tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32528923387588938132024-03-12T15:32:50.807-07:00WorldView Conversation"WorldView Conversation" is an ongoing discussion of global events, issues and trends: What's happening, why is it happening, and how might God be using events for His purposes? How can you get involved and make a positive impact? My twice-monthly WorldView columns will be posted along with other thoughts and observations, but I want to listen to you. What do you think?Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.comBlogger165125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-5621452022939008462015-09-09T09:36:00.001-07:002015-09-09T09:36:45.174-07:00 ‘God is bigger than your cancer’<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V9Z9Kvamw64/VfBf--Zd_sI/AAAAAAAAAng/cFLc_1lIDqo/s1600/family%2Blatest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V9Z9Kvamw64/VfBf--Zd_sI/AAAAAAAAAng/cFLc_1lIDqo/s320/family%2Blatest.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">You find out who your friends are when tough times come around.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
wife and I have discovered over the past year that we have a lot of friends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
started last fall, when Hwa (my wife) found a lump in her left breast. It was
malignant, Stage 3 cancer. It h<o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">ad spread beyond her breast to the lymph nodes
under her arm. It was also “triple-negative.” Without getting into a bunch of
medical jargon I don’t pretend to understand, triple-negative cancer is
typically aggressive and doesn’t respond to several standard treatments.
Powerful chemotherapy is the way to go. If that doesn’t work, you might be in a
world of hurt.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Wait
a minute. Something like this is what happens to “other people.” But it was
happening to us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
was numb, but I put on a brave face so I could support Hwa. She’s much stronger
than I am, but she was scared. Would the cancer spread farther? We didn’t wait
to find out. A great team of doctors and nurses recommended a game plan, and we
followed it. Surgery removed the tumor and cancerous lymph nodes. Next came six
rounds of chemo, which attacked cancer cells that might have gone elsewhere.
After that, 35 radiation treatments blasted the danger zone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Since
about halfway through chemo, our oncologist has been telling us he thinks the
cancer is gone. A final scan later this year, we hope, will confirm that Hwa is
in the clear. Her hair is growing back and she’s gaining strength and energy
every day. The cancer could return someday, but we take life one day at a time
now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">God,
ever faithful, has bathed us with His love, His presence and His Word from the
day Hwa was diagnosed. What has amazed us, however, is the many people He has
used to encourage us. This column would be book-length if I mentioned them all,
but to highlight a few:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our daughter,
Heather, created a handwritten book of personalized devotions — one for each
day of Hwa’s treatment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Former missionary
Kim Davis delivered fresh bread, hot out of the oven, every Monday during
chemotherapy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Church ladies
brought overflowing bags of lovingly prepared meals every two weeks for months
on end. They wanted to bring them every week, but we didn’t have enough room in
the fridge. Work friends from IMB brought many more home-cooked goodies. Yes,
I’ve gained weight. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Church folks
showed up unannounced to do yard work. Brothers and sisters from the Indian
fellowship related to our church paid a special visit at Christmas to pray and
sing worship songs in several languages. Yes, they also brought food. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So many cancer
patients and survivors — some longtime friends, some people we had never met
before — have loved us, counseled us and given us the benefit of their
spiritual insight. “God is bigger than your cancer,” said one wise friend who
has been through it. He is also bigger than all the fear and uncertainty, all
the medicine, treatments and other overwhelming stuff. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Jeannie Elliff,
wife of retired IMB President Tom Elliff, died July 20 after the cancer she had
struggled with twice before struck again. Yet in the midst of her illness, she
took the time to encourage us, just as she encouraged thousands of people
during a lifetime of church and mission ministry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">People prayed for
us and continue to pray. Missionary friends thousands of miles away have
prayed. Our church family has prayed. Co-workers have prayed. People we hadn’t
heard from in years contacted us to tell us they were praying. Thank you. We
still need it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
love and faithfulness displayed by others throughout this experience has
reminded us of Jesus’ words to His disciples at the Last Supper: “A new
commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have
loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that
you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34,35 NASB).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
hope we’ll be a little more faithful in loving others the way we have been
loved, starting with other believers. But not ending there. Maybe we’ll be more
compassionate toward lost and hurting people all around us who have never
experienced such love. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
a dark, cold world out there. The body of Christ, His church, is the warm
shelter for His children — and the shining beacon in the darkness to others
searching for Him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-3077786758821753562015-08-31T14:08:00.000-07:002015-08-31T14:08:26.332-07:00Number your days<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SG5hEVhiLCE/VeTB9FyS8rI/AAAAAAAAAm0/aWVaElCJtoI/s1600/Kyra%2BKarr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SG5hEVhiLCE/VeTB9FyS8rI/AAAAAAAAAm0/aWVaElCJtoI/s320/Kyra%2BKarr.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> <span id="goog_242434313"></span><span id="goog_242434314"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Kyra Karr<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“So
teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom,”
prayed the psalmist (Psalm 90:12, NASB).</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How, exactly, do
you go about numbering your days? Is it even possible, when you don’t know how
long you will live? The psalmist had some thoughts on that, too: “As for the
days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to
strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
for soon it is gone and we fly away.” (Psalm 90:10).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Soon and very
soon. The average life expectancy for Americans is 78.8 years (81.2 for women,
76.4 for men), according to a 2014 report from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The 10 leading
causes of death are heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases, stroke,
unintentional injuries, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and
pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In truth, the
leading cause of death is mortality. It awaits us all, even 18-year-old dudes
who think they will live forever. Sorry, dudes, but insurance actuarial tables
beg to differ.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Suppose you live
to 90. Sounds like forever — until you pass the halfway point of getting there.
I’m well past that halfway point, so this topic holds significant interest for
me. But even if you’re a kid with “forever” in front of you, “numbering your
days” is a useful exercise if you want to use them to serve God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How will you spend
them? Consider well; God is observing your choices. “Therefore be careful how
you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because
the days are evil,” the Apostle Paul advised (Ephesians 5:15-16, NASB). You can
spend them loving God and following Him, or you can spend them on yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In these days of
medical advance, your life might contain many more than 90 years. Or far fewer.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<a href="http://www.imb.org/updates/storyview-3467.aspx#.VdZucrJViko"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kyra Karr</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">,
age 30, a missionary, wife and mother of three young daughters, died in a traffic
accident Aug. 13 in her home state of Georgia. She didn’t have the opportunity
to return to Rome, Italy, where she and her husband, Reid, began serving after
their appointment in 2009. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This young woman
had been sharing the gospel with others since she was a teenager. She had
“found her groove as a mom raising her kids in Italy,” according to a
missionary colleague. She was ministering to children through the church,
helping new missionaries learn the language and mobilizing Christians in Rome
to help women victimized by sex trafficking. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Kyra was the
aroma of Christ in Rome. We sensed it. We breathed it. We were blessed by it,”
said her pastor in Rome, Leonardo De Chirico. “Kyra was a glimpse of what it
means to be absorbed in Christ.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I think her life
would encourage anyone considering missions to go all out, to not waste time,
to pursue it because we don’t have a promise of tomorrow,” said another
missionary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No one is promised
tomorrow. Shakespeare grappled with that reality in his sonnets, which are
essentially meditations on time, death and love. Which is stronger? “Love’s not
Time’s fool,” he wrote in Sonnet 116. “Love alters not with his brief hours and
weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps Kyra’s
Karr’s hours and weeks were brief. But she numbered her days well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">(Interested
in spending your days serving God and His global mission? </span></i><a href="http://imb.org/send/#.Vdci4nt63Se"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Explore the
possibilities</span></i></a><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">.) </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-40069864997322531722015-08-11T07:42:00.000-07:002015-08-11T07:42:15.576-07:00Time to choose<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_ChMFFsEwEs/VcoJnx5EmpI/AAAAAAAAAmU/cohAjHpNq0c/s1600/fence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_ChMFFsEwEs/VcoJnx5EmpI/AAAAAAAAAmU/cohAjHpNq0c/s1600/fence.jpg" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Believing in Jesus as Savior isn’t hard. Following Him as Lord — that’s the
hard part.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
want to do things our way, not His, because we do not love Him enough to obey
Him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
saddest part of the story of Jonah, one of history’s most reluctant
missionaries, is not that he took off in the opposite direction when God told
him to go to the wicked city of Nineveh. It’s not that he got angry and
depressed when he finally preached to the city and saw all the people there
repent and believe. It’s not that he cared more about his own personal comfort
than the souls of the Ninevites (see Jonah 4).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
saddest part is that he fled “from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:3 NASB).
How could he love the Ninevites if he didn’t love the Lord? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Lord certainly cared about the Ninevites. They had committed all sorts of
abominations, but they didn’t know any better. He asked Jonah, “And should I
not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than
120,000 persons … ?” (Jonah 4:11a NASB). But Jonah was too preoccupied with
himself, his needs, his cold heart, his foolish pride. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That’s
us. That’s me, at least. I want to serve God only. I want to follow Him. I want
to make disciples among the nations — just as soon as I finish all the other
things I need (i.e., want) to do. I’m like the young Augustine, called by God
out of a fourth-century Roman culture saturated in immorality, who famously
prayed, “Lord, grant me purity — but not yet.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tomorrow,
Lord, I will give You my whole heart. I promise, just like I promised yesterday
and the day before that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Apostle James had little patience for two-timing believers: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“You</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">the world is</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">hostility
toward God?</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Therefore
whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ‘He</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">jealously desires</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us’?</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">But</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">He
gives a greater grace. Therefore</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">it</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">says,
‘</span></span><span class="small-caps"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: small-caps;">God
is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble</span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">.’<b><sup> </sup></b>Submit therefore to
God.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Resist the devil and he will flee from you.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">purify your hearts, you</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">double-minded” (James 4:4-8, NASB).</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Double-mindedness
is a plague in the American church, which now finds itself in hostile
surroundings similar to those faced by Augustine and James’ halfhearted
disciples. Our culture no longer accommodates the gospel; it despises it.
That’s a blessing in this sense: The days when you could comfortably fence-sit
with a toe in each camp are coming to a close. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
time for choosing has arrived. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
culture will tolerate a one-dimensional Jesus who accepts everything, judges
nothing and requires neither inner transformation nor outer change. The Jesus
of the New Testament is someone else altogether: He refused to condemn the
woman caught in adultery, telling her angry accusers, <span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320;">“He who is without sin among you, let him<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span>be the<span class="apple-converted-space"> first to throw a stone at her” (John
8:7, NASB). After they left one by one, He asked her, “‘Woman, where are they?
Did no one condemn you?’ </span>She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said,
‘I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more’” (John 8:10b,11).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Revisionists love to edit out that last part,
but it’s the whole point of Jesus’ encounter with the woman. Once He dismissed
the hypocrites, He bestowed the amazing grace and mercy of God on a sinner, but
commanded repentance and obedience. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Years
ago a missionary in Zambia visited a village that expressed interest in the
gospel. He asked to see the village chief to seek permission to return. The
missionary sat in the shade of a mango tree, waiting for the chief to come. A
few minutes later, he noticed an old man hobbling toward him through the sand,
leaning heavily on a stick to support his lame leg. The old chief considered
the missionary’s request and gave him permission to return. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
missionary and a volunteer team came back a few weeks later to share the gospel
through Bible storying. After four days of teaching, a line was drawn in the
sand. The villagers were challenged to walk across the line if they were
willing to turn away from their sin and make Jesus their Lord.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
first person to move was the old chief. He struggled across the line, dragging
his crippled leg. When he finally made it, he looked up and declared to
everyone, “I want Jesus to be my Lord!” He later was baptized, setting the
stage for transformation of the whole village.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That’s
a decision we need to make anew as followers of Christ. The line has been
drawn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">(What could God do with your
life if you choose to follow Him? </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Explore the possibilities </span></i><a href="http://imb.org/send/#.VcjEw3FVikp"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">here</span></i></a><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> and </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://www.imb.org/updates/storyview-3406.aspx#.VcjEl3FViko">here.</a>)</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-29200724652186017972015-07-28T13:41:00.001-07:002015-07-28T13:41:45.644-07:00The quiet exodus of women from church<div class="MsoPlainText">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lXiUiOvYTNs/VbfosiasUKI/AAAAAAAAAlw/MLz_69JkCug/s1600/womanchurchpew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lXiUiOvYTNs/VbfosiasUKI/AAAAAAAAAlw/MLz_69JkCug/s320/womanchurchpew.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Take a look at the history of Christian missions and
you will notice a consistent pattern:</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">From the beginning — and I’m talking about the Book of Acts —
women have been among the strongest mission supporters, the most faithful
prayer warriors and the most generous mission givers. Against daunting odds,
they also have proven to be some of the boldest, most committed missionaries
sent by churches in more recent times. Think Lottie Moon and her heroic
co-workers in the formative stages of the American mission movement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So
what happens to missions tomorrow, or 10 years from now, if significantly fewer
women vitally participate in the life of local churches? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That’s
one of the worrisome questions raised by </span><a href="https://www.barna.org/barna-update/culture/722-five-factors-changing-women-s-relationship-with-churches#.VbPDgNJVikp"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">new research
released in June by the Barna Group</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">, a Christian research organization. The
findings show an increasing percentage of American women, even among those who
self-identify as believing Christians, joining the current social shift away
from church involvement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Historically,
men have been less likely to regularly attend church than women,” Barna
reported. “Just over a decade ago, the gender gap was three men for every two
unchurched women. In other words, fully 60 percent of unchurched people were
men. Today, only 54 percent of the unchurched are men. In other words, the
gender gap has narrowed from 20 points to just eight points in the last 10
years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Here
is the landscape of women and their churchgoing: While just over half of all
adult women have gone to church in the past week or past month, nearly four in
10 have not been to church in the past six months. This last group represents
the majority of unchurched women — they are the dechurched. … It’s not
that most of these unchurched women are unfamiliar with or inexperienced in
church, but rather that at one point they decided church was no longer for
them.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They
aren’t necessarily abandoning the faith or rejecting the church. Most are just
slipping away. Barna identifies five trends in the quiet exodus:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Competing
priorities</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">
— “When asked to rank several priorities in
their life, women far and away ranked family relationships as their top
priority (68 percent),” the report said. “Church or religious activities did
come in second — but a very distant second (11 percent) and only marginally
inched out personal time/development (10 percent).” Surprisingly, work or
career ranked as the top priority for only 5 percent of respondents.
