by Steve | Sep 27, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Duffy Robbins
I’ve never given birth to a child.
But, I know something about the birthing process.
In fact, all of us who teach, preach, or speak on a regular basis—whether to a small group, a large group or something in between—know something about the process of conception, preparation, and delivery. And what we all understand is that delivery is always the high point of the drama. All of the planning and prep work, all of the Bible study, all of the brainstorming—all of it comes down to the moment of delivery. If you’re teaching, preaching, or speaking to teenagers on a regular basis, you know that none of it matters until your students hear and respond to God’s Word.
What that means is that the critical part of communication is not just conceiving the topic or preparing the lesson; it’s about bringing that baby to life!
In the last few issues of Good News, we’ve talked about the process of deciding what goes into a message—will it be a four-week series or a stand alone lesson, a topical message or a textual message? That’s important. But, for the next few issues we’re going to be thinking about how to deliver the message—not what goes into the talk, but what comes out when you talk.
They Don’t Call it Labor for Nothing
Most of us know well Paul’s charge in 2 Timothy 4:2: “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season…”
We also know it can be tough work.
Some say it can’t be done, or that it shouldn’t be—that teenagers today don’t respond to spoken messages the way they used to. Some very creative and articulate youth ministry thinkers believe that we should be moving away from “the talk” as we’ve thought about it in the past—that our communication needs to be more visual in delivery, more active in approach, and less linear in form. Some believe that Paul may have said, “Preach the Word…in season and out of season,” but perhaps its time to declare open season on the spoken message as a form of effective communication to teenagers.
Research, for example, tells us that the vocabulary of North American ninth graders dropped from 25,000 words in 1940 to 10,000 words in 1990. This is an audience that spends hours a day in an on-line environment in which people on average watch only 21.8 seconds of a 30 second online video ad. The average segment of attention without a break in television is a grand total of seven minutes! Is it really strategic to speak to a teenage audience for ten, twenty, or thirty minutes using the spoken word?
I, for one, believe it can be. I don’t believe it’s an either-or proposition.
I’m convinced that our teaching must be shaped by the audience factors we’ve discussed in this space over the last several months. That’s critically important. And I strongly encourage youth workers to use lots of different types of communication styles. I’ve co-written books like Spontaneous Melodramas, Memory Makers, and Everyday Object Lessons because I understand that our youth groups are filled with students who learn in lots of different ways. If we’re teaching every week with a “stand and deliver” style, we probably aren’t maximizing our impact with every student. We should be using visual delivery, active learning, and other narrative and creative forms of teaching.
But, I’m not ready to say, “Speaking is passe,” and I’m not ready to do that for the most basic of reasons: I’ve seen the impact of the spoken Word in the lives of teenagers.
But I also believe it’s incredibly hard work. No wonder Paul followed up his charge in 2 Timothy 4:2 with these words: “…correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
Like every other skill, good speaking requires intention and execution. And like every other impossible mission, it requires the power of God. Of course, we know God will do his part! But, how can we more effectively do our part, especially if we don’t feel like gifted speakers and teachers? It’s a question posed by lots of sincere youth volunteers and Sunday school teachers.
And it’s a question we’ll begin to explore in the next issue of Good News.
by Steve | Sep 27, 2011 | Magazine Articles
Wesleyan spirituality
Thank you Good News, and Steve Harper for distilling the essence of Wesley’s spirituality. “Embracing Wesleyan Spirituality” (July/August 2011) reads like an invitation to join together in experiencing a warm and wonderful place of the heart.
For more than 50 years I have had a keen interest in reading the writings of John Wesley and those who have sought to explain their understanding of him and his work. I believe that Harper has captured and communicated the totality of what Wesley was/is all about, sharing not only the essence but the challenge for those of us who would “follow in his train.”
Harper reminded us of the sources, the undergirding if you will, of Wesley’s doctrine and hence of his spirituality. Hopefully, we, as his children in the Faith, will take to heart Wesley’s emphasis on the supremacy of Scripture. “To the law and to the testimony!” (Isaiah 8:20) became what we might call his mantra, as he interpreted scripture by scripture, as a matter of course. Only when Scripture was silent or of doubtful interpretation did he turn to Tradition (which he defined as “antiquity:” the ancient church fathers’ writings, with the practices of the saints, up to the early fourth century); followed by Reason (meaning logically developed argument); and lastly Experience (i.e., the historical experience of God’s people through the centuries—he wrote: “Neither…by the experience of this or that particular person”).
