GIVING FISHERMEN SOMETHING TO DRINK/Missionaries to India

There's nothing small about the love of God

A tract ministry based on lee mcintosh's cartoon characters...

Jeremy sams specializes in christian art, church portraits, murals and painting the gospel: a visual presentation of the gospel.

Dial-the-Truth Ministries

Even by the standards of other missionaries, the Irish woman's ministry to sexually exploited children was intrepid.Kneeling bedside, three-year-old Amy Carmichael begged God to make her eyes blue. Sadly, for the toddler, the prayer didn’t spark a miracle.But decades later as a grown woman, after she had left Ireland to make her home in the then-British occupied India, she remembered her prayer as a child. With her fair skin, she would never truly blend in with the locals. But her brown eyes matched those of the people she lived among—and that was one less distraction when trying to build relationships as a missionary.Carmichael moved to India at the age of 27 and never left. Much of her ministry was marked by disrupting cultural norms on temple prostitution. Her prayer life, a constant of her ministry and well-documented in her books and personal writings, revealed her boldness, stubbornness, and grit in circumstances that deeply challenged her—characteristics she needed in her efforts to share the love of Christ with hundreds of women and children over her lifetime.“Go ye”The oldest of seven children, Amy Carmichael (1867–1951) was raised in a well-to-do Christian family in Millisle, Northern Ireland. She came to faith in Christ as a teenager while attending a Wesleyan Methodist boarding school in Yorkshire, England. But her time at school was cut short when she was forced to return home due to her family’s financial difficulties.The family moved to Belfast for business, where her father died of pneumonia. Carmichael threw herself into serving others, beginning with her siblings—a pattern of self-sacrifice that would carry through to her dying day. Such hardships caused Carmichael to cling to the Word and cry out to God in prayer, not only for comfort but for practical help.Continue reading...

New research shows how Black churches suffered during the pandemic. But these congregations also found unity where others were torn apart.Pastor Lorenzo Neal had the first panic attack of his life on a hot summer night during the pandemic. He imagined it was what a heart attack would feel like. His neighbors called 911.As the pastor of New Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jackson, Mississippi, he was carrying a lot of burdens through the pandemic.He has pastored New Bethel for 14 years, and said his 130-member church lost several key members to the virus, including a mother and son who died within two weeks of each other. Neal himself contracted the virus early on and was sick for more than a month. On top of that, he was initially shouldering the entirety of virtual worship himself.“I was doing too much,” he said. “I was already seeing a therapist for some other things, but once that came to light, we were able to explore some areas that needed to be addressed.” He asked his congregation for prayer without specifying what he was experiencing in his own mental health, which he said is common in Black faith communities. His anxiety has since calmed.COVID-19 hit Black congregations harder physically and brought a heavier mental health burden to Black or African American pastors, according to a new study on the impact of COVID-19 on the American church from ChurchSalary, a sister publication of Christianity Today. But the survey showed Black churches also had more unity about pandemic health measures and lower closure rates.In interviews with CT, a number of Black pastors affirmed the study’s findings. The pastors dealt with a disproportionate amount of sickness and death while carrying the additional burden of ministering in their communities after the murder of George Floyd. Other ministry demands ...Continue reading...

New research shows how Black churches suffered during the pandemic. But these congregations also found unity where others were torn apart.Pastor Lorenzo Neal had the first panic attack of his life on a hot summer night during the pandemic. He imagined it was what a heart attack would feel like. His neighbors called 911.As the pastor of New Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jackson, Mississippi, he was carrying a lot of burdens through the pandemic.He has pastored New Bethel for 14 years, and said his 130-member church lost several key members to the virus, including a mother and son who died within two weeks of each other. Neal himself contracted the virus early on and was sick for more than a month. On top of that, he was initially shouldering the entirety of virtual worship himself.“I was doing too much,” he said. “I was already seeing a therapist for some other things, but once that came to light, we were able to explore some areas that needed to be addressed.” He asked his congregation for prayer without specifying what he was experiencing in his own mental health, which he said is common in Black faith communities. His anxiety has since calmed.COVID-19 hit Black congregations harder physically and brought a heavier mental health burden to Black or African American pastors, according to a new study on the impact of COVID-19 on the American church from ChurchSalary, a sister publication of Christianity Today. But the survey showed Black churches also had more unity about pandemic health measures and lower closure rates.In interviews with CT, a number of Black pastors affirmed the study’s findings. The pastors dealt with a disproportionate amount of sickness and death while carrying the additional burden of ministering in their communities after the murder of George Floyd. Other ministry demands ...Continue reading...

While necessary right now and important in the future, we can't close our eyes to the downsides of online church.It�s a whole new ballgame.In a matter of just a few weeks, churches all around the world have a new standard for measuring ministry success.And I�m trying not to be cynical about it.So here�s my best shot at a non-cynical (but certainly skeptical) take on this.What�s Good About Online ChurchI�m grateful every time I hear that a church now has as many or more people watching their online services than they had attending their in-person services.Better that than a drop-off of numbers, for sure.But let�s be honest about what�s happening here.Recently, there�s been a lot of helpful information about how engagement is a better metric than attendance. I fully agree with that assessment.But if engagement is a better metric than attendance, eyeballs on a screen is a worse one. At-home viewers are far less engaged than bodies in the room ever were.Online And DistractedWe all know how online viewing goes.We watch while we�re cooking, eating, chatting, Tweeting and working out.Even if we lay all of that aside, people who sit at home and watch a screen are far less engaged in the experience than when they were in the room together.An Incomplete MetricObviously, that�s all we have right now. And I�m truly grateful we have it.Even when we�re able to meet together again, keeping an online presence will be an important way to reach new people and keep connected with absent members.But.Let�s be careful not to replace one incomplete, even unreliable metric (attendance) with one that�s even less reliable (online viewership).Online church is here to stay. Our congregation does it, and we�ve learned how to do it even better because of the necessity of this ...Continue reading...