Gospel.com Blog

Are you familiar with the ministry of Luis Palau? Palau, an evangelist whose ministry has preached the Gospel over the radio, in print, and at massive evangelistic events, is on the leading edge of the revival movement. He’s spoken in over 70 different countries to over 25 million people, preaching the Gospel to those who aren’t Christians and encouraging believers to revitalize their faith.

If you haven’t yet explored the Luis Palau Association website, you might be surprised to find that although Palau’s revival ministry works on a grand scale—huge evangelistic events and concerts—there are a lot of resources on the website to help you kick off a revival in your personal spiritual life. Here are a few items worth checking out:

• Palau has written dozens of articles about living out the Christian faith—many of which have become “classics” in the Gospel.com community over the years. Among the best are Five Ways God Answers Prayer, Facing Sexual Temptation, and Forgiving an Absent Dad—but you’ll find many, many others worth reading in addition to those.
• Growing Faith is a semi-regular podcast featuring Palau’s insights into many different topics, from overcoming addiction to understanding the place of wealth and poverty in society.
• Central to Palau’s ministry are the massive evangelistic festivals held all over the world. There are upcoming festivals this year in places ranging from Romania to Mexico.
• Reaching Your World is a one-minute and two-minute daily English feature that provides listeners with practical encouragement on how to share their faith. Tune in and listen online!
• And if you live in the Portland, Oregon area, the Luis Palau Association always welcomes volunteers!

The Luis Palau Association is a truly global ministry, but there’s are plenty of good resources to help you through the everyday, personal issues that come with being a Christian in today’s society. Stop by and see what they have to offer!

Interested in ministry to the Muslim world? Before Christians can witness effectively to their Muslim neighbors, they need to understand Islamic beliefs and culture.

We’ve mentioned Arab World Ministries before—they’re a Christian ministry focused on sharing the Gospel with Muslims and educating believers about Islam. As part of that mission, they’re running a training program this May called the Summer Institute on Islam in Philadelphia. SIIP 2008 is a training course designed to help Christians better understand the theology and worldview of Islam, in order to be more effective ambassadors of Christ to Muslims. The SIIP 2008 website lists the following objectives for the course:

• Understand the major cross-cultural, theological, and spiritual challenges westerners face when relating to Muslims.
• Know how to respond accurately and respectfully to the assumptions behind Muslim objections to Biblical Christianity.
• Be able to compare and contrast the Islamic faith with Biblical Christianity.
• Know how to respond to Muslims in love by speaking into their framework of understanding.
• Understand the world-view and ethos of Islam.

The deadline for course registration and fees is coming up soon (May 15), so if it’s something that interests you, head over to the SIIP 2008 site and get started on the registration process!

Internet Evangelism Day is one month away. What does your church have planned?

If you’re not familiar with Internet Evangelism Day, there’s still time to learn about it and get your church community involved. Each year on IE Day (this year, it falls on April 27), churches are encouraged to focus on a massive missions field that we interact with on a daily basis, but which often goes unmentioned by the church: the internet! It’s a day for churches to educate themselves about the evangelism opportunities that the internet makes possible, and to pray for the ongoing evangelism work taking place online every day, all around the world.

If you and/or your church aren’t overflowing with technical knowledge, don’t worry—the IE Day website has some excellent, user-friendly materials available for free download to help you learn about internet evangelism and share what you know with your church community:

• An explanation of why the internet is an excellent missions field, and a discussion of whether or not internet evangelism achieves results.
• Free resources and ideas to help you set up an IE Day service at your church—anything from a full church service focused on the topic to a small group discussion. And IE Day isn’t just for churches; all Christian groups and organizations are encouraged to take some time on or around IE Day to give some thought to the ways that the internet can be used to share the Gospel.
• Strategies for making effective evangelistic websites, and for improving your church website so that it actually speaks to non-Christians.

There’s much more to explore over at the IE Day site, so take some time to look around. There’s still a month to go, so you’ve got time to plan something (big or small) for your church, small group, or ministry. Mark down April 29 on your calendar!