Unsurprisingly, it was the second-highest time commitment. In other words,
whether women love their jobs or not, they’re spending a lot of time at work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Busyness</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> — “In the end, many women today are just busy.
Really, really busy,” Barna concluded. “And they are experiencing a tension
between things they might want to do and things they actually have time for. …
[More than 70] percent of women feel stressed out, 58 percent are tired and 48
percent say they are overcommitted. The percentages are even higher among moms
with kids at home. Nearly nine in 10 women say they want to improve in at least
one area of life, and what is the area they cite the most, over work, family
and friends? Church. [But] the simple fact of the matter is many women — and
especially moms —feel like they just don’t have time for church in today’s
busy, fast-paced life.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lack of emotional
engagement and support</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> — Only 17 percent of
women responding to the survey said they feel “very” supported at church. More
than 40 percent sense no emotional support at all there. This isn’t some vague,
touchy-feely thing; it is a “relational disconnect,” according to Barna. Faith
is about relationships with God and people. If women don’t form strong
relationships with others at church, they will look for them elsewhere. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Changing family
structures</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">
— Most churches are geared toward traditional
family structures: husband, wife and kids. Singles of both sexes have long felt
like an afterthought in many church settings. Most American women are marrying
later (mid-to-late 20s); many of them want to establish themselves as
self-sufficient individuals before even considering marriage. What does the
church offer them?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Changes in belief </span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> More than 60
percent of unchurched women overall say they are Christians, even if they
haven’t attended church in at least six months. But only 46 percent of
unchurched Millennial women self-identify as Christians. Two of every 10
American Millennial women now identify as atheists, according to the report.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Many
women — particularly those still identifying as Christian — may want to believe
that they can hold to their faith even as they find less and less time in their
life for church,” wrote Roxanne Stone, Barna Group vice president, in
an article for <i>Today’s Christian Woman</i>. “However, Barna’s
research over the years has shown that people who are disconnected from church
— even those who self-identify as Christian — are less likely to engage in
other faith activities, including Bible reading, prayer, volunteering and
charitable giving. … Whether we want to admit it or not, church attendance
roots believers in regular faith rhythms and increases many other related faith
practices.“<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Those
“related faith practices” include the chief purposes of the church in the
world: to love and worship God, to lift His name everywhere and to make
disciples of Christ among all peoples. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Counteracting
the movement of women away from vital church involvement will be a huge,
complex challenge in the days ahead. But if you’re a church leader, here are a
few questions that might help you get started: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Can
busy moms and working women find real relationships in your church that help
relieve the stress and isolation of their frantic lives, while drawing them
toward God? Can young women searching for personal identity find encouragers in
your church who will help them find their identity in Christ? Can women looking
for deeper life purpose than their endless to-do list find exciting ways
through your church to serve Christ and share the gospel in your community and
around the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lottie
Moon was once a young woman — notorious for skipping chapel at school —
searching for purpose in life. When she found it, she changed the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<i><span style="color: #212121; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Explore
ways to participate in God’s mission at </span></i><a href="http://women.imb.org/"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">http://women.imb.org/</span></i></a><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">)<span style="color: #212121;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-13889330097293324712015-07-14T08:36:00.001-07:002015-07-14T08:36:31.716-07:00Jim Slack: mission revolutionary<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DmSUvTreE48/VaUsaBWVceI/AAAAAAAAAlU/zXnHgwzuOvo/s1600/Slack%2Bat%2BIMB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DmSUvTreE48/VaUsaBWVceI/AAAAAAAAAlU/zXnHgwzuOvo/s320/Slack%2Bat%2BIMB.jpg" width="230" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">How can God use one faithful life to change the
world?</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Consider Jim Slack, 77. He retired from IMB in June after 50 years
as a missionary, missiologist, strategist, researcher, ethnographer, teacher —
and passionate advocate for unreached peoples, especially oral learners who
need God’s Word in forms they can understand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Slack can see out of only one eye these days, but his global
vision remains crystal clear. He’s been at the center of several movements that
revolutionized modern missions. And he’s not through yet. He has multiple
projects in the works,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">
from investigating potential church-planting movements to guiding
missions-related dissertations by seminary students. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Whatever
physically I can do, I want to do,” Slack explains in his trademark Louisiana
rasp. “I don’t want to just sit around and look at the wall.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Not much chance of that. Never has been. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Slack was a bright young college grad on the way to law school
when a summer of ministry in Hawaii — still a “foreign mission field” in those
days — captured his heart and mind for missions. He returned home to tell his
wife-to-be, Mary that life plans had changed. She happily informed him that she
had surrendered her life to serving God in missions years earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Before they went to the Philippines as Southern Baptist
missionaries in 1964, however, Slack worked as a researcher with the Billy
Graham Evangelistic Association. Graham was helping lay the foundations of what
would become the Lausanne Movement, which called the church to obey its
biblical responsibility for world evangelization by making disciples among <i>all</i>
peoples — the <i>panta ta ethne</i> Jesus Christ referred to in His Great
Commission command in Matthew 28:19. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Billy
Graham said, ‘We have misunderstood the Great Commission,’” Slack recalls. “The
Great Commission is: You shall make disciples of the <i>panta ta ethne</i> — the nations, the unreached people groups.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Slack
put that into practice as a church planter in the Philippines. He moved as soon
as he could to Mindanao, where restive Muslims and tribal peoples had never
heard the gospel. He trained local believers to evangelize and start churches
and participated in key research projects that challenged missionaries in the
Philippines and elsewhere to move beyond the reached to the unreached. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">While doing doctoral work in seminary early in his missionary
career, he encountered a book about the global challenge of evangelizing people
who can’t read. He devoured it in a single night and changed his whole approach
to missions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
wish I’d had that book when I first went to the field,” Slack says. “Mindanao
Muslims couldn’t read, didn’t want to read, weren’t going to read. And the
tribal people in the mountains didn’t even have a written language.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Missionary
Bible translators were doing heroic work in many cultures. But what was the
point of spending years translating the Bible into indigenous languages if
people couldn’t, or wouldn’t, read it? Until they were willing and able to
read, an alternate approach was needed to deliver God’s Word to the hundreds of
millions of people around the world belonging to cultures that communicate
orally. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Working
with missionary colleague J.O. Terry and others, Slack helped develop
Chronological Bible Storying — later shortened
to Bible Storying — a simple, flexible,
transferrable way to deliver the truths of the Bible to oral learners and make
disciples among them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
has become one of the most effective and widely used mission methods of the
modern era, expanding beyond the original sets of teachable Bible stories to
songs, drama, pictures, video, audio, webisodes and more. But in the early
years, when Slack traveled the world teaching the method, it wasn’t an easy
sell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Slack
and Terry came to West Africa several times to “introduce this weird new thing
called Chronological Bible Storying,” remembers IMB staff member Roger Haun,
then a missionary in the region. “We were kind of hardheaded about it. Even
after our missionaries began to warm up to the idea, we were still having
trouble with our West African brothers. … [Today, storying] is the main
evangelistic tool now used all across West Africa. And there are literally tens
of thousands of Africans who have heard the gospel in a way they can understand
— and many who have accepted Christ, and will
be with us one day in heaven — because [Slack]
came and introduced us to that concept.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
25 years on the field, Slack transitioned to IMB’s Global Research team during
another revolutionary period. IMB mission strategists were exploring the
emerging phenomenon of church-planting movements, the new concept of
strategy-coordinator missionaries and the global urgency of reaching unreached
peoples. Slack made vital contributions in these areas while continuing his
campaign for Bible storying. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">More
recently, as IMB and the North American Mission Board partner to reach the
waves of peoples immigrating to America, Slack has trained church leaders in
some of the biggest U.S. urban centers to reach the unreached in their midst. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Few
men living have affected the shape of world missions like Jim Slack,” says Tom
Billings, executive director of Union Baptist Association (more than 560
affiliated churches) in increasingly multiethnic Houston. “Of late, he has also
focused on helping U.S. church leaders recognize the enormity of the Great
Commission task in our own country and challenged us to think differently about
what we must do to reach them.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
America becomes more and more ethnically and socially diverse, Slack offers the
same challenge to U.S. Christians that he’s been delivering to missionaries and
the global church for decades. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“If
we do not win the people groups here, we will not grow,” he says with tears in
his eyes. “Friend, we’re going to die if we don’t obey the Great Commission.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">(What impact could God make
with your fully surrendered life? </span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.imb.org/go/serving.aspx#.VaQCL19Viko">Explore the possibilities.</a>)</span></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-32490125326695936082015-06-23T12:44:00.002-07:002015-06-23T12:44:50.816-07:00Inspiration and perspiration<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tztzv2jsNMY/VYm25eo-u8I/AAAAAAAAAk4/J3oQiuPSWAw/s1600/Koehn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="204" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tztzv2jsNMY/VYm25eo-u8I/AAAAAAAAAk4/J3oQiuPSWAw/s320/Koehn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (Bill Koehn at Jibla Baptist Hospital)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Inspiration only gets you so far.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
great for starting a major task. As for finishing one —
not so much. That’s where commitment comes in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Winston
Churchill, one of the greatest inspirational speakers of the modern age,
understood this truth: There’s a time for words and a time for action.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” Churchill told the
British people 75 years ago in May. It was his first address to the House of
Commons as prime minister. A fight to the death with the mighty Nazi war
machine loomed. Years of suffering lay ahead. America’s entrance into World War
II was in doubt, as was the continued existence of Great Britain itself. Many
who heard Churchill’s stark words wouldn’t survive the struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
knew what was coming, had no illusions about it. He’d been issuing warnings
about it for years from the back benches of Parliament. So he didn’t try to
sugarcoat it. His speech, less than four minutes from start to finish, is a
stern call to victory at any cost (</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzgPpdjx-Kw"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">listen</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> for a bracing lesson in
leadership). He knew that solemn day was not a time for soaring rhetoric. It
was a time for getting on with the task at hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
same applies to servants of a greater cause: God’s global mission. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Don’t
get me wrong: As followers of Christ, we need His inspiration every day, every
hour, every moment. We need the constant nourishment of His Word and the power
of His Spirit to accomplish anything worth doing. We need to encourage and
challenge one another. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
then we need to act. Obedience is the truest sign of faith.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sometimes
obedience is hard — especially after the
glorious music fades away and the exciting speakers move on. Sometimes the
people who raised their hands with you in those high moments of worship and
inspiration change their minds when things got hard. They were willing to go
anywhere, do anything, until they weren’t. What about you? That’s when you find
out if you are serious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul,
the first great Christian missionary, didn’t sugarcoat the task for his young
friend Timothy: “You therefore, my son,
be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. … Suffer hardship with me as a
good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1,3 NASB). And Timothy knew Paul was
enduring great hardship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Many
centuries later, another great missionary had similar words. Writing to her
friend Annie Armstrong in 1889, Lottie Moon had this to say about daily life in
North China:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Please
say to the new missionaries that they are coming to a life of hardship,
responsibility and constant self-denial. ... They will be alone in the interior
and will need to be strong and courageous. If ‘the joy of the Lord’ be ‘their
strength,’ the blessedness of the work will more than compensate for its
hardships. Let them come ‘rejoicing to suffer’ for the sake of that Lord and
Master who freely gave His life for them.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sometimes
serving Jesus isn’t particularly hard or dangerous. Sometimes it’s just
mundane. Boring, even. Blessed are the plodders who do boring stuff faithfully.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">One
of the most faithful plodders in Southern Baptist mission history was Bill
Koehn. He died in 2002 after being shot point-blank, along with medical
missionary colleagues Martha Myers and Kathy Gariety, by a Muslim militant in
Yemen. Until then, Koehn, age 60, had spent 28 uneventful years running the
Jibla Baptist Hospital as administrator. Relatively uneventful, that is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
hospital faced the daily challenge of ministering to an endless stream of
patients from all over the impoverished Middle Eastern nation. At its peak, the
77-bed mission facility employed several hundred workers, treated some 40,000
people a year, performed more than 400 surgeries a month and operated a busy
outpatient clinic. Koehn and his staff also endured extended civil war in
Yemen, occasional kidnappings, a disastrous fire, numerous financial crises,
ongoing personnel shortages, political pressures and legal battles that
threatened to shut down the hospital. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Other
than that, it was pretty normal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How
did Koehn cope? The former supermarket manager from Kansas was quiet,
predictable, a creature of habit. He operated on a strict daily schedule,
starting with prayer and Bible study before dawn and proceeding with clockwork
precision until nightfall. Unfinished projects, whether at the hospital or in
his woodworking shop, irked him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“You
never called Bill after 9, because he was in bed,” said a longtime colleague.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Koehn’s
highly structured style enabled him to handle the countless details and
headaches involved in running the hospital. Yet he somehow found the time to
make wooden toys for the orphanage he loved to visit, to assist needy widows in
the community, to drink tea with Yemenis and listen to their struggles and
needs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Plodders
get things done, even on the mission field. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Apostle James said our lives are but a mist that will soon disappear (James
4:14), IMB President David Platt reminded listeners June 17 during a </span><a href="http://www.imb.org/updates/storyview-3316.aspx?channelId&channelListId&mediaId=73d64eac67fd4cfb841b87742954860d#.VYh-V_lVikp"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Sending
Celebration”</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">
to recognize 59 new missionaries and their sending churches at the annual
meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Columbus, Ohio. None of us is
guaranteed tomorrow, so we should make our lives count for God now — even in seemingly small things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“May
the urgency of this mission mark us,” Platt said. “May our light shine amidst
the darkness, and may our mist count while we’ve still got time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Roger
Cohen of <i>The New York Times</i> warns
about using that precious time to “follow your passion,” as the cliché goes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Life
is a succession of tasks rather than a cascade of inspiration, an experience
that is more repetitive than revelatory, at least on a day-to-day basis,” Cohen
writes. “The thing is to perform the task well and find reward even in the
mundane. … I’ve grown suspicious of the inspirational. It’s overrated. I
suspect duty — that half-forgotten word — may be more related to happiness than
we think. Want to be happy? Mow the lawn. Collect the dead leaves. Paint the
room. Do the dishes. Get a job. Labor until fatigue is in your very bones.
Persist day after day.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Following
your passion is great, as long as your passion is following God. Day by day.
