Gospel.com Blog

God is very interested in the widows and orphans. Are you?

It’s amazing how plain James makes the care of widows and orphans in verse 27 of chapter 1:

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. (KJV)

The NIV puts a slightly different twist on it:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (NIV)

Religion, we’re told, should primarily be concerned with protecting the vulnerable and helping us stay pure in a sinful world. I’ll be the first to admit that if unprodded I rarely practice the first two (well, all three if I’m being honest). I’d much rather leave the messy business of caring for kids without parents to someone who “has a heart for those things.” Likewise, looking after widows might mean sympathizing with someone’s painful loss.

It’s just so much easier to just read my Bible to myself, then to go and care for groups of people that have been forgotten.

So I wonder, when’s the last time you made a concerted effort to reach out a widow or an orphan? Is it something that you do regularly? Do you have any stories of how you’ve been blessed by the experience?

What does your church do to practice what James calls “pure religion”?

This train of thought was started when I ran across a site called 143million.org. As you might have guessed given the URL and the content of this post, there are approximately 143 million orphans in the world. To put it in perspective, that’s about half the population of the United States.

If you’re interested, they have a number of ideas of how to help the orphans of the world.

Could your internet knowledge make a difference in your local community? The Mozilla Foundation, the organization behind the Firefox web browser, has declared September 14-21 Mozilla Service Week. The idea is simple: during that week, we all look for concrete ways that internet knowledge or skills can be put to work in the service of our local communities.

Here are some of the examples they provide:

• Teach senior citizens how to use the Web.
• Show a non-profit how to use social networking to grow its base of supporters.
• Help install a wireless network at a school.
• Create Web how-to materials for a library’s computer cluster.
• Refurbish hardware for a local computer center.
• Update a non-profit organization’s website.
• Teach the values of the open Web to other public benefit organizations.

As you can see, you don’t have to be an expert coder or a seasoned computer engineer to help out.

I think this is a wonderful idea—and easily translatable into a ministry environment. Who do you know in your community who could use some internet-related help? What local ministries or organizations could you help by donating a few hours of time upgrading software or training their staff? If you’re reading this blog post, chances are you have the skills to help a person or organization in your community in some way.

I note that UrbanMinistry.org has already jumped on this—take a look at their virtual volunteer opportunities, and think about how you or your church might get involved in a virtual service project this September.

For Pastor Chandan, the sentence “if you build it they will come” ended with the phrase “and tear it down.”

His calling was relatively simple: build a church in the tea fields of Sri Lanka to serve the people there. But the reaction he got was rather unexpected. A gang of anti-Christian extremists organized and destroyed his church, damaged his home and even physically attacked him. According to a Gospel for Asia report, the church building was destroyed five times.

But what makes this story really interesting is that some of the same people who antagonized Chandan and his ministry now worship at the church every Sunday.

Few things are as inspiring as a person who overcomes trials and obstacles to do what they know is right. We all know that accomplishing great things often means living through significant pain and tribulation, but the grinding reality of what this missionary endured is still sobering. Stories like his make even the most arduous church-planting experiences here in the West seem simple by comparison.

At the Gospel for Asia site, you can see a slideshow of pictures of Chandan and his church, as well as donate to their cause.

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.

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.

Two new sites from Fireproof ministries are now live! Fireproof is the ministry behind XXX Church and they launched a few new sites in the past month.

The first is for their church out in the heart of Las Vegas called Strip Church. Recently, a number of the people from Fireproof moved out there to start this church on the Las Vegas strip. You can already read stories of how they’re reaching out and bringing the light of Christ to a city that so often revels in its own depravity.

The second site is for Fireproof Serve. If you’ve ever wanted to be involved in the ministries of Fireproof, this site is for you. Here you can read about the impact their ministry is having and sign up to go on a trip yourself. Activities range from handing out water and Bibles to thirsty people, to praying and talking with real people with real problems. All they ask is that you come ready to serve. If you even have an inkling of interest, head over and read more about the experience.