I pray that we will hold tenaciously to these supporting pillars of Wesley’s spirituality. If we lose the supports, we lose everything.
Alice Russie
Tigard, Oregon
The authority of Scripture
The Wall Street Journal recently carried an op-ed by David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine, about the persecution of non-state approved churches in China (July 11, 2011, “Beijing’s Theology of Repression”). Aikman explained that the Chinese government has approved one Catholic Church and one Protestant Church which stay within government approved boundaries and control, while persecuting the many independent and largely underground house churches. The article noted that “the faith that TSPM (government churches) adhere to is what church history calls liberal theology, while the faith of the house churches is evangelical theology.” That line brought to mind what happened in Nazi Germany.
Church leaders, pastors and theologians who led the state approved churches were liberal, while leaders, pastors and theologians of the Confessing Church were evangelical. Why would there be this repeated pattern? Liberal theology tends to downplay the inspiration and authority of Scripture, while evangelicals hold a higher view of Scripture. When you don’t believe in the divine inspiration and authority of Scripture, you have no solid anchor to hold you, no Truth with a capital T, so it’s easier to compromise and drift into the path of least resistance.
A United Methodist pastor from Russia told me the same is true in Russia, where the state-approved Orthodox Church places little emphasis on Scripture and more on tradition, while non-state approved churches are almost all evangelical and/or Pentecostal and hold a much higher view of Scripture. While the non-Orthodox churches do have a measure of freedom, they are viewed with some suspicion by the state and face occasional roadblocks that the Orthodox Church does not.
We see the same tendency in the United States, particularly in the mainline churches. One after another, the more liberal mainline churches have followed the path of least resistance, surrendering formerly biblical stances on homosexuality and other doctrinal/ethical issues to stances that are more in line with the opinions of secular society.
Of the mainline denominations, only the United Methodist Church has resisted this trend, due in large part to stalwart conservatives in the U.S. and the growing African delegations to our General Conference. One has to wonder if this is one of the reasons the UM Church is declining more slowly than the other mainline denominations. (But let us not call our slower decline a victory!)
While the General Conference has voted to maintain a biblical standard regarding homosexuality every time the issue has been raised, the issue is coming back in a variety of forms.
• A group of retired bishops issued a statement calling for the Church’s stance to be altered.
• The recent trial of the Rev. Amy DeLong of the Wisconsin Conference resulted in a mere slap on the wrist. The Rev. DeLong performed a “holy union” ceremony for two homosexuals. Unrepentant and unremorseful, the Rev. DeLong was found guilty and received a mere 20 day suspension from ministerial duties and was ordered to prepare a document “outlining procedures for clergy in order to help resolve issues that harm the clergy covenant, create an adversarial spirit, or lead to future clergy trials.” She has said she will perform such ceremonies again if asked.
• Meanwhile, several hundred clergy have signed statements that they will officiate at same-sex ceremonies. Their plan seems to be that, if charged, they will so clog up the system that efforts to discipline them will fall apart. And you can be sure there will be yet another effort at General Conference to change the official stance of the United Methodist Church.
While there are many angles to consider (political maneuvering, church growth and health, the unity of the UM Church, etc.), let’s not forget the foundational issue: the Divine inspiration and authority of Scripture. Without that, we have no firm anchor to keep us from following the path of least resistance, whether the winds blow us toward serving the interests of the state or blending in with secular society.
David Trawick
Northwest Hills UM Church
San Antonio, Texas
The DeLong Challenge
My thoughts on the “DeLong Challenge” are as long as we take a process stand on addressing these offenses they will only continue to multiply. What speaks loudest in any breach of contract or in this case vows is to eliminate one’s financial compensation within a set period of time. I would error on compassion considering today’s economy. Give them thirty days notice.
With the possibility of losing their compensation along with retirement may allow them to rethink how ‘right’ they really think they are. They are playing poker and are doing an excellent job in their bluff. What are they really losing by the most recent example?
Clergy who are casting aside their vows should not be allowed to continue, period. If a further example is needed consider this. Most everyone has a drivers license, right? It comes with responsibilities and accountability. So what would happen if there were people who now felt that speed laws did not apply to them? It may be simplistic, but why is the United Methodist Church rewarding bad behavior with such lax responses. In order to heal a wound one must address what is the cause of the infection. I’m growing tired of the stance that rogue clergy are exempt from accountability.
