Here’s a common question we get:  “Hey, we love AC and the clean water initiative, but are there any other organizations we should know about?” The answer, of course, is absolutely. AC’s job is to help you do Christmas in a way that is personal, and one big way to make it personal is to support an organization that you feel God is pushing in your direction. One of these organizations is Trade As One, which we highlighted their new video. Last week I had the chance to talk with Nathan George, founder of this amazing Fair Trade movement. 

Let’s get people up to speed. First off, what is Trade As One?

Trade as One is an online fair trade company that sells products that people in America need (things like coffee, olive oil, chocolate, T Shirts, bags, gifts), all made by the sort of people that Jesus called “the least of these” - people released from human trafficking, women affected by HIV/AIDS, people escaping abusive poverty. We partner with churches because we believe that the church needs to take a lead in the area of showing the world how to use our spending, not just our giving, to fix problems instead of create them. How we use the other 90% of our income is as much of a kingdom issue as what we do with the 10%. When we as a church speak with our actions and our wallets of a subversively different way to live our everyday lives, people sit up and listen. The essence of fair trade is loving our neighbor at the same time as we love ourselves.

What pulled you into doing this sort of work?

About six years ago God opened my eyes and my heart to the oceans of pain and grief that so much of the world float in as a result of extreme poverty. After spending time in table fellowship with people on a dollar a day, women taken from human trafficking or people with HIV in the developing world, and listening to how important having a job was to breaking the cycles of abuse and dependency, I asked God what he wanted to do with my life as a businessman. The answer was that he led me and my wife into getting involved with fair trade in the UK. Over the course of a couple of years he ended up calling us to engage specifically with the American church. So three and a half years ago my wife and I with our three boys moved from our idyllic English village to the hustle and bustle of Northern California. It’s been a wild ride ever since!

I know that everyone at Advent Conspiracy was excited to hear what you guys are doing because it really lined up with the vision we promote. Why don’t you share what you are all encouraging people to consider this season.

There is a similar excitement in my team about the partnership too. Oddly enough for a business that sells stuff, we are subversively anti-consumerist. One of the things that I frequently speak on is how consumerism and runaway consumption is killing us and our world. This is especially poignant at Christmas of course when $450 billion is spent ‘celebrating’ in America. This season we are encouraging people to spend less money, to only give gifts that come with meaning, and to think about buying a gift that would be good news to the poor, freedom to the captive, release to the oppressed.

What sort of events do you have planned this year in case people want to come check you out?

Here’s an amazing statistic. If every churchgoer in America made just one fair trade purchase this Christmas, we would collectively lift one million families out of abusive poverty for one whole year. We have pulled resources together for churches to get this message out to their people in the form of a two minute video that is shown in a service in November and in giving out mock credit cards that people keep in their wallets or purses that encourage them to spend less and to remember the poor when they do make purchases. We call this our Just One campaign. Any church wanting to take part can download the video from our website at www.tradeasone.com and order the cards which we will send to them free of charge.

How can Christmas [still] change the world?

Oh it can, but as the church we will need to start to put in place radically subversive practices that reflect the priorities of Jesus when we celebrate his birth before it will. That’s what I love about what you guys at Advent Conspiracy are doing. Imagine if the church became known as insisting on celebrating Christmas very differently from the regular consumer society in which it finds itself. The laws that God gave Israel marked them out as a different, even strange people to their surrounding neighbors. I think in the west we need to frame our narrative as church more closely with the exile than with promised land period in the Hebrew scriptures. Maybe then we would start to look at how, with our practices and priorities, we could prophetically speak to our culture instead of thinking we own the culture.

Thanks again Nathan!