AIDS, as the premier example of the havoc wrought by income disparities, and pornography, taking a toll on the souls of church leaders, are the two new most difficult challenges faced by the next generation of pastors.
At Skye Jethani’s post "AIDS Activism Makes Strange Bedfellow" at Out of Ur, he gives a nice little report on AIDS day. See my previous posts on AIDS with a link to the free online PBS Frontine video here and my post on pornography here.
One additional comment. I have been thinking recently about how social justice is cool (Rick Warren, Emerging Churches, etc.) Because it is a "trend" (sad, huh?), pastors need to be careful to not think they invented the concept! We need to continue to access the resources of wise Christian social workers, missionaries, economists, etc. rather than reinventing the wheel.
Social workers, stand up and help us pastors! We know now that we need to be facilitating and encouraging this justice work but it would be great if you would help us do it!
(See my next post about the advice I gave some Christian social workers in a lecture recently).