May we one day regain our unity in Christ’s service,
Gary McCallister
Via e-mail
Gives me hope
I wanted to thank you for your uncompromising article in the latest Good News. I am an ordained minister in the Wesleyan denomination, serving under InterChurch Service appointment as Minister of Youth and Music in a United Methodist congregation. One of my biggest hesitations to taking this position, which I believe to be an assignment from the Lord, was the issue of homosexual unions and homosexual clergy and my perception of how it’s been mishandled in the UM Church in recent years.
Your article gives me hope that there is still a strong voice for doing what Scripture instructs, and what the UM Book of Discipline requires. May the Bishops heed your clarion call for greater accountability and integrity on this issue. I believe that, should the result be numbers of clergy leaving the UM Church, God can and will replace them with men and women who are dedicated to the Scriptural positions to which the denomination holds.
Thanks again.
Name withheld
by Steve | Sep 27, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By B.J. Funk
Realizing that he would soon be gone from this world, Dwight L. Moody said to a friend, “Someday you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody is dead. Don’t you believe it. At that moment, I will be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that sin cannot touch, that sin cannot taint. I was born in the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of flesh may die; that which is born of the Spirit will live forever.”
When we awake in the morning, we only know we were asleep because we awoke. Explaining exactly what happened is impossible. We cannot explain moving from consciousness to sleep any more than we can explain moving from life to death. We only know that we move out of one life into another life, never dying but continuing to live. In a moment, without knowing how, we discard the jacket called our body. It is no longer useful. We only needed our body in order to live on earth. That’s over now.
Someone put on the grave of Benjamin Franklin, “Here lies all that could die of Benjamin Franklin.”
One of my favorite devotionals concerning death comes from Streams in the Desert. In speaking of his soon coming death, the author wrote, “The owner of the tenement which I have occupied for many years has given notice that he will furnish but little or nothing more for repairs. I am advised to be ready to move. At first, this was not a very welcomed notice. The surroundings here are in many respects very pleasant, and were it not for the evidence of decay, I should consider the house good enough. But, even a light wind causes it to tremble and totter, and all the braces are not sufficient to make it secure. So, I am getting ready to move.”
Watching family members die has given me a new appreciation for God’s plan for us. While the process of death can be excruciatingly painful and sad, death is the only avenue we have for unconquerable pain to end. There is no other way for us to get out of a diseased or broken body other than death. Death is what God uses to transfer us from one life to another. With that in mind, death is another of God’s gifts to us. In a flash, we move our residence from earth to heaven, where complete healing takes place.
Where do we go when this happens? Jesus says we go to his Father’s House. These are some of the sweetest words every recorded. We are given a beautiful illustration of where we will be. Not just any house, but my Father’s house. I wonder if it is something like my grandparent’s big, rambling white house, which had so many bedrooms and interesting places for my sister and me to hide. My favorite place was the large front porch lined with rocking chairs. I was completely content rocking at Grandma’s house.
In John 14:1-4, Jesus says, (paraphrased), “Don’t worry. Instead trust God. There are a lot of rooms in my Father’s house. I’ll go before you and get everything ready. Then, I’ll come back and get you so you can be where I am.”
Added to the enchanting invitation to go to my Father’s house is now the endearing understanding that Jesus is there. He goes before us, as a forerunner. What could be better than going to the Father’s house and finding Jesus waiting for us. I don’t really need to know any more about heaven. If Jesus is there, that’s enough.
William Barclay suggests that “many rooms” means that there is room for all. An earthly house can become overcrowded, but our Father’s house is as wide as the heart of God. Barclay further suggests, “Don’t be afraid. In this world, people may shut their doors upon you. But in heaven, you will never be shut out.”
Near death experiences support our understanding of another life after this one. Reassuring stories are told by some who claim an out of body experience before coming back to earth. A recurring theme includes a bright light and a tunnel. We might question the validity of this. However, there are enough believers to have established a Near Death Experience Research Foundation whose website claims 2500 near death experiences.
Several years ago, a popular country song reminded us to “Live Like We Were Dying.” Truthfully, every day we live, we are dying. It is not until we actually die that we truly begin to live. Our new home will be cozy, joyful, colorful and peaceful, sort of like rocking at Grandma’s house.
by Steve | Sep 27, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Laura Heikes
My mother became a Christian when I was four. From that day forward, we were in church every Sunday…almost. Stewardship Sunday was the one day Mom encouraged us to skip church. Now that we are both pastors, we hope our people don’t feel the same way we did. But we know they do.