Sometimes we needn’t look too far into the past to glimpse amazing faith, and in some respects being able to see the successes and failures of what happened in the recent past can do wonders for our understanding of the present.

Take, for example, Billy Graham, who is a man that needs no introduction in Christian–and many non-Christian–circles. He has tirelessly preached the good news of Jesus Christ to countless millions of people throughout his life. His legacy is one to be admired not because of some empire he built, but because he is a man that took up Jesus’ offer to take up his cross and follow him daily.

Here’s a sermon from 1955 at the All-Scotland Crusade.

And if you’re ever in Wheaton, IL check out the Billy Graham Center Museum. They have an overview of the history of missions and of Billy Graham’s life that will force you to think deeply about evangelism and missions.

Also, from the Christian History Institute we have a bunch of stories of missionaries and Christians from throughout the 20th century. You can find a list of them here.

And here are a few select ones:

Marianna Slocum

Corrie Ten Boom

Ecumenical Church in India

J. Edwin Orr

Have you ever looked around, taken stock of the spiritual apathy and confusion in our culture, and wished for a nationwide religious revival? If so, you’re not the first Christian to do so. If you’re despairing that a society-wide revival could ever take place, you might be surprised to learn that just a few hundred years ago, that’s exactly what happened!

I’m talking about the “Great Awakening” that swept through America in the 18th century, sparking great church growth, renewed missions work, and inter-denominational unity. Sound far-fetched? Here are a few resources to introduce you to the Great Awakening and the evangelists who helped spark it:

• First, read a brief overview of the Great Awakening—who started it and what it meant for an America increasingly affected by spiritual malaise and the humanist philosophies of the Enlightenment.
• Jonathan Edwards was a Puritan preacher who, distressed by what we saw happening (or not happening) in America’s churches, began a preaching tour that kickstarted a great spiritual revival. His 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (link goes to an audio reading of it) is one of the most famous sermons in all of Christian history. (You can listen to many more of his sermons at Sermon Index.)
• George Whitefield, a British evangelist and friend of Ben Franklin, was another major figure in the Great Awakening. Greatly upset by the “lukewarm Christianity” he saw all around him, he did all he could to shake Christians out of their stagnant spiritual state. Read more about Whitefield’s evangelistic work, or check out some of his many sermons. For a shorter sample of his teaching style, see this brief Whitefield excerpt on the importance of “frequent and devout prayer”.
• Revival didn’t end with the Great Awakening— it wasn’t long after that a Second Great Awakening was sparked, with an even greater impact on American society.

The preaching of Edwards, Whitefield, and other evangelists had a profound effect on their society—and if you take the time to read some of their sermons, you’ll be amazed at how relevant they are. Some of them feel like they could just as easily have been written in 2008! So next time you’re tempted to despair at the all the religious confusion we see in society around us, remember the Great Awakening, and be reminded that what seems impossible to man is quite possible for God.

What do you think of when you hear the word “missions”? Most Americans probably conjure up a mental image of intrepid evangelists traveling far overseas to distant lands, there to live and work with unfamiliar cultures.

While there’s some truth in that stereotype, a lot of missionary work actually goes on right amid unreached people groups right here in North America. Two ministries in the Gospel.com community, in fact, are dedicated to bringing the Gospel message to Native North Americans.

The first is Indian Life Ministries, which reaches out to Native North American (First Nations, Aboriginal, Indian, and other) people in the United States and Canada. Important to their style of outreach is contextualizing the Gospel message—telling the story of Jesus in a way that is understandable and culturally relevant to Native listeners. Indian Life publishes a bi-monthly newspaper addressing issues of interest to Native communities and the growing Church there. (For good examples of their storytelling ministry style, see their retellings of the Gospel story and the Wise Men story.) They also run a prison correspondence ministry; you can read about (and support) their projects at ILM website.

Another ministry that works with Native North Americans is Northern Canada Evangelical Mission (NCEM), an organization that aims to create disciples and establish churches within Canada’s indigenous communities. Among other things, NCEM runs the Tribal Trails television program (which you can watch online), a Bible training school, and summer camps for young people. If your heart is leading you to get involved, they also have summer missions opportunities during which you and a partner will live and work for five weeks in a reserve or Native community.

