Food for Thought
June 9, 2008 |
It seems like ministry today has been reduced to strategy and outcomes and production. And, frankly, that is what makes you famous—developing a new ministry strategy. If you can reproduce it and sell it, you can get a book deal.
Ministry to "the least of these" is about people, and it's messy. But there are godly people all over this country who have been loving people in the name of Jesus, and I think that's real ministry.
We hear some crazy stories. Like heroin addicts leading each other to Christ. God using heroin addicts! It blows all your stereotypes. The activity of the Spirit among the marginalized is amazing. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, is God at work inside the church? Sometimes I don't know, but I do know he's at work outside the church.
Sometimes we're just reluctant to join him on the margins.
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Posted by Bonnie McMaken on June 9, 2008
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You said,
I"t seems like ministry today has been reduced to strategy and outcomes and production. And, frankly, that is what makes you famous—developing a new ministry strategy. If you can reproduce it and sell it, you can get a book deal. "
I believe I can buy this original article from Church Builders along with a few others as a Social Justice package for "how to" instructions to do the same. Is getting famous the issue or ministry?
God is at work anywhere and everywhere people make themselves available to be His hand extended. You don't have to write a book about it for the ministry to be legitimate. Real ministry doesn't need the affirmation of a book deal or recognition of others.
We can't blame the people making the book deals -- whose buying the books and the articles?
Yes, there is ministry happening in churches as well as in the communities -- well, at least in the church and community I attend.
Let's be careful not to marginalize the church. God is moving wherever people will respond. Let's set our sails to catch the direction of the Spirit wherever it takes us. Jesus taught and ministered in the Synagogues and the streets. Maybe we should take our cue from Him. He uses ordinary people to do extraordinary ministry through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Posted by: Angela C on June 11, 2008
Heroin is an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is both the most abused and the most rapidly acting of the opiates. Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of certain varieties of poppy plants. It is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known on the streets as "black tar heroin." Although purer heroin is becoming more common, most street heroin is "cut" with other drugs or with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, or quinine. Street heroin can also be cut with strychnine or other poisons. Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death. Heroin also poses special problems because of the transmission of HIV and other diseases that can occur from sharing needles or other injection equipment
Posted by: Pharmacy on August 12, 2008