Stewardship has become a dirty word. November brings with it the lurking threat of sermons on giving. At best, people treat it like a trip to the dentist: they sigh and try to imagine they are somewhere else. At worst, they go missing. Why does stewardship feel like a root canal instead of an invitation to deeper faith and worship? And how might we change that?
Last summer, I was appointed to Bee Creek United Methodist Church, a young congregation in the hill country outside of Austin, Texas. What began eight years ago in a living room is now a church of 400, almost half of whom joined through profession of faith. This means that half of the congregation either has no idea what stewardship is, or a vague feeling of unease related to televangelists they have seen weeping mascara and stealing from grandma. The other half thinks they know what stewardship means, but would rather be at the dentist.
So last year we shifted the focus from budget and money to people and discipleship. We asked ourselves how we could help the congregation grow closer to God through practicing generosity. And could stewardship be fun instead of tedious? The solution occurred one day as I listened to NPR. They announced a matching gift for all first-time contributors. The phones lit up.
Our church adopted this “secular” idea. We liked how it promised to draw the congregation together for a common purpose: growth in generosity where everyone took a step together. New Christians were invited to make a giving commitment for the first time. Mature Christians would encourage them by providing a match above their normal pledge.
Seasoned supporters were personally approached to offer a matching gift of $250 for a first-time giver. Of dozens who were asked, not a single person declined. In fact, several matching donors gave more than requested. Others approached us to ask if they could join the matching group.
The response far exceeded our expectations. The previous year, we had 75 individuals and families who returned a commitment card. That number increased to 91 with the new plan. In one year, we saw 18 first-time commitments. In a year when our membership grew by two percent, the number of stewards increased by 23 percent!
Among the new supporters was Ben, who joined by profession of faith in the fall. The match “encouraged me to try to give more,” he said. “I had a set amount in my head I thought I could afford, but when I heard about [the match], I thought I could do a little more.” Jennifer and her husband have two preschool children and a tight budget. They “liked the idea that our first $250 would be matched. So when asked, we decided to put our contributions in writing with a commitment. We now put our cash in an envelope to track our contributions (we never did that before).”
Mature givers also felt involved and challenged. Folks who might be tempted to skip “Stewardship” Sunday were invited to become a part of encouraging the next generation of believers. Deborah and her family provided four matches. “Doing a pledge for the first time can be scary,” she said. “I decided to encourage new pledgers with a match to celebrate their commitment. There is a lot of blessing in giving.” Joe and his wife, who are retired, agreed to match a family. He and his wife realized “the Bible is full of examples where small beginnings lead to magnificent results.”
Would this idea work in your community? There is a danger that it could seem gimmicky and therefore be off-putting. Talk with your leadership about the idea well beforehand, and choose a matching amount that won’t intimidate first-time givers, but still provides an incentive.
Also seek to have the pastor personally invite mature givers into the process. Share with them how people reach their giving potential slowly, and the first step is the hardest. Help them see how they can help, and then ask for their support.
Remember, your mature givers are not always your largest donors. In our church, matches came from families at a variety of income levels, from construction workers and retired teachers to business executives. One told me the reason she gave is “because you asked me. If I had just heard it in church, I probably would have not done anything.” After agreeing to match one person, she ended up sending a check for four!
Stewardship should be an invitation to worship, joy, and thanksgiving. And why shouldn’t it be fun? Last year at our church, it was. May you also find new ways to invite people, at whatever stage they are in their faith, to grow in their generosity.
Laura Heikes is pastor of Bee Creek United Methodist Church in Spicewood, Texas. She participated in the Lewis Center for Church Leadership’s Lewis Fellows leadership development program for young clergy in 2008-2009.This article is reprinted by permission from Leading Ideas, a free online newsletter of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary and available at www.churchleadership.com.
by Steve | Sep 27, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Liza Kittle
At the 2012 General Conference, the Women’s Division (the leadership organization of United Methodist Women) will petition the worldwide church to become their own separate general agency called United Methodist Women, Inc. If this action is passed, the impact on women and women’s ministry in the UM Church may be dramatic.
