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.