Can you please do two things!
1. Write me a quick email to forward to Pastor Samar Ghandour – even though you may not know him. Right now! Short, sweet, sincere. Our Lutheran friend from Salisbury is ministering to Muslims in Liberia right now … and he’s doing it while suffering from malaria and dysentery. Please write him your prayers and encouragement!
2. Let someone in front of you in line! Sometime this week. We’re working on sewing acts of kindness. And this is this week’s job. (Next week will be a different invitation.) Note: We’re encouraging you to show extra kindness to people with a different accent, whose skin color is different, or who dresses in different cultural garb. Kindness breaks down barriers.
If you want more detail …
Why?!!
A month ago, I said the next Holocaust is here. Jews – and this time Christians too – are being targeted, persecuted, and executed across the world. This week, I found this quote from author Johnny Moore: “[This is] a once-in-a-thousand-year crisis … And the fact that we are alive while it's happening means that God will hold us accountable as to whether we did something or not.”
Therefore, a group has been meeting for several weeks, asking, How Shall We Respond?! We came up with three ways …
1. Think Globally:
Our easiest outreach to through Muslim world is through the former Muslim (now Christian) Pastor Samar Ghandour. He is in Liberia right now sharing the Gospel to Muslim people. See today’s email from him below. Per my request, he lists several tangible ways to help. If you’re in a Small Group, ask your group to consider adopting one of these projects.
2. Act Locally:
The first hands on project that we decided on was simple … Be Good Neighbors and Share Random Acts of Kindness. Through the summer we’ll be inviting you to do one simple thing a week (like buy a meal for the car behind you in a fast food line or make cookies for a neighbor). This week’s challenge is to let someone in front of you in a line! (And please be intentional about showing extra kindness to people with a different accent, whose skin color is different, or who dresses in different cultural garb. Kindness breaks down barriers.
3. Equip Ourselves:
When discussing the challenges of today’s world, most of us said we don’t feel equipped to stand up and witness in a quickly changing world … especially one which is increasingly hostile to Christians (even in America). Equipping ourselves to stand will be our goal this coming year. Our joyful goal!
Let me tell you what I said in today’s sermon about the church being a point of light in an increasingly darkened world. I said, “Does secularism ultimately offer joy … or a slowly growing decay? If we do our job as the church and we discover a growing spirit of joy, soon people will come to us, asking what’s different.”
With that in mind, I shared with the church a recent article by Rod Dreher called The Benedict Option (edited for brevity) …
Is America headed the way of the Roman empire? ... massive public debt, an overstretched military, Bureaucratic decay, rising hedonism, waning religious observance, the ongoing break-up of the family ...
[Well ...] if these are signs of a possible Dark Age ahead, Christians have been here before.
Around the year 500, a generation after barbarians deposed the last Roman emperor, a young Umbrian man ... Benedict, was sent to Rome by his wealthy parents to complete his education. Disgusted by the city’s decadence, Benedict fled to the forest to pray as a hermit.
Rome’s collapse meant ... staggering loss. People forgot how to read, how to farm, how to govern themselvese ... even what it had once meant to be a human being.
[But] with a reputation for holiness, other monks gathered around [Benedict]. Behind the monastery walls ... Benedict’s monks built lives of peace [and] order ... [and] they did not keep the fruits of their labors to themselves.
[They] taught the peasants ... practical skills, like farming ... as well as ... the Christian faith ... Benedictine monasteries emerged as islands of sanity and serenity. These were the bases from which European civilization gradually re-emerged.
Why are medieval monks relevant to our time? Because, says the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, they show that it is possible to construct “new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained”
Click for full article or to listen
Our call is to be joyfully different than the world … and have a hungry world come to us! We’ll do other things that Jesus did too (like seek out the lost sheep), but wasn’t this largely what Jesus did? He was holy different than the world … and the crowds chased after him!
I remember someone saying once: “I left the church seeking greater freedom. I came back because nowhere else offered grace.” We will be working to create a place for grace and to discover a greater spirit of joy.
Pray for us as we research and put in place a way to equip us more joyfully and more thoroughly.
Pastor Samar’s email – Ways to help. Perhaps you can invite your small group to choose one of these ideas and help … (and remember to ask Terry and Laurie Halvorson about Thrivent Financial’s willing program that can simply and immediately contribute $250 to many forms of outreach! Ask us how!)
Pastor Ed,
The Lord be with you.
Thanks for considering the small projects.
These are three urgent projects, one in the range of the projected amount and the others above the $200.0-$400.00
1. A capital seed fund for abandoned wives, widows with children, and girls wishing to do business to help themselves out of the suffering they are currently going through. This fund will provide beginning capital for them to open a mini business of provision or produce locally used soap for sale in their community. With such income, they will be able to find a means to feed themselves and their children instead of begging, being hungry, or otherwise.
2. The March 2016 convocation is to be held in Sanniqullie, Nimba County (the northern part of Liberia). The construction of the church to host the conference is currently going on. In some time to come, we would need timbers for the roofing and other structures in the Sanctuary. The logs needed for the production of the timber are available in the local forest but the machine or saw to fell the trees and produce the multiple sizes of timber is not available. So we will need to buy the saw and produce the timber, cutting the purchasing cost by 75%. On top of that, the machine would still be available to produce timbers for other small churches to be constructed later on. I am told that the machine cost $1,800.00.
3. The construction of the Sanniqullie church is being done by faith. The people are producing the local materials (crushed rocks, sand, some labors, timbers, food for eating at the site, and other things) by hands from various locations and transporting them to the site but the external materials (cement, steel rods, nails, zinc--roofing metal sheet, and others are needed so much if we are to meet our February 20, 2016 deadline for the relative completing of the place.
Relative completion means that we are focusing on the foundation, pillars, walls, roofs, doors, and floor. There would be no ceiling for now, not plastering, and other finishing touches. It would be used when it is habitable and the rest would be addressed progressively by the people after the conference.
Thanks. Many blessings.
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