One foot in front of another, faithfully. God will multiply every step you give
to Him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<i><span style="color: #212121; font-size: 12.0pt;">(</span></i><a href="http://imb.org/go/serving.aspx#.VYOBhPlViko"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Explore ways</span></i></a><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> to follow
<span style="color: #212121;">God in His global mission.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-16159118749626303222015-06-09T08:14:00.001-07:002015-06-09T08:14:31.235-07:00Hope, by the numbers<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gMIIjTKikTs/VXcCxEhx4qI/AAAAAAAAAkc/S8UpzNK76zg/s1600/hope%2Btwo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gMIIjTKikTs/VXcCxEhx4qI/AAAAAAAAAkc/S8UpzNK76zg/s1600/hope%2Btwo.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hope is one of the
most powerful forces in the world. The absence of hope is like death.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve
written in the past about my friend George. He was sincere, thoughtful, funny </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">— and</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> deeply depressed. He eventually hanged himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On
the last morning of his life, George lay motionless. According to his father
(who later found his body), the only words George managed to force through
gritted teeth that day were: “No hope. No hope. No hope.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hopelessness
afflicts many more people than the clinically depressed. It torments millions
who think that they have nothing to live for, that the miseries of the present
will never go away, that the future holds nothing but more despair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hope,
on the other hand, leads people in even the most difficult conditions to reach
up, to believe in possibilities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
may seem obvious, but there’s new statistical support for it. A major trial
study, involving more than 20,000 people in six countries, has demonstrated
that targeted aid aimed at getting extremely poor families out of poverty
produces big results with small investments </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">—
maybe as small as a single cow or a few goats.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Why
would a cow have such an impact?” asks Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times,
who wrote recently about the trial. “There’s some indication that one mechanism
is hope. Whether in America or India, families that are stressed and
impoverished — trapped in cycles of poverty — can feel a hopelessness that
becomes self-fulfilling. Give people reason to hope that they can achieve a
better life, and that, too, can be self-fulfilling.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
aid, minimal as it was, motivated recipients to work harder, save more and show
more optimism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Could
hopelessness and stress create a ‘poverty trap’ — abroad or here in the U.S. —
in which people surrender to a kind of whirlpool of despair?” Kristof asks.
“Some economists and psychologists are finding evidence to support that theory,
and experiments are underway to see if raising spirits can lift economic
outcomes. Researchers are now studying whether exposure to religion might have
a similar effect, improving economic outcomes. If so, Marx had the wrong drug
in mind: Religion would not be an opiate of the masses but an amphetamine.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kristof,
a widely traveled journalist who has praised evangelical humanitarian work in
the past, notes the similarity between the program studied in the trial and the
models used by Christian development organizations overseas. He adds, “Much of
the news about global poverty is depressing, but this is fabulous: a
large-scale experiment showing, with rigorous evidence, what works to lift
people out of the most extreme poverty. And it’s exhilarating that one of the
lessons may be so simple and human: the power of hope.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">These
findings also complement the groundbreaking research of sociologist Robert
Woodberry, director of the Project on Religion and Economic Change at the
National University of Singapore. In country after country, Woodberry began to
find a direct correlation between the historical presence and mission activity
of “conversionary Protestants” and the advance of freedom, social progress and
economic well-being.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
2005, a $500,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation enabled Woodberry to
hire a platoon of research assistants and launch a major database to gather
more information. Armed with those results, he was able to assert: “Areas where
Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average
more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower
infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational
attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in
nongovernmental associations.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">By
and large, those earlier missionaries weren’t radical social reformers or
political revolutionaries. They were bringers of hope. Their gospel ministry
connected them to the common people and the poor, whom they sought to serve in
the love of Christ. Yes, they started schools, hospitals and various
engines of social progress. But most of all, they preached the hope of Christ,
started churches and made disciples who carried on the work in subsequent generations.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">That work goes on today, as missionaries and their
partners find new ways to heal bodies, educate minds, transform cultures and
bring the good news to starving souls. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">One example among many: South Asian women
often despair of finding a decent life. Many face domestic abuse. Many more are
abandoned to care for their children alone but have no skills to find good
work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">With
an investment of $3,550 provided by </span><a href="http://www.imb.org/giving/humanneeds.aspx#.VXXFqtJViko"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">IMB’s Global
Hunger Relief</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">,
15 women were trained to create quality jewelry that met market demands better
than other jewelry produced by local artisans. An export license was obtained
to ship the products out of the country to “fair trade” sales partners.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
year later, the new micro-business is generating enough revenue to stand on its
own and even expand to help more at-risk women in rural areas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“We
have employed many ladies who were left by their husbands or divorced,” the
project director reported. “[One] lady was abused by her husband and went back
to her parents and is going through a divorce. She had a desire to go back to
school in order to support herself, but her parents didn’t have the money to
send her. Our micro-enterprise provides her with an income that can fund her
school ambition. We are gaining a reputation in the community for caring for
those who cannot care for themselves and have had many opportunities to share.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hope. People need it, crave it,
search for it. They will risk their lives to find it, and having found it, will
risk their lives to share it with others. That’s why the gospel of Jesus Christ
is so powerful </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">—
</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">and why it is spreading so rapidly
outside the secularized West. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">By comparison, all the substitutes
offered in its place grow strangely dim. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-8590584921548891072015-05-28T11:56:00.002-07:002015-05-28T11:56:57.006-07:00World War II, 70 years after<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HlSrXa0hax0/VWdk68ERwgI/AAAAAAAAAj8/Tc_chP8D_-Q/s1600/ruins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HlSrXa0hax0/VWdk68ERwgI/AAAAAAAAAj8/Tc_chP8D_-Q/s1600/ruins.jpg" /></a></div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The 70</span><sup style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> anniversary of the end of World
War II in Europe came and went in May with relatively little fanfare.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps the milestone passed quietly because fewer people
personally remember the largest armed conflict in human history. The last U.S.
president to serve in the military during World War II, George H.W. Bush, now
90, left office more than 20 years ago. Barack Obama wasn’t born until 16 years
after the war ended. Of the 16 million veterans who helped win the war — and
lift America out of the Great Depression and into global leadership — fewer
than 1 million are still alive. They are dying at a rate of nearly 500 per day.
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">But we all live with the consequences of World War II, whether we
realize it or not. It forged the modern world in fire and blood along with its
horrific predecessor, World War I. The “Great War” of 1914-18 destroyed old
orders and empires, set the stage for revolutions and economic upheaval and led
to far greater devastation two decades later. Before World War II ended in
1945, more than 60 million people had died, an average of 27,000 per day. Many
of them were civilians caught up in the fighting — or deliberately massacred. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Within the vast compass of the struggle, some individuals scaled
summits of courage and nobility, while others plumbed depths of evil, in a
fashion that compels the awe of posterity,” writes World War II historian Max
Hastings. “Among citizens of modern democracies to whom serious hardship and
collective peril are unknown, the tribulations that hundreds of millions
endured between 1939 and 1945 are almost beyond comprehension.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">For all its suffering, however, World War II unleashed economic
energies that would lift entire nations from poverty to prosperity in the
postwar era. It ushered in a new age of technological and scientific progress.
It hastened the end of European colonialism. It sparked a Cold War with Soviet
communism that the West ultimately would win, spreading political freedom far
and wide.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">And it opened vast areas of the globe — especially in Asia — to
the Christian gospel. Western missionaries streamed into ravaged countries
after the war, bringing help and hope. The disciples they made helped turn
Christianity into a truly global movement. Its expansion has continued in the
generations since, bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to new areas of
Africa and Asia, to the post-communist world, to previously unreached peoples.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Postwar chaos eventually gave way to order and development in many
parts of the world. But it’s become increasingly clear that the era of relative
global stability that followed the war — albeit guaranteed for long periods by
the weapons of superpowers — has come to an end. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“To put it simply, a vast swath of the Eurasian landmass
(understood to be Europe and Asia together) is in political, military and
economic disarray,” says George Friedman, chairman of the Stratfor global
intelligence analysis agency. “Europe and China are struggling with the
consequences of the 2008 [global economic] crisis, which left not only economic
but institutional challenges. Russia is undergoing a geopolitical crisis in
Ukraine and an economic problem at home. The Arab world, from the Levant to
Iran, from the Turkish border through the Arabian Peninsula, is embroiled in
politically destabilizing warfare. The Western Hemisphere is relatively stable,
as is the Asian Archipelago. But Eurasia is destabilizing in multiple
dimensions.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">In Friedman’s view, forces have re-emerged that the old postwar
order cannot control.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“After every systemic war, there is an illusion that the
victorious coalition will continue to be cohesive and govern as effectively as
it fought,” he observes. “After World War I, the Allies (absent the United
States) created the League of Nations. After World War II, it was the United
Nations. After the Cold War ended, it was assumed that the United Nations,
NATO, IMF, World Bank and other multinational institutions could manage the
global system. In each case, the victorious powers sought to use wartime
alliance structures to manage the postwar world. In each case, they failed,
because the thing that bound them together — the enemy — no longer existed.
Therefore, the institutions became powerless and the illusion of unity
dissolved. This is what has happened here.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The only thing that seems certain is uncertainty. Will Europe
collapse as an economic and social entity? Will the Middle East descend into
all-out regional war? Will a new Cold War break out between East and West?</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">History has shown that such times are risky for the church, but
productive for God’s mission. Risky, because Christians will face increasing
persecution as societies crumble, and increasing danger as they take the gospel
worldwide. Productive, because people seek truth when everything else they have
relied upon falls away.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The chaotic period during and after World War II, when the world
Christian movement truly went global, is a case in point. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<i><span style="color: #212121; font-size: 12.0pt;">(</span></i><a href="http://www.imb.org/lead/#.VSvmndzF-3c"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Explore ways to lead</span></i></a><i><span style="color: #212121; font-size: 12.0pt;"> your church into God’s global mission.)</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-34597700357415355982015-05-12T08:53:00.002-07:002015-05-12T08:53:31.717-07:00 Kathmandu and the challenge of Asian cities<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 19.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 9pt;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ramz2-XzKd4/VVIh0v-DRwI/AAAAAAAAAjE/LsQrW5Mm24I/s1600/Nepal%2Bquake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ramz2-XzKd4/VVIh0v-DRwI/AAAAAAAAAjE/LsQrW5Mm24I/s320/Nepal%2Bquake.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 19.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 9pt;">
<i><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 19.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 9pt;">
<i><span style="background-color: white;">(Note: A powerful new
earthquake shook Nepal May 12, killing at least 36 people and sending thousands
rushing to the streets as more buildings collapsed. The 7.3-magnitude
earthquake came 17 days after the 7.8-magnitude quake that struck April 25,
killing more than 8,000 people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes.
The new quake will add to the dismal statistics as rescue workers, including
Southern Baptist relief teams, once again begin digging out.)</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nepalis have begun the long struggle to dig out of
the rubble left by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 8,000
people and destroyed parts of Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It’s becoming clear that the quake did even greater damage in
rural areas, where Southern Baptist disaster relief workers and their Nepali
Christian partners are focusing aid efforts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">But the death and destruction in Kathmandu highlight the enormous
physical challenges confronting many Asian cities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“With an annual population
growth rate of 6.5 percent and one of the highest urban densities in the world,
the 1.5 million people living in the Kathmandu Valley [another estimate puts
the population at 2.5 million] were clearly facing a serious and growing
earthquake risk,” said a report issued by a group of seismologists who visited
Kathmandu a week before the April 25 temblor. “It was also clear that the next
large earthquake to strike near the Valley would cause significantly greater
loss of life, structural damage, and economic hardship than past earthquakes
had inflicted.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 17.55pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Why? Too many people crowded
into too little space — in this case, a quake-prone urban area — living in old,
crumbling buildings or in flimsy structures thrown together to house people
arriving daily in search of jobs and a better life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Earthquakes don’t kill
people; buildings kill people” is a common saying among seismologists. The more
people living in inadequate housing, the more potential casualties. “You’re up
against a Himalayan-scale problem with Third-World resources,” geologist Susan
Hough told the Washington Post.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">But the rapidly expanding megacities of South Asia face even
greater challenges than earthquakes. The region already counts 12 of the
world’s </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">50
largest urban centers. They need more food, water,
jobs, housing and infrastructure for the millions streaming in from rural
areas. Most of all, they need the hope found only in Jesus Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 17.55pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“By
2020, India alone will have a shortage of 30 million housing units in big
cities,” says Daren Cantwell,* </span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif;">IMB
strategy leader for South Asian Peoples</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">. “By 2030 they’re expecting 350 million
more Indians to move to cities. By 2050, they expect 700 million to move to
cities. The challenge for these cities to provide water, food and sanitation is
huge. With this many people coming in, a city can’t assimilate fast enough. So
you have these huge slums grow up — like in
Mumbai, where you have 10 million people living in slums.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yet
Mumbai, with a metro population of more than 20 million, also boasts legions of
middle-class workers and the most billionaires in India. It’s the pulsating
heart of India’s financial, cultural and entertainment worlds. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Our
focus on cities will be at multiple levels of society, from the slum dwellers
to the people living in high-rises to doctors, lawyers, Bollywood [India’s film
industry], the whole gamut,” Cantwell says. “Finding the best places to work,
the best ways to work and to multiply yourself through your national partners
across a city are all things we’re dealing with as we seek strategies to reach
these places.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They’re
looking for U.S. partners, too, as IMB focuses more intensively on extending
the gospel in and through the world’s cities. On a global scale, urban dwellers
will double to 6.4 billion by the middle of this century — 70 percent of the
projected human population — according to a
United Nations forecast.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“There
are massive needs in cities around the world,” says IMB President David Platt.
“How do we take this God-ordained movement of people toward cities, leverage
what God is doing and intentionally go to cities, so we’ve got relationships
when people get there? They’ve come in search of economic help or prosperity.
We hope they’ll find what they need for daily life, but find in a greater way
what they need for eternal life. We want to be there, ready with the gospel.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<i><span style="color: #212121; font-size: 12.0pt;">*Name
changed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-70072017100452222692015-05-01T12:54:00.001-07:002015-05-01T12:54:18.992-07:00Irritating people<div class="MsoPlainText">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jGVKW3P2R54/VUPZ29DTlyI/AAAAAAAAAig/X6wi6Yb1VOY/s1600/irritating.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jGVKW3P2R54/VUPZ29DTlyI/AAAAAAAAAig/X6wi6Yb1VOY/s1600/irritating.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Some people really get on my nerves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">People who disagree with me, for instance, because I’m always
right. People who agree with me all the time are even more aggravating. How
boring is that? People who have no opinion one way or the other are the worst. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yep, I like to argue, debate, raise objections. If you take a
position I support, I might contradict you — just so you don’t go unchallenged.
