Help getting a fresh perspective

Sometimes a fresh perspective can help us significantly.  We see or think about an issue so long and so often that it begins to lose impact on our thinking.  If we have a new metaphor, a new way of bringing old information to bear it might help us regain some energy of thought.  The following tools might be helpful in developing a fresh perspective.

Tool #1-Imagine a stack of 500,000 dollars.  That would be 50 bundles of $100 dollar bills.  That is a lot of money.  If you gave $1 to each village in the Indian sub-continent that did not have a Christian church or missionary and kept all the rest of the money for yourself you would have nothing.

Tool #2-Take off your shoes and socks and count all your fingers and toes.  That is the number of villages that are asking a mission organization in northern India for someone to come and tell them about Jesus for whom there is no one to send.  Not 20 people, not one person with twenty fingers and toes, but 20 villages asking to learn about Jesus without the manpower to fill the request.

Tool #3-Extend your right middle and index finger together and place it on the inside of your left wrist just below the thumb.  You should be able to feel an occasional thump or beat.  That pulse goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.  We almost never notice it, never the less, it continues on.  Each time you feel that pulse is about how often someone in the Indian sub-continent dies without knowing Christ.   Take your pulse for a moment, your spiritual pulse.  Does that loss mean anything to you?  Do you care?  Do you care enough to do something about it? 

Recently, I met separately with two ministers that were pretty discouraged in their work.  It was not that they were bothered by the lost constantly begging them to “Please tell us about Jesus.”  They were not frustrated because they were sore from standing in a cold river and baptizing 80 plus believers, and would be doing so again the next day with another 120 believers.  (That is the frustration of one Indian minister.)  They were frustrated because they had members squabbling over scraps and preeminence and power and getting their way in the petty politics of a local congregation.  As long as we believe that the little group of people meeting in our little buildings is what the Kingdom of God is about we will forever be as effective as a the mammary gland on a boar hog. (Forgive my crudity; my frustration is nearing its limits) 

Let me offer what may be a solution.  Let’s imagine that the wealth and the resources of the American church and American Christians is not really ours, and that we have been given so much so that we can bank roll world mission and evangelism.  Let’s even pretend that God is more interested in our giving to support world missions than spending money on our own pleasure and satisfaction.  I’m not asking for us to all go to India (or Africa, or southeast Asia, or South America or anywhere else for that matter).  I am asking that we send our money there to support local evangelists. 

Even the giving we do is often selfish.  After all, which is more important whole villages hearing about the gospel or the stuff we buy for ourselves?  If we give to reach the lost among the unreached people in the world, we will not benefit from that giving at all, at least not until we go to Heaven.   Then we will enjoy it for all eternity.   We need a radical repentance about our love of mammon and our selling Christ for the American dream.

To this end I am challenging you in two ways.  First, there is a mission organization that supplies motorcycles for local evangelists.  Often time’s, local evangelists will have no transportation to cover extensive distance except to walk.  It is my goal to buy 10 motorcycles this year for these missionaries.  I love Jesus and evangelists and motorcycles.  Will you help me?  My first goal is $10,000.  If you are interested let me know and I will help you connect with the mission organization.

Second, I want to challenge your church to have a mission-specific, stewardship campaign that will focus on unreached people groups around the world. The design of this campaign is to provide giving above and beyond your regular offerings that you can direct to reach those who do not know Jesus.  Call me about a Campaign that will not only change the world but can change your congregation as well.

Charlie Crowe

352-548-4837