This year’s biblical theme for our Week of Compassion observance is taken from John’s telling of the feeding of the five thousand — the remarkable story of how a young boy’s five loaves and two fishes fed a whole crowd of folk. It is the perfect WOC text, so much so that I was surprised it hasn’t been used as our biblical background at some point during the eleven years I’ve served as Director of WOC. I hope you will use the resources in this Leader’s Guide and on our website along with your own creativity and imagination to make this story and your congregation’s participation in Week of Compassion come alive in new and profound ways.

In a “typical” year, Week of Compassion receives somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half million dollars to respond to humanitarian needs in the world. $2.5 million. For most of us that is an enormous sum of money and certainly makes a few loaves and fishes pale in comparison. However, if you consider Jesus’ question to Philip (“How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”) in light of the multitude of hungry people before us - think of the displaced in Liberia, refugees from Afghanistan, drought survivors in southern Africa, unemployed coffee workers in Nicaragua, the children of Iraq - in the face of such human need in our world, $2.5 million seems a lot like two hundred denarii. Not enough to buy even a little bread for each of them to receive a little!

Indeed, many times in the face of the enormous humanitarian needs in the world, what we have is little more than a drop in the bucket or a bucket of water in the midst of not one but a dozen four-alarm fires! And yet, the truly remarkable thing about Week of Compassion is how God continues to take these gifts and multiply them over and over again to accomplish God ’s purposes in the world. Our gifts, at the first level, join forces with those from thousands of Disciples throughout the U.S. and Canada. Then they multiply again as they join with the gifts of millions of other Christians throughout North America who participate in One Great Hour of Sharing. They multiply even further as they work through a most effective, efficient and faithful network of partners like Church World Service, Action by Churches Together, Foods Resource Bank, Interchurch Medical Assistance, Ecumenical Church Loan Fund, etc.

Sometimes the multiplication of our gifts is nothing short of miraculous. For example, a WOC grant of $20,000 enabled Interchurch Medical Assistance to facilitate a donation of 660,000 doses of vaccines valued at nearly $15 million. Another grant of $35,000 provided 35,000 Zimbabwean families with enough seeds packets to produce an adequate family food supply for a year. A WOC grant of $1000 gets matched by a grant of $1000 from an urban church, which then provides the inputs to a Disciples farmer to grow beans, corn or wheat. The harvest then nets some $4000 for WOC’s account in the Foods Resource Bank, which then gets matched dollar for dollar by a USAID grant all for food relief or food security projects in the world.

What are our gifts among so many hungry people in the world? Among so much human need? Far more than we can imagine and nothing less than the amazing grace of what happens when we entrust what we have into the hands of “the prophet who is to come into the world,” even Jesus Christ.

I am grateful to the many people who have made this Leader’s Guide possible, including my colleagues from around the One Great Hour of Sharing Table; fellow Disciples Ron Allen and Linda McKiernan-Allen for their particular contributions; and for the many of you who will use this resource to encourage and challenge the people of your congregation to open their hearts and bring forth their gifts that the day may be hastened when all God ’s people will have food enough to eat and peace in which to eat it.

Grateful for our partnership in the gospel, I remain,

Johnny Wray