Gospel.com Blog

We’re very happy to have you here at Gospel.com!

Over the past few months we’ve been slowly transitioning Gospelcom.net resources over to our new web home, Gospel.com. We’ve also added a number of exciting features to help you connect with the ministry partners that comprise the Gospel.com community.

If you’re looking for a way to search the bible, hop on over to our other main site, biblegateway.com.

Here’s a little bit more information on the three main sections of Gospel.com:

The Topics page let’s you explore the bookmarked content on gospel.com by viewing only the material that’s relevant to your current interest. For a good example, check out the topic page for Jesus. Additionally, each week at Gospel.com we focus in on a specific part of the Christian life and look at resources that you might have missed.

The Ministries page is a catalog of our ministries. You can visit the websites of each of the ministries and also view what information they’ve bookmarked on Gospel.com. This list is constantly changing, so please check back every few months.

The Gospel.com blog is a continuation of Gospelcom.net’s Buzz blog. In it we highlight resources and news from around the community.

Check out our about page for even more information or if you have any additional questions, get in touch with us at info@gospel.com.

We hope you have fun exploring Gospel.com!

In Matthew 25 Jesus tasks his followers to take care of “the least of these” and later in Matthew 28 “to make disciples of all nations.” The mission of International Aid is responding to “Biblical mandates by providing and supporting solutions in health care.” They do a far better job of describing their ministry than I ever would, so read this excerpt from their welcome page:

Disasters such as the Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, earthquakes, and floods will continue to test International Aid’s ability to provide compassionate care in emergencies.

Yet, it is our experience and preparedness as a disaster aid provider that allows our health ministry to offer compassionate care beyond the time and place of disaster.

International Aid is committed to improving global health care by making quality health services available to the world’s poor.

For the past five years, we have leveraged the impact of our worldwide network of ministry partners in countries with unmet health needs.

International Aid bridges the three components of health delivery systems: community health, clinical care, and technology, and embraces them as mutually supportive approaches to health care in the developing world.

The work we do is a physical expression of the power of compassion. We introduce tangible projects of mercy and love that restore the physical, emotional and spiritual health of others.

If you’re at all interested in international missions and providing health care to the oppressed, consider praying and supporting International Aid’s ministry.

This is a great story via Marko of the gospel.com community member Youth Specialities:

I’ve shared before how god worked in and through the middle school ministry at my church to change a community in africa. our kids set out to raise $3000 to build one house for a family of orphans. their goofy little variety show brought in $25,000 the first year. the money went to put in two clean-water wells. the next year, the church responded again with almost $35,000, and a health clinic was funded.

i shared this story at the national youth workers convention a couple times. and recently, i received this way-encouraging email from a middle school pastor, who agreed to let me post it here:

MarkO -

I’ve been meaning to send you a note for a while to say thanks. I’m a Jr. High minister and we were at the St. Louis Believe Conference last year. I had already heard your story about the impact the Jr. Highers at your church made in Africa and shared it with some of my students on Friday night, only to have you tell them all on Saturday. From that story, God sparked our own students to act.

Our story turned out much like yours. We got together and set an ambitious goal of $6,000 to build two wells in Africa (people, including our H.S. guy, later came to me and told me they thought there was no way we’d ever get close). We made “Just Add Water” our summer project and challenged our kids and their families to use their summers for something greater than themselves. Long story short, by the end of the summer we hit over $9,000. In the mean time, our church began a relationship with a ministry in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya and we were able to provide water (plus showers and toilets, which there are almost none of in the entire community of 100,000) for three schools in the slums of Nairobi.

…

Read the rest of the amazing story at ysmarko’s blog.

One cool thing about the gospel.com community is the chance to pray for one another. Whether you’re just getting started with this whole prayer thing or you’ve been doing it for years, sometimes it can be helpful for building a relationship with a ministry through a daily petition to God on their behalf.

All of these links are to specific ministry prayer calendars. Most are well-maintained and offer events and people to pray for on a daily basis.

Arab World Ministries

Mission Possible

Life Action Revival Ministries

Christian Camp and Conference Association

Nurses Christian Fellowship International

Eternity Minded Ministries

Verse six from Psalm 32:

Therefore let all the faithful pray to you
while you may be found;
surely the rising of the mighty waters
will not reach them.

Has your church ever asked the question, “Are we being sensitive to the single people in our congregation?” If you haven’t, it’s time to examine why. Especially if your leadership consists of married people.

Navpress has a quick quiz you can take to see if your church is being friendly towards single people or not. Here’s a few sample questions:

Many sermon illustrations, examples, and applications apply to unmarried adults as well as couples (e.g., “Ask your spouse or roommate … “).
…
Your pastor has preached on the biblical view of singleness.
…
The proportion of single adults in your congregation is approximately the same as in your community (45 percent for the United States as a whole, higher in urban areas, lower in rural areas).

Up until this week I had no idea about that last statistic.

If your serious about reaching out to singles, jump over and take the quiz.

The Circuit ‘Riter ministry is a longtime member of the Gospel.com community. While you might know them best through their large collection of online devotional messages, their ministry has a heart for rural and small church ministry.

We recently visited their home church in Colorado to talk to Michael Ullrich, the man behind Circuit ‘Riter, to find out what makes this ministry tick:

If their ministry sounds intriguing, take a look at their website, and at their online ministries In His Steps and Share the Book!

Mission Network News has some great news to share. One of Wycliff’s translators just finished a translation of the New Testament in the language of the Kagayenen language.

This is notable because this marks the first time:

An African-American woman has completed a New Testament translation.

An African-American has completed a NT translation with Wycliffe Bible Translators.

An African-American has completed a NT translation since the early 1900s.

But most notably this is also the first time the Kagayenen people can read about Jesus in their own language. Just imagine how much this priviledge has meant to you. Imagine not having the bible, and the joy of not only getting to read about it, but read abut it in your native tongue.

Here’s more from the article:
(more…)

A quick update from the Center For Student Missions:

In its 20th year of service to the city of Los Angeles, The Center for Student Missions (CSM) will be moving to a new housing site. For the last five years they have partnered with World Impact, an urban church planting organization, to provide housing to their groups. CSM will move their housing location from one of World Impact’s properties in the Pico Union district to another property (also owned by World Impact) in Southeast Los Angeles.

“This move will better meet the needs of our groups and free up our previous property to be used by the growing ranks of World Impact church planters”, said Rachel Hamilton, CSM-LA City Director.

(more…)

Want to make a different in somebody’s life this holiday season? This Thanksgiving and Christmas, consider giving a gift that will make a real impact: volunteer!

If you thought that Christian service meant committing to years of overseas mission work, think again! ChristianVolunteering.org is a new site that can put you in touch with over 1,000 ministries and more than 2,000 volunteer and short-term missions opportunities. With so many opportunities, there’s almost certainly a niche that matches your skills and interests. Here’s just a few of the ways you can serve this holiday season:

(more…)

Are big-scale ministry events–concerts, retreats, and the like–a good idea? With any major event, there’s always a risk that the event hype and crowd mentality will get in the way of meaningful ministry. But that doesn’t mean that every event has to be that way, or that you should avoid every big event that comes along. In a recent article at Youth Specialties, Wendy Walker helps us understand the risks and opportunities in large-scale ministry events (PDF), how to handle them well, and how to evaluate (and how not to evaluate) their success.