Gospel.com Blog

Lifetime Guarantee’s weekly program is now available via podcast! Lifetime Guarantee is the ministry of Bill and Anabel Gillham and aims to help you “see yourself as God sees you and live as He intended.” (Our friends at Soulation might call that “being appropriately human.”)

To that end, Lifetime Guarantee has quite a few resources worth checking out in addition to the weekly podcast: there’s a daily devotional (that you can subscribe to via email if you like) and weekly article series that touches on topics ranging from dealing with worry to learning from failure. That’s a lot of useful information already, but they’ve got yet more spiritual development resources if you want to explore the site further.

Some sad news from a major international ministry and member of the Gospel.com community: International Aid has closed down due to financial struggles and difficulty in raising support. International Aid has provided help and critical resources to millions in response to disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 tsunami, and 9/11.

This news story covers the ministry’s shutdown, but also has a nice tribute to the tremendous disaster relief work International Aid has carried out over the years:

I hope you’ll join me in thanking God for International Aid’s long and successful ministry—but pray also for the many mission workers both in the United States and around the world who are unemployed as a result of this shutdown.

How would you go about planting a church where there are no churches and are no Christians?

For many Christians living in the Western world, this situation is almost inconceivable: we’re surrounded by churches on all sides. Even in the least churched areas of the country, there are still a few scattered across the landscape.

A recent Lausanne pulse article by Younoussa Djao details some of the philosophy that goes into planting new churches in new places. He identifies seven tenants that one can use as a guide for understanding where and how to plant a church:

I. Go Where Jesus Is about to Go
II. Make Sure to Pray!
III. Look for the Person of Peace (from Luke 10:5-8)
IV. Either Do Your Ministry through the Person of Peace or Leave
V. Respond to the Needs: Compassion Ministries
VI. Give the Word of God by Doing Discovery Bible Studies
VII. Start Churches that Multiply

Out of those seven ideas, the fourth is the most interesting to me and almost seems counterintiutive. Here are Djao’s comments:

When a person of peace is not found in a community or an area, Jesus said to not do anything—to just leave. It means that it is not a place where Jesus is about to visit; God is not at work there; it is not God’s time for that place. Leave, pray more, and plan to come back later.

Sometimes a missionary will spend years in one place without seeing anyone interested in what he or she has to say or do. We spiritualize that by saying he or she is sowing and someone else will come and harvest.

The article is filled with insights and if you’re interested in global missions, it’s well worth your time to give it a read.

Did you happen to catch Answers in Genesis’ “State of the Union” address last week? It presented some very interesting facts about why and when people leave the church and the Christian faith.

You can watch it online here. Answers in Genesis is a creationist ministry, and that worldview is certainly the centerpoint of their address; but no matter what beliefs you hold about evolution and creation, you’ll find some of the research results fascinating. Here’s a few bullet points, taken from Kent Shaffer’s excellent Church Relevance blog:

Among 20- to 29-year-old evangelicals:

• 95% attended church regularly during elementary school
• 95% attended church regularly during middle school
  
>> 40% first had doubts about the Bible in middle school
• 55% attended church regularly during high school
  
>> 43.7% first had doubts about the Bible in high school
• 11% attended church regularly during college

  >> 10% first had doubts about the Bible in college

Oddly, the study discovered that those who attended Sunday school (61%) are actually more likely than non-attendees (39%):

• to not believe that all the accounts and stories in the Bible are true
• to doubt the Bible because it was written by men
• to defend keeping abortion legal
• to accept the legalization of gay marriage
• to believe in evolution
• to believe that good people don’t need to go to church

The take-home point seems to be that America’s Sunday schools and church youth education programs are failing to address kids’ serious spiritual issues until it’s too late and they’ve already left the church. While most youth ministry seems to focus on high school and college students, the above data suggests that it’s in middle school that doubts and spiritual crises kick in. And clearly Sunday school isn’t helping resolve those crises.

Kent’s post has some good thoughts and questions about these numbers. What do you think? Are these numbers a surprise to you?

Where there’s political strife, there’s religious strife, and in Iran, the two are inextricably intertwined.