Psychologists say people like me have problems with authority. I prefer to
think of it as offering alternatives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">God demonstrates His love and patience by tolerating people like
me. And He regularly sends irritating people to challenge my insistence on
seeing and doing things my way, which usually leads to disaster. Maybe He is
sending some of them your way, too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Here are </span><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">few examples </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of especially irritating folks. If they rub you the
wrong way, too, maybe God is trying to tell you something:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">People
who are more interested in doing God’s will than arguing about it. They
challenge those of us who waste time dissecting, analyzing and rationalizing
what God has clearly told us to do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">People
who love God so much that they glorify Him with their words <i>and</i> their
lives. Young believers who do this with extra freshness and enthusiasm are
doubly irritating. They take away our excuses for coasting and complacency in
the spiritual life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">People
who serve others with love. Not just because they’re supposed to. Not just so
they can check “ministry” off their to-do list. They serve others from a
sincere love of Christ that naturally overflows to all they meet. Does that
mean we ought to do the same?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">People
who have a heart for the world. They make it their business to be aware of
what’s happening beyond their little circle. They see the suffering and need in
places of poverty and turmoil. More than that, they see the pain of billions
who wander in darkness without Christ, like sheep without a shepherd. And as
Christ wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41,42), they also weep. Then they do
something about it. They remind us how much we need to get beyond our own safe,
familiar zones and out into the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">People
who listen first, with teachable hearts, and talk later — or maybe don’t talk
at all. These folks drive me crazy, since words are my specialty. They
painfully remind me that words aren’t enough. God speaks in the silence of our
hearts as we listen to His Word and His Spirit. Usually, the only response
required is obedience. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt;">n<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">People
who pray. They might be the most irritating people of all, because they convict
the rest of us of our prayerlessness, indifference and lack of hunger for being
with God, seeking His face and responding to His Spirit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I could go on. There </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">are lots of other
exasperating people who believe the command to make disciples among all peoples
still stands, who are willing to go anywhere God leads, who aren’t willing to
settle for less than all that He desires. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Thank God for them. They show me — all of us — what is possible in
a life truly given to Christ. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">(Want to be “irritating”</span></i><i><span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on a global scale?
<a href="http://www.imb.org/go/default.aspx#.VTvw89JVikp">Here are some ways.<span style="color: windowtext;">)</span></a><u><span style="color: #0563c1;"><o:p></o:p></span></u></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-74819939418856427092015-04-14T09:53:00.000-07:002015-04-14T09:53:04.229-07:00The world in 2050<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YwSdEWQDAAs/VS1FzVgMbOI/AAAAAAAAAiM/kPka6OFy3Ek/s1600/Muslims%2Band%2BChristians.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YwSdEWQDAAs/VS1FzVgMbOI/AAAAAAAAAiM/kPka6OFy3Ek/s1600/Muslims%2Band%2BChristians.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The number of Muslims in the world will nearly
match the number of Christians by 2050.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">That’s the main headline from “</span><a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Future of
World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">,” a
study released in April by the Pew Research Center. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If current
population trends continue, the report says, Muslim ranks will increase by 73
percent (to 2.8 billion) — more than twice the growth rate of Christians, who
will expand by 35 percent, to 2.9 billion. Total world population is projected
to reach 9.3 billion by mid-century. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Other projections for 2050:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">-- Hindus
will increase by 34 percent to nearly 1.4 billion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">-- Four
of every 10 Christians will live in sub-Saharan Africa.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">-- While
remaining majority Hindu, India will become home to more Muslims than any other country, topping Indonesia.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">-- Atheists,
agnostics and others who affiliate with no particular religion will decline as
a share of the world population, even as they increase in numbers and influence
in North America and Europe.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
important to keep two things in mind about this study (and others like it).
First, it’s more a demographic survey than a religious one. Muslims are
increasing primarily because of fertility rates and young populations in
regions where they predominate, not because non-Muslims are converting to
Islam. Second, terms such as “Muslim” and “Christian” are broadly defined. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The
projections are based on the number of people who <i>self-identify</i> with
each religious group, regardless of their level of observance,” the report
emphasizes. “What it means to be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish or
a member of any other faith may vary from person to person, country to country
and decade to decade.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Still,
the projections highlight the global church’s challenge for the next
generation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The
chief contenders for the hearts and souls of those living in the 21st century
will be Muslims, evangelical Christians and secularists,” predicted Patrick
Johnstone, British mission leader and former editor of “Operation World,” in an
interview I conducted with him in 2012. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Who
is going to be the most successful?” Johnstone asked. “Islam is growing,
largely by biological growth, not by conversion. Evangelicals are growing
massively by conversion. Secularists are adding to their number every year, but
are dying as a breed, because they are not having enough children to replace
themselves.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Evangelical
Christian faith, once based largely in the United States and Europe, spread far
beyond its traditional strongholds in the second half of the 20th century. The
expansion was fueled by the post-World War II missionary movement — which made Christian disciples among a myriad of
peoples, who are now taking the gospel to others —
along with the spread of education and communication. The end of Western
colonial power in many countries, initially a challenge to churches born of
missionary efforts, actually spurred the global Christian movement by forcing
national Christian groups to depend on God and themselves — not outsiders. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“One
day in eternity, I think we will look back and see God’s hand in so many
things,” Johnstone observed. “[M]any people thought, with the missionaries and
the colonial regimes gone, Christianity would be pushed out. It did the exact
opposite. It became indigenous and exploded. In many countries that are now
broken politically, the churches became the source of stability and hope for
the future.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
continue to advance, however, the evangelical movement must avoid pride and
complacency, Johnstone warned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Are
the very successes of evangelicalism sowing the seeds of its spiritual demise
by grieving the Spirit of God through pride, division, disobedience, carnality,
moral laxity, theological error or prayerlessness?” he asked. “Nominalism is
not the preserve of more traditional churches —
it is increasingly a problem for third- and fourth-generation evangelicals.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
also urged U.S. and other Western churches and mission agencies to pursue
“multi-polar global leadership” with their Asian, African and Latin American
brothers and sisters. “Wherever you look in the Christian world in the 21st
century, mission teams and strategies that remain mono-ethnic are not going to
survive,” Johnstone said. “I sometimes jokingly say that the perfect
multicultural team would have a Brazilian evangelist, a Korean church planter,
a Chinese to manage the accounts, an Australian to mend anything that's broken
and an American to handle planning and goals.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Good
advice. The church also needs to put away its fear of Muslims and share the
gospel with them in the love of Christ. In some places that will require
life-and-death risk. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
other places, notably America, it requires only a willingness to be a friend.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<i><span style="color: #212121; font-size: 12.0pt;">(</span></i><a href="http://www.imb.org/lead/#.VSvmndzF-3c"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Explore
ways to lead</span></i></a><i><span style="color: #212121; font-size: 12.0pt;">
your church into God’s global mission.)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-85315277844147346342015-03-24T09:27:00.001-07:002015-03-24T09:27:39.231-07:00Looking for home<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ol11sAR6i70/VRGQYo2YjNI/AAAAAAAAAhw/gWolKlWv8f8/s1600/looking%2Bthree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ol11sAR6i70/VRGQYo2YjNI/AAAAAAAAAhw/gWolKlWv8f8/s1600/looking%2Bthree.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Maya, age 7, loves bananas, cartoons and her pink
teddy bear.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">She had to leave the teddy bear back in Syria when her family fled
to Lebanon to escape the worsening civil war. “It’s probably riddled with
bullets now,” Maya says. She’s probably right: Homs, the city they left, is now
essentially a pile of rubble.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">At least she has a stuffed blue Smurf to keep her company. But she
doesn’t have many human friends her age in the “home” she occupies with her
parents and her teenage brother, Hammoudeh. For more than 1,000 days, they have
lived with other Syrian refugees in the crumbling Gaza Hospital in Beirut. It
ceased to be a medical facility during Lebanon’s own civil war decades ago, but
has played host to generations of refugees from the region’s conflicts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It’s more comfortable than the tents, sheds and hovels many Syrian
refugees endure in Lebanon. But Maya — a goofy, giggly girl with tons of energy
— feels like she’s growing up in a prison.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“I’m a kid! I want to have fun,” Maya complains. “Who am I
supposed to play with? I’m surrounded by 10 walls. … When I get bored, I go
outside. I don’t find anyone so I come back in. I keep going in, out, in, out.
I drive Mum crazy!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Syria’s
civil war bled into a fifth year in March, so Maya has little chance of going
home anytime soon. She doesn’t understand the larger
forces that are destroying her homeland, or why she and her brother can’t go to
school, or why her mother seems sad most of the time. She laughs and dreams and
makes the best of an awful situation. But she knows something is wrong with a
world that snatches a home and a teddy bear from a little girl. You can see it
in her eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Let Maya tell you her own story <a href="http://lifeonhold.aljazeera.com/#/en/portraits/maya">here</a>. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s one of five
brief, quietly powerful video portraits of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, part of
the Al Jazeera series “<a href="http://lifeonhold.aljazeera.com/#/en/portraits/home">Life on Hold</a>.” Watch
them all if you want a glimpse of what it means to live in exile. You can even
post a message to Maya. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">You will also meet young Omar, who misses his assistant chef’s job
and his sweetheart back in Damascus. He cares for a leg shattered by an exploding
shell before he fled Syria, reads the Quran, prays, checks out the latest songs
and videos online, and waits. Haifa, a widow who closed the hotel she owned in
Damascus to seek safety for her three children, misses home so desperately that
she wants to go back — even though conditions are far worse now than when she
departed. “At least if I die, I die in Syria,” she says. Hajj, an older man who
cares for his sick wife, wonders if his 200 olive trees have withered and died.
He has lost 38 family members in the conflict. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Al Furati, an award-winning poet and former government worker,
cries for lost friends, co-workers and simple pleasures back home. He worries
about his children missing years of school, part of an entire lost generation
of young Syrians. He sits in a tent with his wife and children, writing
mournful verses late into the night: “Why is my country draped in the black of
night? And why are Syria’s hands hennaed with blood? … Your children are now
crying and your women are wailing, your precious soil is awash with the blood
of your men. I feel your heart is breaking like the valley of lament, I know
that your wound is too deep to heal.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Those words reminded me of the lament of another refugee poet: “B</span><span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">y the rivers of Babylon,</span><span style="color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> t<span style="background: #FDFEFF;">here we sat down and wept,</span> w<span style="background: #FDFEFF;">hen
we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1 NASB). Carried away into forced exile 26
centuries ago, the psalmist and his Israelite brothers and sisters could only
remember their beloved land </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">—</span><span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> and hope one day to return. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve become acquainted with many refugees
over the years, whether in dusty camps and border towns or after they resettled
in other places </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">—</span><span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> such as the city where I live. They include
Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Cubans, Afghanis, Iraqis, Kurds,
Palestinians, Burmese, Nepalis, Syrians. I’m proud to count some of them as
dear friends. Before our own children came along, my wife and I were foster
parents to two Vietnamese refugee kids for a time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t pretend to understand the refugee
experience, however, or the trauma, despair, isolation and loss that come with
it. It is impossible to fathom unless you have gone through it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But God understands. He loves. And He gives
hope. He commands again and again in His Word that we welcome and shelter the
alien, the stranger and the outcast. Jesus Christ, who experienced rejection by
His own that we can only imagine, calls us to befriend the wanderers of this
world </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">—</span><span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> and there are more of them than ever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #FDFEFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Millions of Syrians have been driven from
their homes since the civil war began. If you want to help them, or any
refugees, here are <a href="http://www.imb.org/updates/storyview-2934.aspx#.VQyEJtLF-3c">10 practical
ways</a> to do so</span><span style="background: #FDFEFF; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">. And here are a few more: Listen to their stories. Cry
with them. Be a friend. Offer the hope only God can give. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #FDFEFF; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Love transcends all borders.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-34516091263795273302015-03-10T09:30:00.001-07:002015-03-10T09:30:30.202-07:00Look for ‘the look'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FxfsFeTmQ1g/VP8buZSic3I/AAAAAAAAAhM/xGGF9dR0f2Q/s1600/Dylan%2Bone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FxfsFeTmQ1g/VP8buZSic3I/AAAAAAAAAhM/xGGF9dR0f2Q/s1600/Dylan%2Bone.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“The look.” If you’re a parent, a teacher or a
mentor, you’ve seen it on young faces.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’m not talking about the exasperated eye roll or the heavy-lidded
look of indifference. I’m talking about that yearning stare into the middle
distance — the look of someone in search of direction.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">If you’re a disciple maker or mission mobilizer, look for that
look. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It’s not that hard to find. Don’t let all the gloom and doom about
Millennials leaving the church (or never coming in the first place) get you
down. There are plenty of teens, college students and young adults — Christian
or not — searching for deeper purpose in their lives and eager for someone to
point them in the right direction. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’ve encountered lots of them. And research about faith, work and
“calling” among American adults backs me up. Last year the Barna Group reported
that three out of four adults are “looking for ways to live a more meaningful
life. Whether such meaning is found in family, career, church, side projects or
elsewhere, these are all questions of vocation — that is, the way in which
people feel ‘called’ to certain types of work and life choices. … [T]hese
questions remain as strong as ever for millions of Americans.” </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Christians have an additional question: “What does God want me to
do with my life?” </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">According to the Barna Group’s report, “only 40 percent of practicing
Christians say they have a clear sense of God’s calling on their lives.