Currently under the mantle of the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), the Women’s Division has operated somewhat autonomously throughout its history. They have raised and managed their own monies, set their own policies and procedures, and virtually monopolized women’s ministry options for women within the church.
While becoming a separate agency will prove beneficial to GBGM, which has experienced oppressive control by the Division for many years, its effect on evangelical women seeking other forms of women’s ministry cannot be ascertained.
United Methodist Women is the only officially recognized women’s ministry within the church. For nearly 40 years, membership has declined from 1.35 million in 1974 to the present level of less than 600,000 members. This number represents less that 15 percent of the total women in the UM Church. Attempts for official acceptance of other women’s ministries at General Conference have repeatedly failed due to intense lobbying by the Women’s Division.
Even in the midst of the church’s new focus on building vital congregations, offering choices for women continues to be resisted by the Women’s Division. It is a frustrating dynamic, especially considering the ideals of diversity and inclusiveness that are so valued by the denomination, and the fact that UMW is reaching a very small audience of women.
Regardless of the organizational changes that the Women’s Division is pursuing, their theology remains the same. Their emphasis has been on changing the world social order, rather than promoting the personal healing and transformation that can be experienced through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
The spiritual teachings will undoubtedly remain based on feminist, womanist, and mujerista theologies. The social justice agenda will remain politically partisan, embracing a liberal, progressive worldview.
How do we know this is the case? We know this through the track record of the Women’s Division, including: the resources produced, the Bible studies offered, the activism undertaken, and the speakers invited to United Methodist Women events.
At the recent 2011 National Seminar held in Birmingham, Alabama, in August, the featured Bible study teacher was Dr. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz. She is one of the leading advocates of mujerista theology, an offshoot of feminist theology that emphasizes the liberation of Latina women under male-dominated power structures and injustice.
Central to the concepts of mujerista theology is what Dr. Isasi-Diaz calls “the kin-dom of God.” She replaces the biblical references of “the kingdom of God” with this new phrase, explaining that she rejects the word kingdom for two reasons. “First, it is obviously a sexist word that presumes that God is male. Second, the concept of kingdom in our world today is both hierarchal and elitist.” She prefers the word “kin-dom” because it “makes it clear that when the fullness of God becomes a day-to-day reality in the world at large, we will all be sisters and brothers—kin to each other.”
The concept of “kin-dom” of God is evidently supported by Women’s Division leaders, as Deputy General Secretary Harriet Olsen used the terminology in her closing address at the 12th Assembly of the World Federation of Methodist and Uniting Church Women held in Johannesburg, South Africa on August 15, 2011.
Redefining key biblical terms is a common practice of feminist theologians. Dr. Isasi-Diaz rejects the biblical meaning of “repentance” as a turning away from sin towards holiness. She explained that “it is not a matter of regret, guilt, and shame…because to demand admission of guilt and repentance before forgiveness may well throw us into a cycle of death and violence.” She said that “the Christ” had two goals:”radical inclusivity and upsetting hierarchies.” She is thankful that feminism “carried out the social gospel Great Commission and helped revert power to the community.”
Is this the theological foundation women within the UM Church are looking for? Is this the avenue of deliverance for lost and hurting women? Is developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ no longer in the language of the Women’s Division? Unfortunately, evangelical and conservative women within the UM Church have virtually no official outlet for pursing other women’s ministry options.
According to a new Barna study, The State of the Church 2011, “no population group among the sixty segments examined has gone through more spiritual changes in the past two decades than women.”
Church attendance by women has dropped by 11 percentage points, down to 44 percent. Weekly Bible reading has plummeted by 10 points down to 40 percent. Women’s involvement in volunteer church activities has fallen 9 points and Sunday school attendance has fallen 7 points.
The only religious behavior that increased among women in the last 20 years was becoming unchurched—that rose a startling 17 percentage points.
Women still define most of the family traditions; thus, a drop in church attendance by women means a drop in attendance by men and children as well. This significant change must be addressed by our churches. Reaching women means reaching families for Jesus Christ. Reaching women is one essential key to church vitality.
There is now, more than ever, a need for alternative, Biblically-based women’s ministries within the United Methodist Church to reach this declining demographic. This is a need Renew and other women’s ministries stand ready to help meet. The time has come…thy Kingdom come
Liza Kittle is President of the Renew Network (www.renew-network.org), P.O. Box 16055, Augusta, GA 30919; telephone: 706-364-0166.
by Steve | Sep 27, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Rob Renfroe
I spent the first ten days of August in India, landing in Delhi, spending a day seeing the Taj Mahal, and then seeing what God is doing in the cities of Hyderabad (4 million residents) and Patna (6 million residents in India’s poorest state of Bihar).
