Assyrian Christian Ayad Tariq, 14, from Baqouba, Iraq, was reportedly beheaded while at work on Saturday, Oct. 21. The boy was working his 12-hour shift maintaining an electric generator when a group of Muslim insurgents in disguises walked in shortly after 6 a.m. Another employee who hid when the men approached reported the Muslims asked for the boy’s identification card. After reading the boy’s religion listed as “Christian,” one man asked Tariq if he was really a “Christian sinner.” Tariq replied, “Yes, I am a Christian, but I am not a sinner.” The Muslims called Tariq a “dirty Christian sinner” and held the boy’s arms and legs as they beheaded him to chants of “Allahu akbar!” (God is great). Terror expert Glen Jevney said thousands of Iraqi Christians are living in fear because of their identification that states their faith. Jevney called the practice “horrendous.” (Assist News Service)
I mentioned in an earlier press what Time magazine was saying about reaching the youth of today. Here is a link to that entire article for your consideration.
This letter just came from Travis Snode, who is a missionary supported by Windsor Hills Baptist Church. Pastor Vineyard is a great man and has been greatly used of God for the cause of World Evangelism. His church is probably one of the most world evangelism minded and hearted churches that I have ever heard of. Please read this, share it, and pray for him.
October 30, 2006
Dear folks:
My tumor turned me upside down again Friday night. I am in Mercy Hospital.
The Lord willing, they are going to take this tumor out and my small
intestines. When they do, there are 3 possibilities:
1. They will put me back together. I will lose some weight but
continue to function better than I have been at the present time.
2. They will put me back together and watch me for a while, but
if my digestive system does not function properly, allowing me to maintain
my weight, they will install a tube into an artery or vein in front of my
right shoulder whereby 5 times a week, on 5 days, I will give myself 2200
calories each time directly into the blood, and continue to be able to
function as I am presently – with the only liability of having to take the
additive items and giving myself the additive calories.
3. I go to Heaven to be with Jesus.
So, it is a win, win, win situation.
Please pray for me as I definitely need prayer at this time. Pray that the
surgeon can get after this thing ASAP.
May God’s richest and best blessings be yours.
I am humbly, sincerely, and gratefully, your friend and servant,
A tongue-in-cheek look at some sure-fire ways to avoid becoming a missionary
Ignore Jesus’ request in John 4:35 that we take a long hard look at the fields. Seeing the needs of people can be depressing and very unsettling. It could lead to genuine missionary concern. Joh 4:35 Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.
Focus your energies on socially legitimate targets. Go after a bigger salary. Focus on getting a job promotion, a bigger home, a more luxurious car, or future financial security. Along the way, run up some big credit card debts. Missiologist J. Herbert Kane wrote that a person will enhance the possibility of hearing God’s Call if he or she has:
An open mind
Attentive ear
Pure heart
Busy hands
Ready feet
Take these steps to discover if He is calling you
Read everything about missions and missionaries that you can get your hands on.
Get involved in the missions mobilization and education program of our church
Go hear every missionary speaker that you can. God sometimes chooses that time to clarify His calling to young people.
Talk to your pastor.
Verbalizing your thinking with him and enlisting his prayer support may help you sort through various issues.
Throw yourself into active ministry through your local church.
Learn to minister effectively in your own culture before you attempt cross-cultural ministry.
Go on a short-term missions trip like you hear offered regularly in our services. A cross-cultural mission trip will give you a taste of life on the mission field and a good opportunity to sense God’s leadership.
Consider giving a year or two of volunteer service overseas before deciding whether you should offer the rest of your life.
Persevere.
In her book, Ventures of the Heart, Lela Morgan says that early Nazarene missions leader H.F. Reynolds told a young would-be missionary: “Brother Winans, we cannot send you to South America; but if God has called you, you will go or backslide.”
Get married to somebody who thinks the “Great Commission” is what your employer gives you after you make a big sale. After marriage, embrace the socially accepted norms of settling down, establishing a respectable career trajectory and raising a picture-perfect family.