Christian Millennials are especially sensitive to this divine prompting —
nearly half (48 percent) say they believe God is calling them to different
work, yet they haven’t yet made such a change.”</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">What’s stopping them? Fear of stepping out of the safety zone,
perhaps. Finances, student debt or conflicting commitments and priorities might
be holding them back. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Then there’s the “quarter-life crisis” — that anxious and
increasingly extended period between completing school and hitting a stride,
professionally and/or relationally, when 20-somethings wander in a bewildering
world of countless options and no firm decisions. It’s not a new thing. Bob
Dylan captured it perfectly 50 years ago in his classic song, “Like a Rolling
Stone”: </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<i><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">How does it feel</span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<span style="background: white;">To be on your own</span><br />
<span style="background: white;">With no direction home</span><br />
<span style="background: white;">Like a complete unknown</span><br />
<span style="background: white;">Like a rolling stone?</span></span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">But maybe all many 20-somethings lack is a nudge, an encouraging
word, a coach in their corner. Christians in particular crave “more direction
and discipleship when it comes to the theology of calling, especially as it
relates to work,” the Barna report found. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Many young Americans are following a multi-career path or working
multiple jobs, whether by choice or economic necessity. The traditional
40-hour week for a single employer has changed for millions into a series of
temporary jobs, freelance assignments, passion projects and startups. It’s
harder to make ends meet, but the new environment affords the flexibility for
people to seek something more than just a paycheck. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“A new kind of economy is taking shape, in part because it would
seem today’s workforce has decided for itself that making a living is not
enough if that living lacks purpose, meaning and impact,” said the Barna
report. “[A]dults today are deeply concerned with getting work ‘right’ — nearly
six out of 10 say they want to make a difference in the world.”</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">This represents a huge opportunity for Christians who want to lead
a rising generation toward God and His global purposes. The secular façade that
covers American culture is just that — a façade. Young adults are just as
hungry for God today as ever, whether they realize it yet or not, and they’ll
never know peace and purpose until they follow Him. Seek them out. If you can’t
find them at church, look for them in the workplace. Join a school mentoring
program. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">They’re out there, hoping for a guide. Don’t keep them waiting.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">(Are you a student or young professional seeking ways to make your
life count? Check out <a href="http://www.marketplaceadvance.com/">http://www.marketplaceadvance.com/</a>)</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-53262291001072537742015-02-25T08:34:00.001-08:002015-02-25T08:34:27.158-08:00David Platt: Counter culture with gospel<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2xMmP8uLYKg/VO35amP8W2I/AAAAAAAAAgc/rTQ-vnye6Bw/s1600/Platt%2Bon%2Bcounter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2xMmP8uLYKg/VO35amP8W2I/AAAAAAAAAgc/rTQ-vnye6Bw/s1600/Platt%2Bon%2Bcounter.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It’s hard not to offend people these days, especially if you actually
believe what the Bible says about right, wrong, sin and salvation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Fearing
the loss of friends, being dismissed as irrelevant — or worse, being called
intolerant — many evangelicals jump on the bandwagon of popular social-justice
causes, but lapse into uncomfortable silence on issues such as same-sex
marriage and abortion. Some quietly abandon biblical positions on controversial
issues altogether.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
path eventually leads to a deeper surrender, however. Because the entire
foundation of biblical morality, not to mention the biblical basis of Christian
missions, rests on the most “offensive” claim of all: the gospel itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“[T]he
most offensive and countercultural claim in Christianity is not what Christians
believe about homosexuality or abortion, marriage or religious liberty,” writes
IMB President David Platt in his new book, <i>Counter Culture: A Compassionate
Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex
Slavery, Immigration, Persecution, Abortion, Orphans and Pornography</i>.
“Instead, the most offensive claim in Christianity is that God is the Creator,
Owner, and Judge of every person on the planet. Every one of us stands before
Him guilty of sin, and the only way to be reconciled to Him is through faith in
Jesus, the crucified Savior and risen King. All who trust in His love will
experience everlasting life while all who turn from His lordship will suffer
everlasting death.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
claim — and the idea that God became a man, died on a cross and rose again to
embody it — is foolishness at best, anathema at worst to postmodernists,
atheists, secularists, Muslims and other subsets of humanity comprising
billions of people. It is increasingly costly, even dangerous in certain
places, to proclaim it. Some cultures consider it blasphemy; others call it
hate speech. That’s really nothing new if you peruse church history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
main question for self-proclaimed Christians, Platt suggests, is this: Do we
believe this gospel? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
we don’t, we should reconsider whether we really follow the Christ revealed in
the Bible. If we do, everything else we believe and do must flow from it. We
don’t get a pass on the toughest issues engulfing culture today, nor do we get
to pick which ones to address. We must counter them all with the revolutionary,
uncompromising love of the gospel. Hence the title of Platt’s book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
the gospel is an equal-opportunity offender, as Platt has discovered in his
personal spiritual life. He says God convicted him of his own silence about
racism and abortion, among other issues. That’s why he’s speaking to other
believers now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
sense a trend in the church among evangelical Christians — particularly younger
evangelicals, but really broader,” he observes. “We have this tendency to pick
and choose which cultural issues we’re going to stand up and speak out on and
which we’re going to sit down and be quiet on, usually based on those issues that
are most comfortable and least costly for us to speak out on. It is right for
us to speak out against poverty and sex trafficking, and I’m thankful for
increased awareness of issues like that and the way people are speaking out on
those issues. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The
danger, though, is if we speak boldly on issues like that, but then when it
comes to issues like abortion or so-called same-sex marriage — issues that are
much more likely to bring us into contention with the culture around us — we’re
much more likely to be quiet. Before we know it, our supposed social justice
actually becomes a selective social injustice. … The same gospel that compels
us to combat poverty compels us to defend marriage. The same gospel that
compels us to war against sex trafficking compels us to war against sexual
immorality in all of its forms.” (Hear Platt on “<a href="https://vimeo.com/119358278">picking and choosing</a>.”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
kind of consistency won’t win us many popularity contests, but if we back up
our words with lives of grace, truth and loving action, we will change culture
rather than surrendering to it. (Hear Platt on <a href="https://vimeo.com/119358284">whether addressing cultural issues hurts our
witness</a>.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Why
court controversy so early in his tenure as IMB leader? Platt began writing the
book several years ago, while he was pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in
Birmingham, Ala. He submitted it to his publisher well before his election by
IMB trustees last year. But he remains convinced the time is right for its message
to an American church facing fundamental challenges.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
trust that the Lord led me to write this and knew exactly where I would be when
it came out,” he told IMB missionaries and staff in a recent message. “Further,
I am completely convinced that these issues are not just American issues …
these are global issues … . I want to use any platform the Lord has given to me
to strengthen the church in this culture in order that we might send out and
support brothers and sisters into other cultures with rock-solid confidence in
God’s Word and with wisdom to apply the gospel to these pressing social
issues.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Only
servants with that kind of confidence can make a real impact on the world’s
lost, who suffer from the worst injustice of all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The
greatest injustice in the world is the fact that a couple of billion people
still don’t have access to the gospel,” Platt says. It is the gospel alone
“that has the power not only to change cultures on this earth but to transform
lives for eternity.”</span></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-76220193217068240832015-02-09T13:27:00.002-08:002015-02-09T13:27:41.082-08:00 Four threats and a promise<div class="MsoPlainText">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5Hoea91RIRs/VNkmOKMrFjI/AAAAAAAAAgI/XhTy-12-pxU/s1600/global%2Bcrisis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5Hoea91RIRs/VNkmOKMrFjI/AAAAAAAAAgI/XhTy-12-pxU/s1600/global%2Bcrisis.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Will a new Cold War begin over the hot war in Ukraine? Will the European
Union crumble, sparking another global recession? Will Iran go nuclear? Will
the tottering Arab world collapse?</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tyranny
is cruel, but anarchy may be worse. Ask anyone living in one of the increasing
number of failed (or failing) states around the world as 2015 stumbles toward …
what? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Our
age is insistently, at times almost desperately, in pursuit of a concept of
world order,” writes Henry Kissinger, chief architect of U.S. foreign policy
for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, in his recent book <i>World Order</i>.
During tumultuous times, Kissinger engineered Nixon’s historic 1972 opening to
China. He also helped craft <i>détente</i> — the easing of decades of
nuclear-armed tensions with the Soviet Union.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today,
however, order and agreement are becoming hard to find.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Chaos
threatens side by side with … the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the
disintegration of states, the impact of environmental depredation, the
persistence of genocidal practices, and the spread of new technologies
threatening to drive conflict beyond human control or comprehension,” Kissinger
warns. “Are we facing a period in which forces beyond the restraints of any
order determine the future?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
Kissinger can’t answer that question regarding world affairs, I certainly won’t
try. But here are four key threats to monitor this year, according to risk
assessments from the Eurasia Group, the World Economic Forum, Stratfor Global Intelligence
and other globe watchers:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Russia and Ukraine</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> — As conflict in eastern Ukraine
intensifies between government forces and Russian-backed rebels, peace
prospects seem to be fading. Western economic sanctions (and lower oil prices)
have crippled the Russian economy, and the United States is now considering
sending arms to Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin frames the struggle
as a new assault by the West generally, and the United States specifically, on
Russia and its essential interests — and threatens a return to Cold War
footing. But will Putin stay in power long enough to act on his warnings? He’s
popular at home, for now. But the longer the Ukraine crisis goes on, some
observers say, the more likely it is that Putin’s regime will eventually
collapse under the weight of economic trouble. “And if Russia destabilizes, it
is the destabilization of a nation with massive nuclear capability,” reminds
Stratfor chief George Friedman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Europe on the edge </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">— National economies in Europe
continue to stall or decline. Unemployment continues to rise, threatening the
still-fragile global recovery from the Great Recession. Fear of social and
political chaos grows as angry populist movements on the left and the right
blame the continent’s ills on the European Union, economic austerity measures,
immigrants, Muslims — and Europe’s age-old target, Jews. Ugly anti-Semitism is
on the rise in the continent that has promised “never again” since World War
II.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">State collapse</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> — ISIS isn’t the only “non-state actor” with
the potential to overwhelm whole governments. Rebels, terrorists and
international criminal cartels have been able to do that for a long time. But
this bloodthirsty band of Islamists has morphed from one faction in the Syrian
civil war into an army that aims to conquer multiple countries. And they’re not
alone. Kissinger: “In the Middle East, jihadists on both sides of the
Sunni-Shia divide tear at societies and dismantle states in quest of visions of
global revolution based on the fundamentalist version of their religion. The
state itself — as well as the regional system based on it — is in jeopardy,
assaulted by ideologies rejecting its constraints as illegitimate and by
terrorist militias that, in several countries, are stronger than the armed
forces of the government.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Iran versus Saudi Arabia</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> — These two
states, though challenged from multiple sides, will continue to struggle for
effective control of the Middle East, influencing regional conflicts, the
Sunni-Shia feud, the security of Israel, the price of oil and other
flashpoints. If Iran develops nuclear weapons, the competition could escalate
beyond control.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
followers of Christ, what are we to do in chaotic times? Fear not (the most
frequent command in Scripture). Trust God. Pray hard. Act in obedience. And
keep going to the nations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Major
gospel advances almost always come during periods of struggle and change. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Cease
striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be
exalted in the earth,” the Lord declares (Psalm 46:10, NASB). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
is a promise, a guarantee — regardless of the historical moment. The church has
flourished in harder times than these. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-7355295332851296452015-01-27T15:09:00.001-08:002015-01-27T15:09:10.813-08:00The rough edges of globalization
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d_fPpMDWDUA/VMgag_buniI/AAAAAAAAAf4/iHczvV4pDsM/s1600/immigrants%2Bin%2BEurope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d_fPpMDWDUA/VMgag_buniI/AAAAAAAAAf4/iHczvV4pDsM/s1600/immigrants%2Bin%2BEurope.jpg" height="153" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hannan* is hanging on, unsure what tomorrow will bring.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">A
doctoral student from the Middle East, she studies at a university in a major
European city. Her potential is unlimited, but her resources are razor-thin.
She and her husband, also a student, live off a tiny stipend they receive from
their home country’s government. But political unrest has increased there, and
no money has arrived for months. They’re using up what they managed to save
last year; funds are almost gone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hannan’s
husband is completing his degree, but has no immediate prospect of a job —
either back home, where things are falling apart, or in Europe. How will they
survive? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">A
local church has befriended the Muslim couple, making sure they have enough
food during the lean months. Moved by the love of Christians, Hannan and her
husband have begun comparing the teachings of Jesus with their own beliefs.
Their church friends hope they will accept a New Testament to learn more about
the gospel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">There
are millions of Hannans out there. They live on the periphery of a better life,
but it often lies just out of reach. They are students, immigrants and their
children, refugees, migrant and contract workers. They’re looking for
prosperity or at least basic economic security. They’re also looking for
purpose and hope. But unlike Hannan, most of them have no one to tell them
about Jesus, even if they currently live in free societies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">To
echo a common phrase among economic and sociopolitical analysts, they live on
the “rough edges of globalization.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">More
than 200 million people are part of this global migration, according to John
Brady, IMB vice president for global strategy. Some of them quickly find
opportunities in the places they come to. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
many “are being left behind,” says Brady. “When I look at the unevenness of the
benefits of globalization, I see a lot of the rough edges. And sometimes those
rough edges are in pockets that are just a few feet away from the very smooth
edges. We’ve got to find ways to get into those pockets just outside the
wealthy core of the industrial world and the information world.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">First,
these migrating millions want decent jobs. “But particularly in the populations
that have vast numbers of young people, we see not only underemployment but
just the sheer inability to be employed, so there’s a wasting away of human
potential,” Brady reports. “They don’t have jobs; they don’t have hope; they
don’t have education. They feel useless.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Left
on the edge of prosperity looking in, some turn to crime. Others turn to
extremism if they fall under the influence of militant ideologies. Most
struggle quietly with hopelessness and despair. That’s true for people who live
close to opportunity but can’t quite grasp it — and for the masses who still
live far from it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Pressure
is building in many places over the world where there’s just this booming
number of young people, and we’ve got to find a way to get to them with the
gospel,” Brady stresses. “It’s not easy, but it’s essential. Utopia is not
going to just appear out of the economic progress of the world. It’s not going
to be an economic solution, though economics is important. It’s not going to be
a political solution, though politics is important. It is going to be a kingdom
of God solution.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
practical ways to apply God’s solution globally are countless. But they always
involve people reaching across barriers and differences in the love of Christ
to make disciples. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“I
see the nations, and I see His love for them,” says Brady. “I see His desire
for those people in the highways and the byways and the hedgerows, all those
people who are hidden away — the neglected, the least of these, the ones who
are the most unlikely folks. He wants us to be obedient in passing what we’ve
got to someone else. When the blessing goes to that person and through that
person to the next person, it becomes unstoppable.” </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">*<i>name
changed</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-472614771126974142015-01-13T08:47:00.001-08:002015-01-13T08:47:11.630-08:00First things first<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pBxlPkmKWXw/VLVL-4dW_VI/AAAAAAAAAfo/3VzkkeTbi3U/s1600/plan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pBxlPkmKWXw/VLVL-4dW_VI/AAAAAAAAAfo/3VzkkeTbi3U/s1600/plan.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">The new year had barely begun when the usual round of bad news resumed:
terror attacks, atrocities, massacres, war.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Some
folks respond to the ugliness of world events by ignoring them. They try to
create their own safe little world and pretend the big bad one doesn’t exist.
