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Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Church members worship after devastating fire
The first song the Childress Memorial Church of God in Christ sang
together as a congregation Sunday, less than two days after a fire left
its church a charred shell, was indicative of its spirit — hopeful.
“Over my circumstance, given me another chance, you reign,” they sang, hands raised and heads held high.
The congregation was displaced from their building at 901 North Pine St. to the Convention Center after a fire destroyed the church and almost everything in it. The Bible passages, songs and sermon Sunday encouraged church members to press on, even though their home of nearly 50 years is gone.
“Yes, we've gone through a tragedy, but Childress is not over,” said Bishop Samuel Edward Iglehart. “I just got news all the way from heaven that God says he's still with us. He still has our back.”
“Over my circumstance, given me another chance, you reign,” they sang, hands raised and heads held high.
The congregation was displaced from their building at 901 North Pine St. to the Convention Center after a fire destroyed the church and almost everything in it. The Bible passages, songs and sermon Sunday encouraged church members to press on, even though their home of nearly 50 years is gone.
“Yes, we've gone through a tragedy, but Childress is not over,” said Bishop Samuel Edward Iglehart. “I just got news all the way from heaven that God says he's still with us. He still has our back.”
Leaving Lesbianism
God-honoring faith and government seemed to have parted ways.
Whenever a law contradicts God’s law, as believers we need to stand on
His truth. This won’t make Christians popular, but Jesus already warned
us about popularity contests. He also told us to love one another and
leave changing hearts up to him.
During
my lonely freshman year of college I met Jan. She had a way of finding
the humor in just about everything. We shared thoughts about life and
our distant future, wondering where our lofty goals would take us.
Gradually she revealed to me that she was a lesbian. Our friendship was
never about sexual orientation—it was about two young women on a small
campus who didn’t have a clue what the future held.
On a whim one evening, we went to a Christian crusade held at a campus across town. A dynamic speaker told us that Jesus wanted us just the way we were, but loved us so much he didn’t want us to stay that way. Jan went forward and wanted Jesus—not really knowing how He could change someone like her.
This isn’t one of those stories where a confused soul sees the errors of her way, seeks God’s forgiveness and discovers that she wasn’t really a lesbian after all. For the next decade Jan struggled with her personal identity and the identity she knew she had in Christ. The two weren’t the same.
READ MORE
On a whim one evening, we went to a Christian crusade held at a campus across town. A dynamic speaker told us that Jesus wanted us just the way we were, but loved us so much he didn’t want us to stay that way. Jan went forward and wanted Jesus—not really knowing how He could change someone like her.
This isn’t one of those stories where a confused soul sees the errors of her way, seeks God’s forgiveness and discovers that she wasn’t really a lesbian after all. For the next decade Jan struggled with her personal identity and the identity she knew she had in Christ. The two weren’t the same.
READ MORE
Quarter of a Million Military BibleSticks Deployed
For Immediate Release
February 11, 2013 |
Contact: Bill Lohr (505) 881-3321
|
Quarter of a Million Military BibleSticks Deployed
Albuquerque, N.M. – Faith Comes By Hearing
(FCBH) initiated their military outreach about five years ago at the
request of a handful of active duty Marines and chaplains serving
overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Needing a deployment-friendly version
of the ministry’s standard BibleStick, military members advised FCBH
engineers of the needed specs and the result was the creation of the Military BibleStick.
Today, Faith Comes By Hearing is honored to announce they have shipped –
free of charge – more than 250,000 units to chaplains serving every
branch of the military for distribution to troops in pre-deployment
briefings, counseling sessions, Bible studies, weekly chapels and upon
direct request of service members.
More
than 1,200 chaplains have participated in the project, with regular
requests for more BibleSticks coming in every week. The small,
portable, digital audio devices are so popular that the ministry is
currently working to fill a backlog of requests for over 20,000
additional units.
FCBH
raises funds for this project from a number of sources, which includes
individual donors and on-air campaigns with Christian radio and TV
stations. However, the single largest funding source has come from
churches across the country that have partnered to generously support
America’s troops with God’s Word in audio. More than 7,000 churches –
across 120 denominations – have presented this project to their
congregations, with many participating a second and third time.
The
ministry’s church outreach currently is to raise funds for 12,000
additional BibleSticks by Easter in recognition of our troops twelfth
year of deployment since 9/11.