Ever since the Iranian elections a few weeks ago, the political climate there has been tenuous at best. There have been massive protests, violence on the streets and even some deaths. Here in the United States, we’ve been inundated with Youtube videos and round-the-clock reporting. It’s definitely a situation that will take months to unravel, and the turmoil is showing no signs of slowing down.

Mission Network News is—as always—dutifully reporting on the situation. A few days ago they published an article about Christians joining in on the social networking activity that’s been coming out of Iran:

Yet, Christians are joining the Twitter Revolution and using Facebook to get information out of Iran. Open Doors learned through its contacts that voters are frustrated and have lost trust in Iran’s democracy in other cities outside of Tehran.
…
In other districts of this southwest city of Shiraz, the situation is more grim as Daryush explains: “Friends told me that young people in Shiraz are being arrested and that they’ve seen young men and women being beaten, or worse. A friend who lives near the university and student dorms told me she heard screaming, shouting and gunfire in the early hours of the morning.

“The predominately young demonstrators are calling Ahmadinejad a dictator, and they yell chants like ‘Ma dolate zoor nemikhaim,’ meaning ‘We don’t want a government of force.’ They also yell at the security forces and call them traitors and vote-stealers. A friend said that within the security forces are pro-Mousavi followers, saying ‘beechareh shodim!’ or ‘We are without hope.’”

Daryush continues: “The majority of people I spoke with consider the elections a fraud and don’t accept the results at all. A friend of our family lives in Shahe Cheragh, which is a predominantly religious and conservative district of Shiraz. He said that even in that district, a huge numbers of votes went to Mousavi.”

And here’s an excerpt from a recent article about the church in Iran:

However, many Christians have fled Iran because of persecution. Those who commit the crime of apostasy, or leaving Islam for another religion, are often arrested and tried in court. These charges are of particular concern since a draft law proposed in early 2008 that would mandate the death penalty for apostasy has passed several stages of Iran’s legislative process.

Even so, Penner says there is a growing church in Iran. Recent years have seen a growing appetite for political reform among the Iranian people. There is also a growing openness to considering the claims of Christianity, especially among the young.

Prayer is needed. “The situation for Christians worsened under Ahmadinejad’s previous term of presidency. That’s certainly going to deteriorate in the middle of this political chaos. We certainly need to be remembering our brothers and sisters in prayer during this time.”

Please pray for Iran and the world as this situation progresses.

For more information on what’s happening here’s CNN’s page on the Iran Elections.

“The Will of God” is one of those phrases rife with theological, philosophical, and emotional implications. It’s not easily explained or easy to learn, but whether or not you’re “doing God’s will” is a question that every Christian confronts at some point in their faith journey.

Mart De Haan of RBC ministries recently wrote about it in a post called Knowing the Will of God on the Been Thinking About blog:

Our conversation moved to the conclusion that, according to the Bible, “the will of God” that we should be concerned about is not about being in the right place, but having the right attitude. From the Apostle Paul’s words to first century slaves and masters (Ephesians 6:5-9), we concluded that when the Bible urges us to do “the will of God” it is something we can do wherever we are if, from our hearts, it is our desire is to serve “our Lord Christ.”

Read the whole post.

What do you do to make sure you’re walking in the will of God? Do you think it’s purely based on your attitude in a situation? Or is it more complicated than that?

It’s the oldest question in the book: how can God allow suffering? Over the centuries, Christians have turned to the Bible and found answers to this dilemma; but the persistence of the question suggests that on some level, we’re just not able to wrap our minds around God’s reasons for allowing evil and suffering. We can firmly believe in God’s goodness and love, and yet still find our faith deeply challenged when tragedy strikes our own lives.

William Stuntz, a professor at Harvard, can speak about this with authority—because nine years ago, his life went from “normal” to “nightmare” in the course of just a few harrowing months.

From a crippling injury to chronic, constant pain to relationship breakdowns and finally to a cancer diagnosis, Stuntz has experienced suffering… and he’s written down some of his observations about living through suffering while believing in Jesus Christ. In his essay, he talks about some of the misconceptions Christians have about the purpose and nature of suffering. Here’s one of his points:

Christians err when we imagine that God is supposed to heal all our diseases. That is not promised to us, not in this life. More the opposite: Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble” — not “might have,” but “will have.” But while God does not offer to take my cancer or my pain away, He offers something even better: that good will come from those illnesses, and that the good will be larger than the suffering it redeems. Romans 8:28 says that “in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him.” Cancer and chronic pain remain ugly, killing things, enemies of all who love life and beauty. But try as they might, those enemies do not get the last word. Our pain is not empty; we do not suffer in vain. When life strikes hard blows, what we do has value. God sees to it. That is an enormous mercy.

