THE KILLER QUAKE UPDATE

Alliance Radio Hong Kong is celebrating 30 years of gospel broadcasting to China. People in the stricken area have no means of contact with the outside world because of the devastation. One thousand small radios that are pre-tuned to world and national news, and also gospel broadcasting of messages of hope and comfort in times of tragedy, are on their way to Sichuan for distribution. Each radio costs US $13.00. Their goal is to send 10,000 radios as quickly as possible. Pray that the funds for this project will be quickly provided and people will be helped in this tragic hour. Contributions may be sent to The Christian & Missionary Alliance, Box 35,000, Colorado Springs, CO 80935 with the designation “Earthquake radios Alliance Radio HK. Log on to www.cmaradiohk.org <http://www.cmaradiohk.org/> for more information.SPECIAL PRAYER REQUESTS

Christine is a friend of Melissa MacDonald’s. She is serving with the CMA in the Balkans. She moved to Macedonia in August of last year. She is nearing the end of her first full year as a missionary. I (Melissa) just spoke with here today and she is doing well. She was excited about being featured on our blog and she covets our prayers. Here is her latest update.

So, I was back in Skopje for a week and a little – got to celebrate Easter, do lots of laundry, repack and I was on my way to the Balkan Field Forum in Baška Voda, Croatia. It was a 2 day trip – 16 hours of travel through some of the most beautiful country I have seen. Baška Voda itself, is quite beautiful as well, an amazing place for a getaway from the norm and a get together with the whole field family. Our 5 days were spent in times of singing and listening to the Word, also in business meetings and just fellowshipping and enjoying the surroundings.

One big thing that took place was the restructuring of our field. We will be working our way towards becoming 3 autonomous teams over the next year or so, this will give us a bit more bottom-up structure and will give more freedom in decisions and vision for each country. We will still get together once a year for encouragement, support and refreshment. I truly believe that this is a win-win situation and am looking forward to how God will continue to work in all of this.

On the trip home we were reminded of God’s faithfulness in seeing several rainbows – it was wonderful! Here is a shot of the type of mt. roads that we traveled for a good portion of our trip – you can see it winding up the mountain. Anyway, I made it back to Skopje in time to attend a joint service of all the Protestant churches in Skopje for a day of prayer on Sunday. It was great to worship with so many other believers, three different worship teams lead portions of the service intermixed with prayer for many different things. This is a picture of the Evangelical church’s worship team. And this is a picture of all the pastors and church workers in Skopje – we took much time to pray for them.

Now, it is back to the grind of language and normal day stuff. I do have several prayer requests and praises: I haven’t been feeling well lately – I am not sure if it is allergies or what, but I would appreciate your PRAYERS for healing. Also, I am preaching this Sunday at the International Church in Skopje, Please PRAY as I prepare this week and that God’s Word will be heard and interacted with on Sunday. A BIG PRAISE – I finally got my ID card just today – thanks for your continued prayers on that – it feels great to be official. PRAISE for a great time at field forum and safety in our travels. Thanks so much for your prayers and support – I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you all. Christine

The Great Commission Fund is what keeps all Alliance workers on the field. If you are not currently giving to the GCF, may I encourage you to consider how you may become an active part in the process of keeping all of us serving around the world.

I remember hearing a story about war time prisoners and how they were tortured in an unusual way (don’t worry, this is still a “family oriented” read). I cannot remember all the details of what happened, but the significant factors remain clear.

Each day the guards would take the prisoners out to a place where they would be given a shovel and were told to dig a hole. After they had spent much of the day digging the hole, before they could head back to the prison camp, they had to take the same dirt that they had just spent time removing and fill the hole back in.

At first you may think, what is so torturous about that? What it did to the prisoners was it began to eat away at their sense of living with a purpose. Everything they expended energy on was absolutely in vain.

We all need to live with a sense of purpose, something that declares that my life matters. Many of us can relate to that “torture” to some extent. We come to a point where we don’t see how our day to day affairs connect with something significant. It becomes lifeless and even depressing at times. That is why it is so significant that we continue to maintain the focus of living this life with heaven in mind. If all of our energy and efforts point to a promotion, or our kids, or a new boat, or retirement, then what happens when the job falls through, our kids leave home, our boat becomes a huge expense and retirement is not quite what we had imagined?

None of these focuses are wrong, but they can be if they are elevated too highly.If we can allow the kingdom principle (living this life with heaven in mind) to be our first aim, then the others will be kept in proper perspective. I guess that is why when Jesus was teaching about money and possessions he reminded them to seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33). After all, if God loved us enough to give us his son, I think everything else we need will be taken care of as well.

Prosperity Gospel; it seems like every one has their prosperity Gospel radar up these days, and rightfully so. I, like you, have heard too many T.V. preachers make promises to people that sound like, “Make Jesus your choice and drive a Rolls Royce!” We should have our radar up, I know Paul the Apostle did, “if anyone is preaching a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” Paul had strong words for those who preached something other than Jesus.

So is it wrong for us to pray for God’s blessing?

Psalm 67:1-2 reveals how to pray for God’s blessing in a way that pleases him. It says,”

May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your salvation among all the nations.”

This writer gets it right and in doing so give us an example to live by. He prays, “God be gracious to us and bless us, so that your ways of salvation may be known among the nations.” The writer asks for blessing from God to give the blessing of God away so all people may know this God who blesses. This is the right motivation in praying for blessing. The blessings don’t just stop with you, you bless others with it, so they will turn to the Lord.