Stay away from missionaries. Their testimonies can be disturbing. The situations they describe will distract you from embracing whole-heartedly the materialistic lifestyle of your home country.
If you happen to think about missions, restrict your attention to countries where it’s impossible to openly do missionary work. Think only about North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China and other closed countries. Forget the vast areas of our globe open to missionaries. Never, never listen to talk about creative access countries.
Think how bad a missionary you would be based on your own past failures. It is unreasonable to expect you will ever be any better. Don’t even think about Moses, David, Jonah, Peter or Mark, all of whom overcame failures.
Always imagine missionaries as talented, super-spiritual people who stand on lofty pedestals. Maintaining this image of missionaries will heighten your own sense of inadequacy. Convincing yourself that God does not use ordinary people as missionaries will smother any guilt you may feel about refusing to even listen for a call from God.
Agree with the people who tell you that you are indispensable where you are. Listen when they tell you that your local church or home country can’t do without you.
Worry incessantly about money.
If you still feel you must go, go out right away without any preparation or training. You’ll soon be home again and no one can ever blame you for not trying!
Ronald and Asunta are great servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. God greatly used them in Peru before coming back to the states. Ronald was the pastor of the Victory Baptist Church. They started with no one and with 5 or 6 years God had given them over 100 in attendance and more importantly 19 young people studying in the Bible College. Ronald is a soul winner, a discipler and a leader trainer. These are the things that we want to be so much a part of our church here at Vision. We are honored to have a part in his ministry. Please pray for Ronald, Asunta, and their daughter Joy. They are your missionaries and they are a product of mission work in Peru.
Chris Gardner and Jeremy Hall have just started blogs. That is a great way for you to keep up with what God is doing in their ministries. You can go to their web pages and check their blog or you can subscribe and have it delivered to your email or a web page like the google home page that I use to monitor nearly 20 blogs.
Both Jeremy and Chris are missionaries to Peru. Jeremy is currently on deputation and Chris has been living in Peru now for many years. They plan to work together to accomplish great things in Peru, South America, and around the world. I hope that you will desire to truly know your missionaries and stay in touch with them.
Click on these links and check out their blogs. Sign up, get involved.
The following article comes from http://www.albertmohler.com/ and you need to click here to read all the article. This article deals with an article in Time magazine about how the church is reaching out to teens in a different way than the past. Read the article and let me know what you think. This that you see here is just a short quote to cause you to want to click on the link and read the rest of the article. We must do all that we can to get the word of God to the young people. Games don’t get the job done. They need a purpose and a passion that can only be found in the glorifying of Jesus Christ by preaching His word around the world.
Youth ministers have been on a long and frustrating quest of their own over the past two decades or so. Believing that a message wrapped in pop-culture packaging was the way to attract teens to their flocks, pastors watered down the religious content and boosted the entertainment. But in recent years churches have begun offering their young people a style of religious instruction grounded in Bible study and teachings about the doctrines of their denomination. Their conversion has been sparked by the recognition that sugarcoated Christianity, popular in the 1980s and early ’90s, has caused growing numbers of kids to turn away not just from attending youth-fellowship activities but also from practicing their faith at all.
Now, that is an astounding approach — maybe these kids are hungry for biblical substance and something more than entertainment and pizza. Well, they probably still want the pizza, but they don’t want to waste their time in useless and superficial youth programs. After all, they are swimming upstream against an adolescent culture. In many cases, they are more seriously-minded than their parents. They have to be, because the stakes are higher.
This week we begin another World Vision Celebration which is our mission’s conference. This coming Sunday we will have the first of our training sessions for the World Evangelism Committee. I wanted to give you a couple of ideas of what we mean when we say that we want to be a World Evangelism Church.
First it is our desire that World Evangelism permeate every part of our church; every class, every meeting, every activity, everything should tell people what we have on our minds and hearts.
We want every member to expect to play some part in World Evangelism. Not all will go to the mission field but all will have a part. All will be involved, World Evangelism and making a difference is not limited to the chosen special few that have some kind of special calling but to all of us.