It’s an excellent essay, and makes a good companion read alongside Jim Watkins’ recent writings about suffering, which we highlighted last week.

Nate Butler over at the Comix35 Prayer blog is asking for prayer for their prison comics tract about an ex-offender:

Initially launched on a larger scale in late 2008, this project had to be revised due to the changes in our family health situations. We are now producing a 7-page mini-comic based on the life of an ex-offender who currently works in prisons. Information on the back ( page 8 ) will explain how a Christian inmate will have the opportunity to create a mini-comic of their own personal testimony.

We are already corresponding with some inmates and chaplains about possible productions. Please pray that the Lord would continue to connect us with all the right people – partnering ministries, chaplains, inmates – so that effective literature will be produced and distributed to inmates and “at risk” youth who are in danger of ending up in prisons. Thank you.

The comic is part of the Amazing True Life Stories project run by Crosswinds. You can read more about the project over at the Comix35 page: Christian Comics Tracts for Prison Inmates.

Some good news on the missionary front from Nepal: after serving 9 years in a Nepali prison, Manja Tamang, a Gospel for Asia native missionary, has been released! Manja was sent to prison in 2000 after being falsely accused of murder.

Here’s some of his story, from the Gospel for Asia website:

Manja’s saga began one day as he was out sharing the Gospel. As he walked along a river path, he saw a dead body and immediately contacted the police.

An anti-Christian extremist group who had opposed Manja’s ministry seized the opportunity to stop his work. They arranged for several false witnesses to testify against him, “framing” him for the murder. Manja was arrested, charged with the crime that he did not commit and beaten to near death.

Even though the widow of the deceased man testified to Manja’s innocence, the missionary was sentenced to 20 years in prison. His case was appealed all the way to the Nepali Supreme Court, where, citing the “evidence,” it was upheld.

According to the article, persecution of this sort was not uncommon under the Hindu government of the time. The political situation in Nepal is more open now and Christians have more freedom to worship openly, although challenges and dangers still remain.

It’s a cause for thanksgiving and rejoicing, and certainly the answer to many long years of prayer from around the world. Gospel for Asia has been tracking Manja’s case for years; to see the full story as it unfolded over the last decade, scroll to the bottom of the Gospel for Asia article and look through the list of archived stories, videos, and other information about Manja.

Missionary stories are almost always encouraging. They’re the tales of men and women making intentional choices to challenge themselves, to stretch themselves and to honor God’s calling. Missionaries are a lot who often find life to be difficult, but often find it to be joyful. Few find themselves regretting their decisions.

I personally like reading missionary stories because they remind me that missionaries are real people who have real fears and real successes.

The Beigerts are missionaries with BCM International who were recently featured in the the Spring edition of BCM World. They’re a young couple who have been in Peru just a few short months but have hit the ground running.

Here’s an excerpt from their article, Not My Home:

Still, landing in Peru was again a shock, physically and mentally. We’d flown from Florida where it was 45 degrees Fahrenheit to arrive in Lima at almost midnight to about 80 degrees and humid. We’d left English speakers to be surrounded by thousands of people jabbering what seemed to be the world’s fastest language, Spanish. As we left the airport, I looked at my husband to see his eyes opened wide, looking more lost than I ever thought he could be. As we went to bed in our new home at 1:30 AM, we looked at each other, and said, “What in the world are we getting ourselves into?”

But now that the initial shock has worn off, we are so content to be here. Everyone here has accepted us and made us feel welcome. And we’re excited to begin our new ministry.

My favorite verses recently have been Hebrews 11:13-16 (NIV). The author is speaking of the heroes of faith who died without ever receiving in their lifetime the promises from God. They realized they were “aliens and strangers” here on earth. “If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return” (vs.15). But they were longing for something better—a heavenly homeland. Verse 16 says, “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

Read their whole BCM international account here. You can also keep up with the Biegerts over at their regularly updated blog.