Pray that God will use you and us as a church to be people that make his ways known among the nations. Pray for God’s blessing to make that possible.

I love being your pastor, grace and peace.

We just had to say goodbye to some great friends that came to visit us from Pennsylvania and I was reminded during our visit how much I miss them.  We recalled life before Idaho, where we spent time together, walked through life together and even joked about them moving out here…well at least they were joking.

It is always hard to say goodbye or to let go of something that you really do love and enjoy.  Then I began to think of some of the great things we have experienced in our past that we would not have experienced if we hadn’t moved out here.  New chapters of growth and many great new friends that we have made since moving out west to say the least. The reality is that had we not said goodbye to life before moving to Corry, PA, we would not have said hello to our good friends that came to visit this past week.

Jesus spoke about this when he was talking to his disciples about the Holy Spirit coming to live in each believer after salvation.  He reminded them that unless he said goodbye to them, they could not have the Holy Spirit. You see they resisted any talk of Jesus leaving them.  They had grown close to him and had witnessed life transformation as never before and did not want to let go of what they knew.  But Jesus knew what was needed and what would be best for everyone-He knew his role and that it was time for him to leave so something better could take place.

I am convinced that it was not easy, but it was the best.  We all experience this transition of goodbye’s and hello’s, whether it is with a job, a friendship, or parenting your children.  It is rarely ever easy and shouldn’t be done to just create change, but when you are convinced that it is for the best, you willingly walk through it once again. 

May God give us clarity to know when and how to say goodbye to what we know and likely appreciate, to say hello to what is truly best.

Don’t worry! It’s not another reality TV show. It’s far more real than that. For decades, the C&MA has been a major force in world missions. However, times change, generations change, strategies and methods must change as well.

With this in mind, the leadership of C&MA International Ministries is taking a hard look at the way we do global outreach and praying for God to breathe a fresh wind into the Alliance’s heritage of high quality missions. Although the methods might change, the vision is still the same…” [to] establish wholistic communities of Christ among the least reached.”

Learn more about the Alliance Makeover and participate in the e-community dialogue.

Gabon is a country of 1.4 million people along the west coast of Africa. This is an exciting time for the national church in Gabon, because they are now strong enough to take over leadership and staffing of many of the ministries that C&MA missionaries have been doing. The C&MA is beginning to transition some of its missionaries out of Gabon and into other countries. 

One ministry where the C&MA will remain in Gabon for a while is the Bongolo Hospital. It serves over 20,000 patients a year, and over 1,000 people accept Christ every year! In February, Mark and Susie Greene spent several weeks serving at this vital hospital, and we look forward to hearing from them about the work God is doing there.

Heather and I recently returned from what the Beeson program calls, “The Houston church immersion.” My fellow pastors and their spouses, lead by an experienced pastor from Houston, saw 13 churches in action, in 2-1/2 days. It was one of the fastest tours of a city I have ever been a part of.

We worshiped in a house church that reaches out exclusively to the gay community of Houston. We toured a large Southern Baptist church, which had in their foyer a fountain that was larger than most swimming pools. We worshiped in an all African-American church, a post-modern church that meets in a basement where they all do art during the church service, a mission-church, where the dominate out-reach event is the weekly church based poker tournament, and a small little church named Lakewood, who’s pastor’s name is Joel Osteen.

What we learned was the following:
First, the God created uniqueness of each church is what makes it great! Heather and I loved how each church was so different in how God was asking them to carry out their mission. Churches can learn from each other but not try to copy each other.

Second, the people owning the mission of each church is what made them great! The churches which had as their base, that the churches mission is owned by the people, these churches were great churches. Churches that just let the paid staff handle the ministries were flat. Staff, leadership and the people all owned the mission with their hearts.

Third, when a church knew it was placed in their community by God, to reach their community for God, this was a great church. A common thread in all the churches was a desire to look outside their walls, pray for, and love and help those who don’t know Jesus.

It takes all kinds of churches!

Are you defined by who people think you should be or by who God says you are? I know that too much of my life, even to this day, can be spent on trying to fulfill other peoples “expectations” of me. Like, what kind of pastor, husband, father, friend, neighbor, etc… I should look more like.

I can really get tired, bitter and even feel depressed when I jump on the “gerbil wheel” of trying to meet those expectations, because I use so much of my time and energy and ultimately fall short of meeting those expectations when it’s all said and done with.

One thing that has been helpful is taking time to deliberately and deeply consider who I really am. God tells us that when we become part of his family we take on a new identity (2 Corinthians 5:17), our old identity is actually completely different or foreign (1 Peter 2:11), we have a new purpose for life (Galatians 2:20) and a never-ending source of power for living this new life (John 14:15-17, 26; 16:5-8; Acts 1:8).

The bottom line is that when we live in our true identity, we begin to experience a “life that is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19).

It is February, the month of love. So it seems appropriate for us to visit France – home to the “language of love”. Oui? Though historically an upholder of Catholicism, in the past centuries, France has increasingly become a very secular society.

As secular humanism has increased, some Protestant groups have also grown, but overall only about 1-2% of the population are true believers in Christ. In this spiritual vacuum, interest in the occult has exploded, and it is estimated that there are nearly as many Mediums and Spiritual Healers as there are all types of Christian workers combined!

Please pray for missionaries and local Christians to share their faith in a way that is relevant to their surrounding culture. Much of the growth in the Church has been with minority groups, so pray for the majority French population to see Jesus in a new way that brings meaning to their lives.