Sooner or later, however, reality intrudes. Bills. Unexpected illness. Family
problems. Job struggles. Life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Even
life’s pleasures become burdens if we depend on them for happiness. We create
problems for ourselves by trying so hard to avoid problems. We can’t control
our lives, but we never stop trying. It’s human nature, a manifestation of our
need for security — and our endless temptation to usurp God’s role in
decision-making. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Christians
are as guilty as anyone of playing God, sometimes more so. With great fanfare,
we dream up brilliant ministry plans and ask God to bless them. We consult our
goals and action plans more often than we seek direction in Scripture. Doing
something, anything, is easier than praying and waiting for God’s voice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Our
tendency, observes IMB President David Platt, “is to miss Christ in the middle
of mission, to get so consumed in what we are doing for Him that we miss out on
intimacy with Him.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">There’s
a better way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">As
his first full year of IMB leadership gears up, Platt is asking missionaries
and staff — and anyone else interested in making the most of each brief,
precious day of 2015 — to renew their commitment to seeking God’s
direction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Life
in this world doesn’t last very long,” Platt says. “When we realize this, it
changes the way we live. It’s in this light that I want to implore you in the
beginning of this year to stop and think: What does it mean to trust in God
when I’m not guaranteed tomorrow?” <span style="color: black;">(Listen to Platt’s
podcast on the topic </span></span><a href="http://www.radical.net/media/series/view/2479/a-humbling-start-to-a-new-year/audio?filter=series"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">HERE</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">.
Subscribe to his ongoing podcast through iTunes </span><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/radical-together/id929751982?mt=2"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">HERE</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"> or
download audio files </span><a href="http://www.radical.net/media/series/series_list/?id=392"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">HERE</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">.) </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
Apostle James addressed the issue when he rebuked early believers for making
their own plans: “<span class="text">Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we
will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business
and make a profit.’<sup> </sup>Yet you do not know what your life will be like
tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then
vanishes away.</span> <span class="text">Instead, you<i> </i>ought to say, ‘If
the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’</span> <span class="text">But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is
evil.</span> <span class="text">Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do
and does not do it, to him it is sin” (James 4:13-17 NASB).</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Platt
draws two basic truths from James’ words when it comes to setting priorities: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">n<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Faith is humbly
submissive to the sovereignty of God.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“We
can become so consumed with the material realm, so consumed thinking about our
plans and our strategies, [that] we become blind to spiritual realities,” Platt
says. “The problem is not planning in and of itself. The problem is planning in
such a way that God has no place in the plans.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">James
by no means counsels “passive fatalism” or sitting back and doing nothing until
God acts, Platt emphasizes. The Book of James is all about action: Its 108
verses contain more than 50 imperative commands. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“James
is talking about activity and action the whole book,” Platt says. “But he’s
talking about activity and action that are humbly submissive to the sovereign
God of the universe, knowing that every accomplishment, every activity,
literally every breath occurs only by the sovereign grace of God. … The key is
a mindset that says, ‘I need the grace of God, and I am dependent on the will
of God in every facet of my life.’ This is a radically different way to live in
the world — particularly in the busyness and the business of our lives. … James
says in the middle of it all: Submit to God. Don’t live like you’re going to be
here forever. Live and plan and work like your life is short and you don’t want
to waste it on worldly things. You want to spend your life humbly submissive to
the sovereignty of God, and ultimately live for the glory of God. Make your
life — this mist that comprises who you are for the short time you are here —
count. Be finished with self-sufficiency. Live your life in radical
God-dependency.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">n<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Humble submission
to God’s sovereignty leads to wholehearted submission to God’s will.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sin
isn’t just lying, coveting and other evil acts on a long list of don’ts. We sin
when we fail to do what God has clearly told us to do: Live holy loves, love
others as ourselves, and make disciples in our circle of personal relationships
and among all nations. Platt:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Holiness
includes what we do in this world, how we obey in this world, so we’ve got to
think, ‘What has God said to do today? He has given me today. He’s given me
breath. He’s given me life. He’s given me sustenance. What has He told me to do
with it?’ That’s a good question with which to approach today and this next
year. If the Lord wills to give you an entire year in 2015, make the most of
that mist which is here today and will be gone before you know it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">That’s
the approach Platt is taking this year — not only in his own life, but in
planning and strategizing with Southern Baptist missionaries and mission
leaders in their global gospel enterprise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rather
than recycling a stale set of new year’s resolutions, why not consider it for
your own life?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br /></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-52441211063492911722014-12-11T10:38:00.001-08:002014-12-11T10:38:17.358-08:00Jesus in disguise<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d1ahmDID3zs/VInkiA6trwI/AAAAAAAAAfU/-zKCbJXzWUA/s1600/Mother%2BTeresa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d1ahmDID3zs/VInkiA6trwI/AAAAAAAAAfU/-zKCbJXzWUA/s1600/Mother%2BTeresa.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Christmas 1914 on the Western Front witnessed a remarkable event.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
Great War, now known as World War I, had begun. Years of unimaginable death and
destruction lay ahead. Yet during the week leading up to Christmas a century
ago, many German and British soldiers put down their weapons, crossed battle
lines and shook hands. The informal “Christmas Truce” brought enemies together
to talk of home, exchange food and cigarettes and engage in impromptu soccer
games. Some even sang hymns and carols together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
the darkest places, Christmas brings light. Enemies make peace. Old hatreds die,
and mercy is born. Christ is glorified.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">On
the first Christmas, God willingly entered enemy territory, disguised as a
helpless child, to make peace with those who had rejected Him over and over
through the ages. Only a few recognized Him when He walked among us. Even fewer
followed Him. He was reviled, betrayed and denied before being put to death on
a Roman cross. Yet He changed everything through His life, death and
resurrection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Have
you encountered the Lord in disguise? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Jesus
told his disciples: “For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was
thirsty, and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked,
and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me: I was in prison, and you
came to Me. … Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these
brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me” (Matt. 25:35,36,40b
NASB).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">This
Scripture passage formed the essential mission strategy of Mother Teresa of
Calcutta, who took Jesus’ words literally. For her, every hungry person, orphan
and refugee was “Jesus in His distressing disguise.” The more distressing the
disguise, the greater the need for our love. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
1946 she sensed a “second call” from God to leave her original vocation as a
teacher in a Calcutta convent and go to the streets, which were filled with the
refugees of communal violence, poverty and indifference. One day she stumbled
over a starving woman, eaten with worms, lying in the gutter. She picked up the
woman and took her to a hospital, refusing to leave until someone cared for
her. City authorities eventually gave Mother Teresa an abandoned Hindu hostel,
where she could take the nearly dead to die in the arms of love. Thus was born
her mission to “the poorest of the poor.” In 1950 she founded the Missionaries
of Charity, gradually expanding her ministry to lepers, disaster and war
victims, the unborn — even affluent Westerners afflicted with loneliness and
isolation, which she regarded as the worst diseases of the developed world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mother
Teresa carefully schooled her missionaries in simple acts, like touching. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“We
train ourselves to be extremely kind and gentle in touch of hand, tone of voice
and in our smile so as to make the mercy of God very real and to induce
[others] to turn to God with real confidence,” she said before her death in
1997.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Which
brings me back to my earlier question: Have you ever encountered Jesus in a
“distressing disguise”? How did you treat Him? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Maybe
He showed up in your town recently, speaking a strange language and carrying
all His possessions in a plastic U.N. refugee bag. Maybe He’s sitting in the
county jail, with no visitors except an overworked public defender. Maybe He’s
working at the convenience store near your house and has nowhere to go for Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Maybe
He’s living in an Ebola-stricken area of West Africa, in a refugee camp on the
Syrian border or among a spiritually lost people group never touched by His
modern-day followers, wondering if anyone will come bringing light and hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Were
Jesus’ words about visiting Him by visiting others symbolic? Perhaps. But
Mother Teresa’s lovingly practical approach to the “least of them” makes a lot
of sense to me. One thing is for sure: God Himself personally visited us on the
first Christmas in the form of a child, walked with us as a man, died and rose
for us as a Savior.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">One
day in eternity, He we will ask us who we visited in His name.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-85682263560271769552014-11-25T08:07:00.000-08:002014-11-25T08:07:14.728-08:00The Creed: His glory their reward
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3rspq6Eary8/VHSoziiFaQI/AAAAAAAAAfE/vRAih9nWX8E/s1600/Creed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3rspq6Eary8/VHSoziiFaQI/AAAAAAAAAfE/vRAih9nWX8E/s1600/Creed.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black;">Here’s a creed worth adopting — if
you dare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i><span style="color: black;">As a follower of Christ: I am
called not to comfort or success but to obedience. Consequently, my life is to
be defined not by what I do but by who I am. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<i><span style="color: black;">Henceforth: I will proclaim His
name without fear, follow Him without regret and serve Him without compromise. <o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: black;">Thus: To obey is my objective,
to suffer is expected, His glory is my reward.<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: black;">Therefore: To Christ alone be
all power, all honor and all glory, that the world may know. Amen! <o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black;">Those 83 words challenge a number
of things we hold dear as modern Americans: personal independence, success,
comfort, unlimited options. They comprise the creed, which is first memorized,
then lived out, by students accepted into Fusion (</span><a href="http://imbstudents.org/fusion"><span style="color: #0563c1;">imbstudents.org/fusion</span></a>)<span style="color: black;">, a challenging year of mission training and action for
college-age Southern Baptists. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Fusion, now in its 10<sup>th</sup> year, is a partnership
between IMB and Midwestern Baptist College, the undergraduate program at
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. It puts
students through far more than an academic overview of missions. They spend the
fall semester living and studying in a close discipleship community,
participating in specialized training programs, doing ministry and evangelism
in the Kansas City area <span style="color: black;">— </span>and holding each
other accountable to their commitment. For the spring semester, they head
overseas to join IMB missionaries in various locations. Fusion teams are
trained to go to the least-reached people groups, so they often travel to
physically challenging or high-security areas around the world. <span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black;">Wishy-washy believers need not
apply. Well, they can apply, but they won’t stay wishy-washy for long.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black;">Gwen Noonan* found that out for
herself when she signed up. Noonan, now 20, entered the Fusion program in the
fall of 2012. She was as an enthusiastic 18-year-old from California searching
for exciting ways to serve the Lord. In Fusion training, she soon learned that
God seeks more than our service; He seeks our whole being. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
“During our contingency training, we were put into scenarios
that felt so real <span style="color: black;">—</span> even though they weren’t <span style="color: black;">—</span> that I really had to ask myself whether or not the
gospel is worth my life,” she said. “Is Jesus, really knowing Him, worth all
that I have to go and glorify Him in the nations?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
She also learned about Karen Watson, whose words and life
helped inspire the Fusion Creed. Watson, another Californian, was one of four
Southern Baptist relief workers killed by unknown gunmen in Iraq in 2004. A
former law enforcement officer known both for her toughness and her passion for
God, Watson knew the risks of working in Iraq. She had willingly returned there
shortly before her death after several previous close calls with death. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
“When
God calls there are no regrets,” Watson wrote in a now-famous letter found in a
sealed envelope marked “Open in case of death.” She left it with her pastor
when she departed for the Middle East in 2003. “I tried to share my heart
with you as much as possible, my heart for the nations,” Watson said in the letter.
“I wasn’t called to a place; I was called to Him. To obey was my objective, to
suffer was expected, His glory my reward, His glory my reward.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black;">Fusion training confronted Noonan
with spiritual reality. “L</span>earning more about Karen’s story helped me
realize His Glory really is my reward and really is worth it,” she said.
“Knowing the sweetness of Jesus even in the midst of these hard things, knowing
Jesus even in His sufferings, was something I would be willing to lay my life
down for.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Noonan’s commitment deepened when she went to her mission
assignment overseas, which involved developing friendships with Muslims in
order to share the gospel. It wasn’t easy, but she found Christ already was
there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
“I went through a time of loneliness,” she remembered.
“Jesus was just so faithful during that time, and He used the creed to
encourage my heart. [He said] ‘I am so worth it. I have suffered for you and to
obey My Father. Abide in Me and know the sweetness of laying your life down.’”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
During that time Noonan, a musician, also completed a song
based on the Fusion Creed that she had begun writing during training. When she
returned to the United States, she recorded “The Creed” and participated in the
making of a<span style="color: #1f497d;"> </span>video featuring the song: <span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/112718306"><span style="color: #0563c1;">https://vimeo.com/112718306</span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
This year, Noonan has become a Fusion “advocate,” one of the
alumni who return to help prepare the next generation of Fusion trainees <span style="color: black;">— </span>not only for their overseas assignments, but for a
lifetime as disciples who make disciples. In January, 59 people now in Fusion
training anticipate going in teams to North Africa, the Middle East, Central
Asia and South Asia to glorify God. Noonan will lead a team of three young
women back to the area where she served last year. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Her reward? His glory. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black;">*<i>Name changed</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-88164775090825424272014-11-13T17:13:00.003-08:002014-11-13T17:13:44.403-08:00The rise and fall of walls
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ITa8fvvirLI/VGVXPbLyjII/AAAAAAAAAe0/lmvjiLEeJaE/s1600/wall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="//3.bp.blogspot.com/-ITa8fvvirLI/VGVXPbLyjII/AAAAAAAAAe0/lmvjiLEeJaE/s1600/wall.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">Walls of the mind and heart are harder to tear down than walls of brick and
stone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The
fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago brought great hopes of a new birth of
spiritual and political freedom, not only in the communist orbit but around the
world. In many ways, those hopes were realized. Old tyrannies began to crumble.