We want God’s heart and desire to reach the world to be mentioned in nearly all the services, meetings, acitivities so that we never stray from our or better said His purpose for us.
As a church and its leadership we want to be constantly challenging our young couples and singles to give their lives to serve God over seas.
We want the kind of church where it is expected and everyone expects to be involved in mission service and short term trips to other parts of the world. These trips will be to work and witness for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
We want to be the kind of church where the average layman can quote, mention, talk about several verses that talk about our God’s desire to get the gospel to the world. We want them to know, understand, and believe that this desire of God is the theme of the Word of God.
We want to be the kind of church that takes care of our missions giving even before we pay the electric bill. We know why we are here and we will live like. By the way, Vision has lived that way since the first private meetings that we held.
We want to be the kind of church where the average layman from our church knows our missionaries that we support and prays for them. The member will know their name, where they serve, what they are doing, and what is happening currently with them. He will know what their needs are.
Mission information and praying for the world will be the mainstream of our church life.
It will be our goal to give as large a portion of our income as possible to the cause of World Evangelism. We never want to give less than 25% and our goal will be to get to at least 50%. Currently, Vision gives over 25% of her offerings to the cause of world evangelism.
As a church we desire to realize that World Evangelism is at least have the reason we exist as a church. We want it to be our heart to reach our Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost and all at the same time. We will make every effort to be effective for His causes in His endeavors
Well God has been so good and great with us again today. We had prayed for 120 in attendance. In Sunday School God gave us 97 and then in the morning service we had 121. Three professions of faith were made in the Spanish Service with Pastor Ronald Tubillas.
After Sunday School and Church we had games, hotdogs and fun. I really believe that everyone enjoyed themselves and we thank God for His goodness. God is blessing in wonderful ways We ended the month with over 71 as our average Sunday School attendance and just over 93 for the church attendance. The church is just under 7 months since our opening Celebration Sunday.
I now want to invite you to be praying about something really wonderful this week. Starting Thursday night we will be having our World Vision Celebration as we get involved in missions again. Don’t miss any services this week. Each evening we will begin at 7:15 pm
Sunday we will begin our training for the World Evangelism Committee. This is a very special time and only for those that have truly decided that they want to be involved in the plan of God to reach the world. We will meet this coming Sunday afternoon from 1:30 until 4:30. We will learn how our church can be involved and what type of church that we want to have. After that we will learn to do an area study and begin working towards overseeing various parts of the world and mission work there. Don’t miss it. Sign up now.
You will enjoy the following article I am sure. I hope that the extra hour of sleep will get you there tomorrow on time and even for Sunday School and Adult Bible Fellowship. You know that tomorrow we will have our Fall Festival and so please pray that God will use all of us to bring many visitors. At the end of the post you will find the link to take you to the rest of the article and you definitely want to read it.
It’s that time of year again, when pumpkins sprout on doorsteps, the winter coats come out of the closet, and most Americans get an extra hour’s sleep by resetting their clocks. (Remember? Spring forward, fall back.)
The change officially takes place at 2 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 29, but most Americans tend to turn their clocks back an hour before going to bed Saturday night. (Others may forget and arrive an hour early at church or brunch.) The time switch marks the end to daylight-saving time, which started in April.The idea behind daylight-saving time — or summer time, as it’s known in other parts of the world — is to use the extended daylight hours during the warmest part of the year to best advantage. Timekeepers shift some of that extra sun time from the early morning (when timekeepers need their shut-eye) to the evening (when they play softball). The shift reduces the need for lighting during the evening, and some studies have shown that results in energy savings as well.
Ronald and Asunta are great servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. God greatly used them in Peru before coming back to the states. Ronald was the pastor of the Victory Baptist Church. They started with no one and with 5 or 6 years God had given them over 100 in attendance and more importantly 19 young people studying in the Bible College. Ronald is a soul winner, a discipler and a leader trainer. These are the things that we want to be so much a part of our church here at Vision. We are honored to have a part in his ministry. Please pray for Ronald, Asunta, and their daughter Joy. They are your missionaries and they are a product of mission work in Peru.