So if you feel prompted to get involved with missions but can’t travel overseas, there are plenty of missions opportunities in North America where your support, prayers, and participation would be welcome!

Mission Network News reports on the movie, The Godman, being shown in India that’s having a tremendous impact:

Already they’ve received more than a half million letters from people who have responded to the movie. Hoskins says that response is a direct result of pre-trained national believers…”So far, we’ve had over 3,405,000 people that have watched the movie, and we’ve had literally hundreds of thousands of people who have accepted Christ.” Those numbers represent only those who watched in Christians’ homes.
…
Hoskins says we don’t want to see “spiritual abortion” take place. That means “you give birth to something and you don’t feed that new child. And so what we’re needing to do is plant the Word of God and ensure that Scripture engagement takes place.”

According to Hoskins, it’s more critical in India than anywhere else because of Hinduism. “All gods are equal, and there are thousands of them. We don’t want Jesus just to be another god that you accept. We want Scripture engagement to take place for those children and their parents to understand that Jesus is the one, the only true Lord.” However, that takes time and good resources.

Watch a trailer over at Book of Hope International.

Is there room for the Gospel in a world marked by war, genocide, and terrorism? The latest issue of the Lausanne World Pulse focuses on the challenge of proclaiming the Gospel in the face of war in the Middle East and genocide in Africa.

Lon Allison’s opening essay talks about the Gospel as a source of hope in a broken world. Another article provides a case study of relief work and evangelism in Uganda, where “a 19-year war… initiated by the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) against the government of Uganda has subjected its people to brutality and violence beyond imagination.” Despite the horror that many in Uganda have suffered, the Gospel is providing hope to traumatized survivors at a care center for child mothers.

Other essays talk about the plight of Christians in Iraq today, ministry in the red light districts of Kolkata, India, and media evangelism in the Middle East. Lots of good material on the theme of missions and evangelism in some of the most battered and wartorn areas in the world—give it a read and get a glimpse at the state of global mission work today.

Have you ever wondered how to respond to the increasing pluralism in today’s society? Just Thinking is a daily listener-supported radio show that comes out of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. The program “seek[s] to explore issues such as life’s meaning, the credibility of the Christian message and the Bible, the weakness of modern intellectual movements, and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.”

If you’re interested, you can find their complete archives online here. Or, search for a station near you using this page.

Recently they did a series called The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society. This presentation was formed from a series of talks by Itinerant team member Stuart McAllister, who is filling in for Ravi Zacharias. He focuses on Christian responses to an increasingly pluralistic world, and outlines how we need to begin interacting with the cultures and religions around us. His call is for Christians seek to understand the world they live in so that our defense of the gospel can be relevant. In his mind, there is far more happening on this earth than what we see from our own limited world-view.

The presentation is broken into five different parts. These links will take you to a page where you can select how you would like to listen to the broadcast:

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

“The radio outreach of RZIM is a listener supported ministry that powerfully mixes biblical teaching and Christian apologetics. The programs seek to explore issues such as life’s meaning, the credibility of the Christian message and the Bible, the weakness of modern intellectual movements, and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.”

In the 1930’s Helen Baugh hosted a dinner where the gospel of Christ was presented in a loving and relaxed manner to other women, after that first meeting the women asked if they could come back again the next week. The weekly meetings took off and soon Stonecroft Ministries was born. From those humble beginnings the ministry branched out to include Christian bookstores, tracts, and bible studies. Currently there are Stonecroft Ministries’ bible studies in sixty-three countries around the world!

Here are some informative pages from their web site:

An interesting set of videos about people’s perceptions of Christians from Stonecroft media.

Stonecroft daily news.

The main page for Stonecroft Ministries’ small groups. If you’re interested in joining a Stonecroft group they have a location finder here.

Main page for Stonecroft bible studies.

Stonecroft Ministries, “is a non-denominational organization that equips women to impact their communities with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, providing resources to enable women to connect with God, each other, and their communities.”