Fairtrade?

A story on sydneyanglicans.net puzzled me. It is about churches holding fairtrade events for the community. Seems fair enough in fairtrade fortnight ! But one theme through the article is the question "does getting involved in fairtrade help the church connect with the community?" In fact that seemed to be a more important question than "is fairtrade a good thing to support and could churches bless the world and their community by promoting it?" Grant Murray, who promotes fairtrade, is quoted as saying it helps in the church to show its integrity. However if the main premiss of any involvement is "Will this help us build contacts to grow?" then the integrity seems to be put in doubt. I think there is a danger of assuming that promoting the mission of God is equivalent to promoting our church. It seems to me that we have to make sure that our churches participate in God's work in the world, rather than equating the two. That will mean that sometimes we'll do things which have no apparent benefit for our church simply because they fit with God's mission. Mind you I haven't done anything about fairtrade at our church or at college - but I am about to look into it.