. They need you to answer their cry for justice.