The Cold War ended after more than a generation of East-West conflict. Churches
and believers long imprisoned by persecution and fear were released into the
sunlight of liberty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">The
collapse of the Soviet Union followed the glorious opening in Berlin. Waves of
Christian workers from the West flooded into Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet republics to assist their brothers and sisters in the faith. An exciting era of
evangelism and church planting began. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">That
era continues, despite the turmoil that has followed Soviet communism’s demise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“The wall was an outward symbol of an inward reality,” Mark Edworthy, IMB
strategy leader for Europe, told IMB writer Nicole Lee. “Communism had erected
a spiritual barrier with its incessant denial of God’s existence and its cycle
of cruelty. Spiritually, we eagerly took up a hammer and chisel to work against
that greater barrier.” A quarter-century later, “we can see greater trophies
than stone and mortar as the Lord has continued to build His church throughout
the former Soviet sphere.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 13.2pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">But believers are working with urgency in Eastern Europe, Lee reported,
“because no one knows how long the door to some of these countries will remain
open. The ongoing war in Ukraine highlights the fact that, although the Cold
War is over, communism and other secular philosophies are still at work.”
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The social and economic chaos of the immediate post-Soviet years led to
yearning </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">—</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> in Russia, at least </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">—</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> for a “strong hand” at the helm, which has resulted in new tensions with
the West in recent years. Those tensions are pushing the world to the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">“brink of a new
Cold War,” warned former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at a Nov. 8 event in
Berlin marking the Wall’s fall. Gorbachev, whose reforms helped hasten the end
of the Soviet empire, criticized global powers for failing to work together to
end conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 13.2pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">For now, open ministry continues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“We really don’t see any comprehensive political pressure that hinders the
advance of the gospel. Materialism and consumerism have replaced communism,”
said one Christian worker based in Russia. Still, he added, “Our time might be
short. Have we planted an apostolic burden among Russian church leaders? There
are some who [are passionate about reaching the lost], but we need many more.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 13.2pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The message is one that has been repeated again and again throughout
history: There are no guarantees </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">—</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> except for
the presence and sovereignty of the Lord. Walls may fall, while others rise. In
the political realm, the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing occurred in
1989, the same year the Berlin Wall came down. Yet the Chinese church, which
suffered one of its darkest hours during the savage persecution of the 1966-76
Cultural Revolution, continues to grow in size, vitality and passion for global
mission.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">“God
may seem silent on occasion. At other times, people simply don’t trouble to
hear his voice,” writes <em><span style="font-style: normal;">Philip Jenkins,
distinguished professor of history at Baylor University, in </span>Christianity
Today</em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></em> “As an example, we
might look at the experience of China<i>, </i>which over the past two millennia
has remained the world’s most populous nation. The story of Chinese
Christianity is a recurrent cycle of mighty boom years followed by what seemed like
total annihilation at the time, an obliteration so absolute that on each
occasion, it was quite clear that the church could never rise again. That cycle
has occurred five times to date since the ninth century. On each occasion, the
Chinese church has reemerged far more powerful than at its previous peak. Each
successive ‘nevermore’ proved to be strictly temporary.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Today, the very existence of the church in the Middle
East, the cradle of the Christian faith, seems threatened by the advance of
Islamic extremists. But God will not leave Himself without a witness. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Even
when institutional churches vanish, believers persist in many different forms,”
Jenkins writes. “As Anatoly Lunacharsky, the frustrated Soviet minister of
education, complained in 1928, ‘Religion is like a nail: The harder you hit it,
the deeper it goes into the wood.’ Sometimes it goes in so deep, you can’t even
see it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">One
day that nail reappears, stronger than ever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-90753572263498238802014-10-28T08:22:00.001-07:002014-10-28T09:25:36.447-07:00Quarantine fear<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z-d3HQ4n70M/VE-0sWVA2MI/AAAAAAAAAek/BgyKZqvNSk0/s1600/Ebola.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z-d3HQ4n70M/VE-0sWVA2MI/AAAAAAAAAek/BgyKZqvNSk0/s1600/Ebola.png" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">There’s a disease on the move that’s even deadlier than Ebola.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">It
is invisible and highly contagious. It spreads with lightning speed and
paralyzes its victims. It turns people, communities and nations against each
other.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">The
disease is fear.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">Anxiety
and dread seem to permeate our nation — and many of our churches — at the
moment. Threats abound: Ebola, ISIS, mindless violence, multiplying enemies.
There’s a general sense that the world is spinning out of control and no one
knows what to do about it — certainly not the institutions and experts we once
looked to for guidance. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“The
Ebola crisis has aroused its own flavor of fear,” observes David Brooks of <i>The
New York Times</i>. “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">It’s not the heart-pounding
fear you might feel if you were running away from a bear or some distinct
threat. It’s a sour, existential fear. It’s a fear you feel when the whole
environment seems hostile, when the things that are supposed to keep you safe,
like national borders and national authorities, seem porous and ineffective,
when some menace is hard to understand.”</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">Some
threats are real; others are the product of hysteria and saturation coverage of
death and destruction. But we aren’t sure which is which. So we hunker down
behind locked doors and dire predictions of worst-case scenarios. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">“There
is no doubt that we will stop this [Ebola] outbreak, end the deaths, and, if
done right, build the tools to prevent another large outbreak like this,”
writes epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in <i>The Wall Street Journal</i>. “But
it won’t be easy. Fear, panic and politics have gripped Americans, with the potential
to do untold damage to our nation and the global economy. Our real enemy is a
hybrid of the virus of Ebola and the virus of fear. As the famous World War II
British poster reads, we need to keep calm and carry on.”</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">Easier
said than done. Instant media spread facts and knowledge as well as rumors,
misinformation and doubt. Many Americans now apparently fear anyone coming from
Africa, even if they arrive from countries nowhere near the West African region
affected by the Ebola outbreak. Some African immigrants who came to America
years or decades ago report being ostracized or treated with suspicion since
the Ebola scare began.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">Eighteen Oklahoma high school students
reportedly stayed away from class recently when their parents heard rumors on
social media about three students who had just returned from a mission trip to
Ethiopia, thousands of miles from the Ebola zone. “Our students were not
exposed to Ebola,” Inola School Superintendent Kent Holbrook assured a local TV
news reporter. “There was no person that was sick on the trip. There was no
person sick [in] Ethiopia while they were there. There was no person [sick] on
the plane.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">T.J. Helling, a local youth pastor who
helped organize the mission trip, told the TV reporter the three students “did more
in the last 10 days [during the mission trip] than most people do in their
lifetime for other people. We need to remember that we’re here to encourage
them and support them, not beat them down.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">I called First Baptist Church of Inola,
where the three students attend, and talked to an adult member there. She said
the fear in the community “shows that the world is lost. But our reaction to
the fear shows Christ in us. I’m telling our students, ‘It’s easy to show love
and grace to a kid in Ethiopia on a mission trip, but you need to show the same
grace to the kids you see every day at school who are fearful of death. God may
be building character in you.’ <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“The church can’t react in fear,” she added
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">—
at home or abroad. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Amen,
sister. First Baptist of Inola is an example for us all in these uncertain
days.</span><span lang="EN" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">Fear
is real. Don’t deny it or mock others who feel it, even when their fear seems
irrational. That would make us hypocrites, because we all struggle with it. A
friend of mine who did Southern Baptist mission work for many years in the
Middle East currently mobilizes churches in the United States. He regularly
interacts with Christians and church groups who fear all Muslims, fear
everything happening in the Middle East, fear even the thought of going there —
or befriending someone coming here from the Muslim world.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">“I
acknowledge the fear. It’s real; I get that,” said my friend. “But we’ve got to
look at it through God’s eyes. If God can turn a terrorist named Saul into [the
Apostle] Paul, He can turn some of the hearts of the people in ISIS. Jesus is
the only solution.”</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">Jesus
calls us to look at the world through His eyes — and to look at Him, not the
dangers and troubles that terrify us. Matthew 14 describes the night He came to
the disciples walking on water:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">“<span class="text">When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified,
and said, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear.</span> <span class="text">But
immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, </span><span class="woj">‘Take courage,
it is I; do not be afraid.’ </span><span class="text">Peter said to Him, ‘Lord,
if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.’</span> <span class="text">And
He said, </span><span class="woj">‘Come!’</span><span class="text"> And Peter got
out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus.</span> <span class="text">But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he
cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’</span> <span class="text">Immediately Jesus stretched
out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, </span><span class="woj">‘You
of little faith, why did you doubt?’”</span> (Matt. 14:26-31 NASB)</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">If
bold, impetuous Peter, who walked with Christ Himself, experienced fear when He
looked at the world, don’t be surprised if you do. Acknowledge it. Confess it
to the Lord. Then look into His eyes, not at the fearful circumstances of our
times. Step out of your safe, cramped boat. Befriend a lonely immigrant. Cross
a border — and challenge some friends to go with you. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">Jesus
is already there, even in the darkest places, waiting for you to follow. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">(To
explore ways to follow Jesus into a dark world, visit </span><a href="http://imb.org/go/serving.aspx"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: blue;">http://imb.org/go/serving.aspx</span></a><span style="background-color: #444444;">)<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-5341765333383910232014-10-09T13:56:00.000-07:002014-10-09T13:56:31.507-07:00Darkness and light in the Middle East <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9hiP2-CGAVQ/VDb2UL4wqMI/AAAAAAAAAeU/vk8Vj37enig/s1600/on%2Bthe%2Brun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9hiP2-CGAVQ/VDb2UL4wqMI/AAAAAAAAAeU/vk8Vj37enig/s1600/on%2Bthe%2Brun.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Sometimes the tears, the tragedies, the sheer horror of it all overwhelm
Christian workers trying to help refugees fleeing war and terror in Syria and
Iraq.<br />
<br />
Jayson Keath,* a Christian strategy leader based in the Middle East, recently
visited a Syrian refugee family now living in a country inundated with
traumatized Syrians. One of the small children in the family was missing a
finger — severed by a slammed car door as they rushed to escape the violence in
their homeland. The parents had to knock the child unconscious so pursuing
Syrian soldiers wouldn’t hear his screams of agony.<br />
<br />
“It wasn’t so much their pain that gutted me,” Keath says. “It was the void
of hope in every face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or felt darkness so
strongly.”<br />
<br />
Can the situation on the ground in Syria and northern Iraq get any worse?
Much worse — as illustrated by ISIS (Islamic State) militants and their
genocidal campaign of conquest across the region. The rise of ISIS amid the
rubble of two failing states offers evidence of something larger, according to
one despairing Arab observer.<br />
<br />
“Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone,” wrote Hisham
Melhem, a Lebanese journalist and Washington bureau chief of the
<em>Al-Arabiya</em> satellite news network, in a recent commentary for
<em>Politico</em> titled “The Barbarians Within our Gates.” <br />
<br />
“The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by
extremism — the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition — than at any
time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago,” Melhem asserted.
“Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed. The promise of political
empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded
by the season of Arab uprisings in their early heydays — all has given way to
civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of
absolutism. … Is it any surprise that, like the vermin that take over a ruined
city, the heirs to this self-destroyed civilization should be the nihilistic
thugs of the Islamic State?”<br />
<br />
Melhem speaks for millions of disillusioned people across the Middle East and
Northern Africa who feel caught between larger forces struggling for power. Is
there any hope for them?<br />
<br />
Yes, says Keath. And he wants Christians watching the struggle from outside
the region to know the other side of the story. Hope that was hidden from many
in earlier, quieter times is being introduced to people searching desperately
for it now.<br />
<br />
“The world is captivated by the crisis that has been generated by the
movements of ISIS in northern Iraq, the plight of the Yazidis and other
minorities,” Keath says. “The world is watching, and all they’re seeing is the
advance of evil — sheer, utter evil. But there are two realities at work. There
is the advance of evil. There is an evil one who is not only lurking but is
actively trying to kill and maim and destroy and keep eyes blinded to the light
of the Gospel and the glory of Christ.<br />
<br />
“But there’s also the advance of the Gospel. Everywhere we see these things
happening, we see the Gospel advancing in ways that we did not imagine
before.”<br />
<br />
As the visible Christian church in the Middle East faces threats, attacks
and persecution from many directions, a new church is being born among Muslims
deciding to follow Christ as Lord after seeing Him in dreams and visions,
reading the Word of God and seeking out other believers.<br />
<br />
And not just Muslims, adds Keath. Members of traditional Christian groups on
the run from ISIS and other extremists in Syria are finding shelter, aid and
friendship among evangelical believers in the region — and hearing the whole
Gospel as they never have before.<br />
<br />
“Now they’re meeting in discipleship and growing,” he says. “Maybe God is
moving in a way to lead those in the ancient church back to Christ, because that
is happening. There are others — Orthodox from Syria and in another country
bordering Syria that have come to faith in Jesus for the first time. There are
multiple people groups that we’re talking about; there’s Sunni, there’s Shia,
there’s Alawite, there’s Bedouin, there’s Orthodox, there’s Assyrians and Kurds.
We can find believers now from all of these people groups that have come to
faith as a result of the Syrian crisis. … Yes, the world needs to respond to the
crisis, but there are enormous opportunities to confront people with the Gospel
of Christ who have never been confronted with it before. All these people groups
that I just listed, we never had access to them before [in Syria]. …<br />
<br />
“The same thing is happening in Iraq right now. It’s not just the Yazidis and
Christian minorities and other minorities; it’s the Sunni Muslims who are
fleeing Mosul and other areas who are coming out by the hundreds of thousands.
We have had no engagement of Iraqi Sunnis — and now we have an opportunity to do
that. It’s not just the immediate response; it’s ‘Lord, what space are you
creating for the Gospel to go forth, and how do we steward that
opportunity?’”<br />
<br />
With new opportunities come new and increasing risks across the region. But
risks won’t stop the work God has begun.<br />
<br />
“We will not accept that we cannot engage in these countries,” Keath says.