It would take a lifetime to describe the history, the religions, and the culture of India. Most apparent are the overcrowding and the poverty. Wherever you go, you see people. And you see poor people. Some selling rice or lentils, hoping to make enough money that day to feed their family. Others sleeping on the streets—some with blankets, others without. And still others, begging—mothers, children, men who are crippled or blind.
Ten days in a country of 1.2 billion people doesn’t make me an expert. But this I know for sure. Jesus is the hope of India.
Sometimes, liberal Christians who pride themselves on being open-minded, will say that all of the world’s great religions are pretty much the same—just different paths to the same God that teach pretty much the same truths. Those who say that have most likely taken a comparative religion course. But I’m pretty sure they haven’t been to India where the culture has been fashioned by, and is today permeated by, Hinduism.
More than one of our Hindu guides told us proudly “we have 330 million gods.” Read that again. 330 million gods. Looking into a Hindu temple was heart-wrenching. Mothers were there with their children, kneeling before idols with their offerings. One popular god is Ganesh, “the elephant god” who brings good fortune. His image bears a human body and an elephant’s head. Others knelt and worshipped Hanuman, the monkey god—again with a human-like body but the face of an ape. Our guides were particularly devoted to the one they called “the monkey god” because he brings wealth and prestige.
One night we met in a house church in a slum outside of Patna. Seventy believers were crowded into the house of a man who had been converted from Hinduism. It was difficult to worship that evening because nearby a loud and lively Hindu service was being conducted. The service was devoted to a fertility deity—and the idol receiving worship was sexually provocative and obscene. This is what you see in India.
But there’s more. The caste system is still very much alive. From the time of their birth children are told who they are and that they should never strive to be more. One caste is known as “the rag pickers.” They will subsist all their lives picking up discarded rags and then selling them to whomever may want to purchase them. Why is this their lot? Why should they aspire to nothing more? Because Hinduism tells them that in a previous life their deeds merited such an existence in this life.
In India, I couldn’t help but think about Jesus over and over. He picked common people, like fishermen and tax collectors, to be his disciples and to carry on his work when he was gone. The outcasts of first century Judaism—the lepers, and the blind, and the lame—Jesus never told them they deserved their lot. He told them about a God who loved them. And he did the unthinkable. He touched them. And he healed them. And he called them to be his disciples and his friends.
Jesus loves Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. At the same time, let’s be clear that not all religions are the same. We can respect all people but we cannot accept all belief systems. We cannot call darkness light. And a religion that has people bow before idols and tells the lowest of society that they deserve to be crippled and blind and to be nothing more than rag pickers for the rest of their lives—that kind of religious oppression is darkness. And it breaks my heart to think that people live in that kind of hopelessness and despair.
Wherever faithful people have made Jesus known, societies and cultures have been raised and bettered. Hospitals have been built. Schools have been started. The hungry have been fed. And that is exactly what we see in India.
Christians make up 3-5 percent of the population, but their influence is unmistakable. We saw children who once lived on the streets, now living in a Christian orphanage. It’s hard to describe the beauty of these children. We were their honored guests and they joyously sang and danced for us. They quoted long passages of Scripture. Their eyes are alive and their clothes are clean. That’s Jesus, the hope of the world.
We visited a school created by Christians. Many of the children who attend come from huts made out of grass in nearby fields. Their parents make $3 a day. But the children we spoke to dream of being engineers and doctors and nurses. And the work in their school notebooks—the mathematical formulas, the physics theorems, the literature notes in two languages—spoke volumes. These children will not be condemned to huts and field labor. Their gifts will be used and their lives will be full. That’s Jesus, the hope of the world.
And then there were the malnourished children still living in the poorest of conditions. But every morning, a young man gets up at 3 a.m. to make 18 quarts of soy milk for them. And when he’s done, he puts the pail on the back of his bicycle and he pedals 12 miles to give them what may be the only nourishment they receive for the day. And he tells them about a God who loves them. And he does all of this because he’s a follower of Jesus. And Jesus, he puts such things in the hearts of his followers, because he is the hope of the world.
Rob Renfroe is the President and Publisher of Good News.