Arab Vision is a media ministry that produces television programs for the Arab world. They have Arab Christians working at every level of their ministry in order to produce quality Christian programming for countries largely untouched by Christ.

Some facts about Arab countries from Arab Vision’s profile:

• Almost every Arab family has a television set
• Half of all Arab homes has a satellite dish, which allow them to view channels beyond government censorship
• At least half of the Arab population is functionally illiterate

Here’s a translation of what one Algerian had to say about the ministry:

The thing I like about you is that you adapt Christianity to our own people. The Kabyl language and the culture make things relevant and it does not seem strange for any one to accept Christ. I have read the Kabyl New Testament and I was surprised to see my heart opening up.

On one of my trips to France, a Kabili evangelist told me about Christ but I declined the invitation. Another opportunity was given to me by a group of Christians but I declined it too. A third time, I was invited by the Copts on one of my trips to Egypt, and I refused again.But when I saw you speak in Kabili about Jesus and who Jesus is, I couldn’t resist, and now I want to accept Him in my life. Would you be willing to help me to find a church in the neighborhood? I have heard there is a church somewhere not too far from where I live. Thanks for your help and your availability.

Read more about Arab Vision.

Fireproof Ministries (the people behind xxxchurch.com) announced last week that they’ve officially acquired Pure Online Workshops.

Under their auspices they’ve rebranded Pure Online as x3pure.com and are “pumping more resources into customer support and into creating new products to help people deal with the aftermath of porn.”

From their Who is X3pure.com for? page:

You may be desperate for freedom and real answers to your pornography or sexual addiction. You may be a parent that desires to understand the struggles that your child is going through. You may want to understand the nature of sexual temptation and learn about tools to use in maintaining your purity. Your spouse may be struggling with pornography addiction, sexual addiction or other sexual sin.

X3Pure is designed to assist men and women looking for wisdom, direction and tools to use in keeping themselves sexually pure. At X3Pure, we equip you with a strong knowledge of the issues surrounding pornography and sexual addiction and give you insight into the nature of sexual temptation so that you can maintain your sexual purity and win the battle against sexual temptation.

How would you react if your church closed its doors? What if it your church was the same one that you’re parents had gone to and their parents before them?

It’s a situation that many small rural churches are facing: what to do when there’s just not enough money or interest to stay open?

A recent blog post from Youth Specialties addresses the issue (the comments section is particularly interesting) and today, GetReligion highlighted the exact same sobering story from Minnesota where a 118 year old church shut its doors:

Carol Porter, 63 and no word mincer, sits in her modest kitchen in Euclid, Minn., and recalls the day her 118-year-old church was burned to the ground. “I was baptized, confirmed and married there,” she reports. Her family had moved two lots down from Euclid’s First Presbyterian, so she was able to watch through the kitchen window a few years ago as fellow parishioners knocked down the church, buried its fixtures and then put a match to what remained, sending a thousand Sundays of memories up in smoke.

America’s rural congregations, thinned by age and a population drain that plagues much of farm country, have gotten too small and too poor to attract pastors. No pastor means no church.

When so many of your religious experiences are intertwined with a building and community, the loss of those can be hard to bear. That’s why ministries devoted to the life of the small town church like Village Missions are important. They reach out to a community that many would like to ignore.

This video from Village Mission shows the importance of churches in these communities during tragic circumstances and asks the question, “What would happen if this church had closed?”

How would you react if God called you to start a church in the heart of a place that revels in its own sin? Would you go?

The people that make up the ministry XXXChurch are going. They’ve already moved their families and their lives out to Las Vegas to minister in one of the most highly sexualized places on the planet. They’re even starting a church on the Las Vegas strip which they’re appropriately calling The Strip Church.

XXXChurch is a ministry that has oftentimes been controversial in their approach, but has consistently confronted sexual sin in direct and meaningful ways. If you’re interested in learning more about what they’re doing in Las Vegas you can read more on The Strip Church website.