“It’s just a matter of what is our presence and what does that strategy look
like? How do we continue to see Gospel penetration in these countries? Yes,
there will be strategic shifts. [But] the Gospel is going to continue to
advance.<br />
<br />
“God is moving; the nations are stirring. It’s going to happen. It may not
involve us every time, but it’s going to happen. It is happening.”<br />
<br />
<em> (To learn more and join what God is doing amid the turmoil of the Syrian
refugee crisis, visit: </em><a href="http://namepeoples.imb.org/landing/4syria"><em>http://namepeoples.imb.org/landing/4syria</em></a><em>)</em><br />
<br />
<em>*Name changed</em>Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-2217960959598116832014-09-11T07:36:00.001-07:002014-09-11T07:36:35.392-07:00Platt: Opposition reveals our beliefs
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bTGHOiFwI1I/VBGzXzffstI/AAAAAAAAAd0/kLfLU9vejFk/s1600/Platt%2B3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bTGHOiFwI1I/VBGzXzffstI/AAAAAAAAAd0/kLfLU9vejFk/s1600/Platt%2B3.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="NoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
(<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">NOTE: This is the last of
three articles featuring new IMB President David Platt’s views on various
missions issues. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.imb.org/main/news/details.asp?StoryID=13493&LanguageID=1709"><i><span style="color: blue;">Read
the first article here.</span></i></a><span style="color: black;"> </span><i>Read the
second </i><a href="http://www.imb.org/main/news/details.asp?StoryID=13512&LanguageID=1709"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></span></i></a><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">.)<o:p></o:p></span></i></span><br />
<br />
<div class="NoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Pressure reveals character,
we all learn sooner or later. And opposition reveals what we really believe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Do we believe in the Gospel of Jesus
Christ enough to lose friends, social status, a scholarship or a job over it?
Do we believe it enough to suffer for it? These are questions followers of
Christ in many places have to answer on a daily basis. In America, the land of
the free, not so much. We still enjoy the religious liberty embedded in the
founding ideals of our nation. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="NoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">But the rise of militant secularism —
and increasing efforts to make the practice of biblical faith socially and
legally unacceptable — are slowly raising the cost of discipleship in the
United States. That’s probably one of the factors behind the decline of
“cultural Christianity” devoid of real commitment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Maybe that’s a good thing, observes new
IMB President David Platt.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="NoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“In one sense, I’m thankful for the
trends in our culture, and even in the church, that are causing us to ask, ‘OK,
do we really believe the Bible?’” said Platt, who discussed a range of
missions-related issues during an interview following his Aug. 27 election to
lead Southern Baptists’ global mission enterprise. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Do we really believe this Gospel that
we claim to believe?” Platt asked. “Because more and more, cultural
Christianity is just kind of fading to the background. People are realizing if
you actually believe in the Gospel then that’s not as accepted as it once was.
It’s actually looked down upon as narrow-minded, arrogant, bigoted and
offensive. Obviously, we want to be humble in our embracing of the Gospel, but
it’s becoming more costly in our culture in a way that’s good — in the sense
that this better prepares us [for] what we’re going to be a part of around the
world.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Paying a higher cost to live and declare
the Gospel here, in other words, will make us better and more effective
servants among the nations — where the cost may be far greater. The reward will
be greater still.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“We’re not going to shrink back in light
of the resistance that’s there,” Platt said. “We’re going to step up, rise up
and say we want to see His glory proclaimed no matter what it costs us, because
we believe He is our reward.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">American Christians have enjoyed the
blessings of religious liberty and freedom of expression for a long time.
Perhaps those freedoms, coupled with the material prosperity of the richest
economy in human history, have lulled us into expecting things will always be
as they have been. That is a naïve complacency that flies in the face not only
of history but the Bible itself.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“We need to realize the clear New
Testament teaching that it is costly to follow Christ, that the more your life
is identified with Christ, the harder it will get for you in this world,” said
Platt. “We need our eyes opened to that reality. I think we’ve been almost
seduced by the spirit of cultural Christianity that says, ‘Oh, come to Christ
and you can keep your life as you know it.’ No, you come to Christ, and you
lose your life as you know it. The more you’re active in sharing the
Gospel, the more unpopular you’ll be in many ways, the more resistance you’ll
face. … <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“[But] it helps you realize this is what
our brothers and sisters around the world are facing in different places. If
we’re going to join with them in spreading the Gospel, then we need to be ready
to embrace that ‘everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will
be persecuted,’” he added, quoting the Apostle Paul’s words in 1 Timothy
3:12. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">During months of praying about leading
IMB, Platt said God had instilled in him a “deeper, narrowing, Romans 15 kind
of ambition, where [the Apostle] Paul said, ‘I want to see Christ preached
where He has not been named.’” The whole concept of unreached peoples, “of
nearly 2 billion people who have never heard the Gospel, is just totally
intolerable.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The reality, however, is that most
unreached people live in places where religions, cultures, governments and
extremists oppose — sometimes violently — the transmission of the Gospel and
the making of disciples. Western missionaries and churches, accustomed to
relative freedom, continue to struggle with that fact and all that it entails.
But there’s nothing new about it if you read church history. What’s more, God
continues to use what the world intends for evil for His good purposes. Just as
it did in the Book of Acts, persecution today tends to strengthen, unify and
embolden believers, even as it multiplies churches. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Making disciples of all nations will
not be easy, and the more we give ourselves to reaching unreached peoples with
the Gospel, the harder it will get for us,” Platt said. “But the beauty is the
more we identify with Christ [in America], the more we’ll be ready to identify
with the sufferings of Christ [overseas] as we go. And we’ll realize, whether
here or there, the more we give ourselves to this mission, [the more we’ll]
believe in the depth of our heart that He is our reward and that the reward of
seeing people come to Christ is worth it. This is just basic theology of
suffering in mission. How has God chosen to show His love most clearly to the
world? Through the suffering of His Son, a suffering Savior. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“So how is God going to show His love
most to the world today? Through suffering saints, through brothers and sisters
who identify with the suffering Savior.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Watch related video clip: <a href="http://media1.imbresources.org/files/213/21388/21388-115726.mp4"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: blue;">Opposition
clarifies mission task</span></span></i></a><i>) <o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-77414003899301664192014-09-05T08:11:00.003-07:002014-09-05T08:11:54.393-07:00Platt: Bible still the best mission plan
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cRL46pMil8Q/VAnSogzPvZI/AAAAAAAAAdk/ByJc4215A2I/s1600/Platt%2Binterview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cRL46pMil8Q/VAnSogzPvZI/AAAAAAAAAdk/ByJc4215A2I/s1600/Platt%2Binterview.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(NOTE
TO READERS: This is the second of three articles featuring new IMB President
David Platt’s views on various missions issues. </span></i><a href="http://www.imb.org/main/news/details.asp?StoryID=13493&LanguageID=1709"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">Read the first article here.</span></span></i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> The third article will post Sept. 11.) <o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">David Platt sat down for a
wide-ranging interview the morning after his Aug. 27 election as IMB president
— and offered a number of insights into the way he hopes to lead Southern
Baptists’ global mission enterprise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Platt, 36, who succeeds Tom Elliff, is
the youngest leader in the history of the 169-year-old Southern Baptist mission
organization. In the first part of the discussion, he touched on the value of
mission institutions and structures — sometimes questioned by younger
evangelicals — if they help nurture Spirit-led movements. He also talked about
the “massive” potential of IMB to mobilize local Southern Baptist churches,
cooperating with each other, to plant churches around the world. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“That’s the beauty in what God has
created, even in the Southern Baptist Convention on a large scale — 40,000-plus
churches working together, and the IMB keeping that coalition focused on
reaching unreached peoples with the Gospel,” he said. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Read the full story, </span><a href="http://www.imb.org/main/news/details.asp?StoryID=13493&LanguageID=1709"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">“Platt looks
ahead to mission challenges.”</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">) <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">During the conversation, Platt also
emphasized the necessity of looking to the Word of God— not only for guidance
and power, but also for mission strategies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“God’s Word doesn’t just tell us the
content of mission; God’s Word informs in very practical ways the strategy for
mission,” he said. “How can we most effectively multiply churches and make
disciples? This is what we see in the Book of Acts: local churches sending out
missionaries who are making disciples that form into churches that are then
multiplying churches. That’s what we’re after. Let’s put everything on the
table — no question out of bounds — and ask, ‘How can we most effectively
mobilize churches who are making disciples and planting churches among unreached
peoples?’” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Watch the video clip, </span><a href="http://www.imb.org/main/downloads/embedvideos.asp?mvid=21301&mvidext=flv"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">“God’s Word as
mission strategy.”</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The New Testament pattern of missions
offers many approaches to missions that still work, Platt observed, including:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">§<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Bottom-up, not top-down<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“There’s a fundamental paradigm that we
want to operate out of that sees mission and the role of the IMB not from a
top-down, but as a bottom-up perspective,” he stressed. “The temptation is to
view a denominational entity as the agent for mission: ‘We [IMB] send
missionaries, and we do strategy, and we support missionaries. So churches, we
need you to send us people and money, and we’ll carry out mission for you’ — as
opposed to flipping that and saying it’s actually the local church that is the
agent that God has promised to use for accomplishing the Great Commission. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“How can we as the IMB come alongside
the local church and equip and empower and encourage the local church to send
and shepherd missionaries? That’s how I want us to posture ourselves, saying to
the local church, ‘You can do this, and here’s how we can help.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Watch the video clip, </span><a href="http://www.imb.org/main/downloads/embedvideos.asp?mvid=21302&mvidext=flv"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">“Bottom-up, not
top-down.”</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">§<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Mission teams <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“We want to send people who are making
disciples together here overseas to make disciples there,” Platt said. “Again,
this is a picture we see in Scripture: Jesus was always sending people out in
twos, at least. Paul and Barnabas went out together. You don’t see people going
out, with rare exceptions, alone in mission. How [can we adapt] what we’re
doing here somewhere else strategically in the world, for the spread of the
Gospel there? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“I think about some missionaries from
our church who were appointed [Aug. 27]. They’re going to join an IMB team
overseas that’s comprised of brothers and sisters they were with in a small
group here. They were making disciples in Birmingham, Alabama, and now they’ll
be serving together for the spread of the Gospel in the Middle East.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Watch the video clip, </span><a href="http://www.imb.org/main/downloads/embedvideos.asp?mvid=21300&mvidext=flv"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">“Mission teams.”</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">§<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i>Multiplying resources <o:p></o:p></i></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Not everyone is a church planter in the
mold of the Apostle Paul, Platt acknowledged. Paul himself relied on a wide
network of Christ followers in the cities and regions where he preached and
made disciples. The same is true today.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“I remember the time a guy came to me
and said, ‘Hey, I’m an engineer. My wife’s a teacher, and we just figured out
we could get a job doing engineering and teaching in (a part of East Asia)
where there’s not a lot of Gospel presence. Can we just go there? We don’t know
if we count as missionaries or not. We could actually be self-sustaining there.’
I said, ‘Yeah, you count. You will be crossing cultures for the spread of the
Gospel. You’re moving to be a part of making disciples there.’ <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“When people begin to get that kind of
vision for the gifts and skills and education God has given us here, it may not
just be for us to stay here, but we can use these gifts in strategic ways in
parts of the world that are unreached with the Gospel,” Platt said. “If we can
connect that couple with what God is doing through church planters who work
specifically with the IMB and come alongside them, that’s just a win-win. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“When we begin to think like that, we
can blow the lid off the number of people who can go overseas.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Watch the video clip, </span><a href="http://www.imb.org/main/downloads/embedvideos.asp?mvid=21299&mvidext=flv"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">“Multiplying
resources.”</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In
the third and final installment, Platt will talk about missions in hostile cultures
— at home and abroad.</span></i></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252892338758893813.post-90449813052633268572014-08-25T12:11:00.001-07:002014-08-25T12:11:59.281-07:00Bad news, Good News
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RjMi_idxSZI/U_uKZ26EPlI/AAAAAAAAAdM/0VEVY5VFxkc/s1600/bad%2Bnews.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RjMi_idxSZI/U_uKZ26EPlI/AAAAAAAAAdM/0VEVY5VFxkc/s1600/bad%2Bnews.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The cascade of grim global headlines overwhelmed a friend of mine recently.
He announced that he couldn’t take it anymore — at least until tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“I
don’t know why I care,” he wrote. “I don’t know why I bother. I check the news.
Bad. All bad. Unless the news is horrible, it’s bad. Why care? Why bother? Why
not just play ‘Angry Birds’ and pretend it doesn’t affect me? It sounds
easier.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps
you can relate. I know I do. Violence and hatred rage everywhere. Wars,
skirmishes and suffering flare up where we don’t expect them, and where we do.
Ukraine and Russia. Syria. Iraq. Israel and Gaza. West Africa. Death and
disease abound. Innocents are infected, blown out of the sky, kidnapped, driven
from their homes, shot in the crossfire. In some places, the bad guys seem to
be winning — if we can even figure out who the bad guys are. It’s too
complicated, too confusing, too depressing. It’s tempting to tune it out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Most
people do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Not
my friend, however. Despite his frustration and discouragement, I know he won’t
stop reading, watching, caring and praying. He’s an intelligent and
compassionate young man, for one thing. He’s concerned about world affairs. He
makes a point of keeping up with what’s happening and tries to understand it,
unlike many others. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Most
important, as a child of God, he’s in touch with the mind and heart of God, who
so loved the world that He gave His only Son to redeem it. If He loved even
those who hated Him, we must do likewise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“The
one who does not love does not know God, for God is love,” the Apostle John
teaches. “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His
only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is
love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love
one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God
abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in
Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and
testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world” (1 John
4:8-14, NASB).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It’s
only His love, through His Spirit, that changes a broken world. By His grace,
He chooses to use us, if we submit to Him. His love is more than enough to make
up for our lack of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Another
young person I know returned recently from a youth mission trip to Amsterdam,
the Dutch capital. She and the group arrived there the same week in July that
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over
Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew. Two-thirds of the passengers
were Dutch. People on the streets of Amsterdam were just beginning to
experience the shock of the tragedy as the youth team walked through the city
and distributed more than 6,000 copies of the Gospel of John. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Some
people they encountered rejected the small gifts of truth. Like many Europeans,
the Dutch consider themselves secular and post-Christian. But many accepted it—
many more than the Amsterdam-based Christian worker helping the young people
expected — and they began reading it. Perhaps they were looking for something
to hold onto, something to hope in. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">While
interacting with them, my young acquaintance learned some things about herself.
She realized she wasn’t as tolerant, as patient or as loving as she thought she
was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“But
through learning all these ‘I am nots,’ I learned who God is,” she said.
Distributing the Gospel, “even if they were going to reject it a second later,
is so much more important than my comfort. … I learned to really care for and
love the Dutch people.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So
it is with all who seek to follow Him. It’s not who we are; it’s who He is. And
He has overcome the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Explore
ways to follow Him into the world at <a href="http://going.imb.org/"><span style="color: blue;">http://going.imb.org/</span></a>
)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
Erich Bridgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11019277602925497420noreply@blogger.com0