church

Church leaders in Brazil are looking for ways to build up children and teenagers as vital ministry workers. 

The ministry of Jacob’s Well extends throughout northern Brazil, sharing the gospel alongside helping people get access to the clean water but also teaching them new agricultural practices, hygiene lessons and other community skills.

Reading lessons are one of their programs, meant to combat the high levels of illiteracy in Brazil’s rural areas. 

One of their missionaries goes to a village in her region twice a week to hold a reading and writing class for the children and then one for the adults. One day, two of the middle school-aged students asked if they could stay for the adults’ class.

As natural disaster hits Kenya, the local church is reaching out to bring a saving message and much-needed supplies to the hardest hit communities.

Famine has hit Sub-Saharan Africa.

In Kenya alone, about one million people are facing starvation. Cattle and other livestock are dropping out on the arid fields where drought and locusts have cleared away all but the thorniest plants. 

Local leaders and medical students are working to more effectively spread the gospel to rural communities.

Over a decade ago, Tom and Nancy Hinton founded Barnabas Task to help address many of the medical needs in Central American communities, but they had a larger vision for these health clinics.

They focused on evangelism and leadership training for locals who were becoming involved in the work. Only a change in people’s hearts could bring the community-wide change many of these volunteers passionately wanted to see.

As leaders naturally sprang up, Tom and Nancy began handing more and more of the ministry responsibilities over to the local team, until the ministry in the Dominican Republic was entirely run by people living in the communities where they were serving.

Evangelism is becoming an increasingly touchy subject both outside and inside the church.

A Discipleship Pathway Assessment study found that “most Protestant churchgoers say they are eager to talk to others about Jesus, and are praying for opportunities to share their faith. But most say they have not had any evangelistic conversations in the past six months.”

Is modern Western culture making evangelism more difficult than it was before? This seems unlikely. Every generation has faced obstacles to sharing the gospel.

So why do Christians feel like they can’t or shouldn’t evangelize? 

In our current culture of pluralism and individuality, a fair amount of controversy surrounds church, who leaves and why they leave.

A Pew Research Center survey found that one in every two self-identified Christian believers who don’t attend church say that they “practice their faith in other ways.”

In the same survey, over half also said their absence was because they hadn’t found “a church or house of worship they liked.”

About 48 percent cited “not enough time” as their reason for not going to church.

Major challenges are facing the church in Peru as they look for ways to serve their society’s most vulnerable. 

This spring, Director of Mercy Ministries Mark Buzzetta traveled to Cusco, Peru to connect with a local church doing great work caring for widows.

The trip was eye-opening to Peru’s great natural beauty and local struggles, coming almost as often from floods of global tourists to their region as well as stifling animist traditions.

A Booming Economy Downside

The Chicago Tribune pointed out the sad state of Peru’s massive tourist attraction, Machu Picchu, and by connection, Cusco.

God brought one young woman out of a seemingly hopeless spiral and then blessed her with an incredible surprise.

Ashley was a cheerleader at her high school. Popular, pretty, she had ambitious dreams for a future in the medical field.

Life was buzzing right along between her family and friends, figuring out who was secretly crushing on whom, prepping for the next prom and keeping abreast of the most recent gossip about that hot new kid in her class.

She had her feet on the car’s dash, absently chatting to her friend and checking her phone when a car smashed into them.

A flare of light, a fan of shattered glass wrapped around the screech of bending metal.  

A battle with mental health can already feel like a lonely one, but when God doesn’t miraculously free us from it, the question “Why?” inevitable rises.

A research project collaborating with the University of Oxford conducted a study on depression and anxiety disorders worldwide in 2016. They found that about 322 million people globally suffer from depression, making it the predominant psychological disorder.

Despite its prevalence, depression is often ignored or dismissed in great part because of the wide variety of ways it can manifest.

A drug user and alcoholic turns to God and becomes a respected member of his church and community.

A Hard Crash

Francis was a renowned weed smoker, drug supplier and drunkard in his Ugandan village.

…“members of the community didn’t like me because of my habitual drinking and smoking,” said Francis. “I was always involved in bar fights and gambling, and I sold marijuana in the village. Parents didn’t want me near their children for fear I would recruit them into this devilish behavior.”

He confessed that alcohol and marijuana also drove him to harass his wife on a daily basis. Painfully, he recalled one fateful evening when he stumbled home after getting extremely drunk and began beating his wife.

Pummeled with constant news about crises, it becomes tempting to simply ignore the persecution of our brothers and sisters around the world.

In a sermon at Times Square Church, Pastor Carter Conlon pointed out, “Many today find themselves journeying through this season of despair….

“As much as you know it, you’re doing what’s right. You’re trying to be a representative of Christ in this perishing world. But it looks so hopeless! Everything seems to be going the other way, and you wonder, ‘Will I ever make a difference?’” 

Turning off the Feelings

Often people respond to the overwhelming number of calamities in the news by simply lowering their eyes to whatever immediately affects them and shrugging off everything else.