“We
continue to be amazed at both the number of requests from chaplains and
the outpouring of support from grateful citizens wanting to do their
part to provide our military heroes with the kind of peace and spiritual
guidance that only comes from the pure Word of God,” states Troy Carl.
Carl
is a vice-president at Faith Comes By Hearing and oversees the Military
BibleStick project. He also has a personal perspective as the father
of a West Point graduate who recently spent two years deployed.
“It’s
very encouraging to see so many hard-working people financially
supporting this outreach,” says Carl. “But more importantly, these are
strong, patriotic Americans who get on their knees every day and pray
for our sons and daughters who are in harm’s way.”
The package a soldier receives includes the BibleStick, ear buds,
and a triple-A battery. There is also a pre-paid postcard they can
return and the ministry will send Audio Bibles on MP3 discs to their
spouse and children back home.
# # #
Monday, February 11, 2013
VBB and VOM combine connections to 'sneak' Bibles into enemy territory
International (MNN) ― Ministries are teaming up to bring God's Word into a Muslim-dominated country with a history of persecuting Christians.
If it sounds dangerous, that's because it is.
"Pastors and evangelists are killed regularly in this country. Christians are persecuted. Sometimes Christian girls are forced to marry Muslim men," says Patrick Klein with Vision Beyond Borders (VBB).
He doesn't disclose the nation's name because terrorist acts are a daily occurrence, and religious persecution is rampant. Christ-followers comprise only about 2% of the population in this country, or roughly 3 million people.
READ MORE AT MISSION NETWORK NEWS
If it sounds dangerous, that's because it is.
"Pastors and evangelists are killed regularly in this country. Christians are persecuted. Sometimes Christian girls are forced to marry Muslim men," says Patrick Klein with Vision Beyond Borders (VBB).
He doesn't disclose the nation's name because terrorist acts are a daily occurrence, and religious persecution is rampant. Christ-followers comprise only about 2% of the population in this country, or roughly 3 million people.
READ MORE AT MISSION NETWORK NEWS
10 Reflections on a Decade of Church Consulting
By Chuck Lawless
I love the local church. It’s God’s church, despite its flaws. For ten years, I’ve had the privilege of consulting with churches seeking to grow. Here are my reflections of those years – one reflection for each year.
If you’re a pastor in a struggling church, be sure to read to the end. I think you’ll find hope there.
I love the local church. It’s God’s church, despite its flaws. For ten years, I’ve had the privilege of consulting with churches seeking to grow. Here are my reflections of those years – one reflection for each year.
If you’re a pastor in a struggling church, be sure to read to the end. I think you’ll find hope there.
- Churches often wait too long to address decline. Some churches don’t do regular checkups, and thus they have no means of knowing they’re sick. Others recognize the symptoms but choose to ignore them. By the time they admit decline, the pattern is so entrenched that reversing the trend is not easy.
- Statistics really are helpful. I realize that numbers can become an idol—and that we must fight against—but numbers do tell us something. Most often, they tell us to ask more “why” questions. Why has the church declined in attendance for five years? Why did the church reach 50 people last year, but attendance grew by only fifteen? Why has worship attendance in the second service plateaued?
How Can Short-Term Missions Best Advance God's Mission?
Author Brian Howell says we should start with a robust reconciliation theology.
[ posted 2/7/2013 8:22AM ]
It's a relatively common sight at the airport: the conclusion of a short-term mission trip. A dozen suburban teenagers wearing matching yellow T-shirts talk about two weeks of manual labor at an orphanage and share iPhone photos of their trip to the jungle. Wheaton College anthropologist Brian M. Howell has puzzled over this phenomenon. Is it about service, tourism, personal pilgrimage, or something else completely? Are short-term missions even missions at all? Freelance writer Jeff Haanen spoke with Howell, author of Short-term Mission: An Ethnography of Christian Travel Narrative and Experience (IVP Academic), about how Christians justify short-term mission trips, the problem with these stories, and how churches can do short-term missions better.
As an anthropologist, why write a book on short-term missions?
When I started teaching in the 1990s, I asked students about their
cross-cultural experiences. Some hadn't done anything, or some maybe had
taken a cruise. But when I came to Wheaton College and asked the same
questions, I would get stories about northern Ghana, Mongolia, the Czech
Republic—places people don't normally go on vacation. Short-term
missions had exploded, and all these students had gone on short-term
mission trips.
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