I’m so stinking proud of our Nashville campus right now I can’t stand it!
In my message this morning I knew I would be referencing my India trip, so late this week we had Compassion International overnight us 50 sponsor kits. Each packet represents a kid who is waiting to be sponsored. While I wasn’t making a push for child sponsorships I thought it would be a good idea to have a few on hand in case people felt led to sponsor child. We actually had a missions table with several ways people could respond.
By the end of the second service every packet WAS GONE and people were signing up on an overflow list! I was blown away by everyone’s authentic desire to make a difference.
We made a pact today that we were not going to settle for our lives counting for anything less than changing the world. I believe more than ever the local church CAN change the world.
Thank you Cross Point. I’m so proud to be one of your pastors.
We’ve ordered 200 more packets for both campuses, but if you’re impatient like me and still interested you can click on the image below to look through a list of children who are waiting to be sponsored in India.
And by the way, here’s another video from India I forgot to post while I was on my trip. I saw it yesterday and just started cracking up. I saw a lot of things that continue to wreck me, but there were also a few light-hearted moments like this. Sometimes you’ve got to laugh through the tears.
This morning I’m going back to my office. I’m thankful for my job and love my church to death, but as many of you know
ministry can be difficult…
Long meetings
Staff issues
Financial pressures
Difficult conversations
Public pressures
Frequent criticism
High expectations
Writing blocks
Hateful e-mails
Never-ending hours
To sustain this every ministry leader has to have their heart broken from time to time. They have to find a way to recalibrate. They have to wrestle with what Jesus really meant when he said “feed my sheep.” They have to get down to the core of why they really do what they do.
I’ll go back to my desk today but if anyone ever wonders what keeps me going… if you ever wonder where I reach when I need to give a little more than I have… or how I get motivated to keep going when I want to quit? I don’t think about giving a dynamic message on a stage or sitting in powerful meetings and making the right call. I don’t even think about the massive vision God’s put in my heart that’s ten years away.
I think about people… broken people… hurting people… impoverished people. I think about the thousands of people God allowed my life to intersect with last week in India. I’ll think about these images…
A special thanks to Keely for capturing many of these moments, to Compassion for the life changing opportunity, and to EACH of you who went on this journey via the blog with me!!
And I was wondering…what keeps you going in ministry, parenting, and life in general when things get difficult?
Today was a monumental day as most of the compassion bloggers had the opportunity to meet their sponsor child (I wish you could have seen Anne with her little boy).
Brandi and I have sponsored Samvasiva Rao Kokkitegodda (we call him Sammy) for the last six months. Sammy is from the coastal community of Penumudi, India and unfortunately couldn’t make it to Calcutta because of the distance of travel. Several of the kids traveled by train for up to 48 hours just to meet their sponsor!
Angie and Melissa each had two children and since Angie was so rotten to me in her post yesterday I chose to help Melissa out instead. I was secretly hoping Angie’s kids would run her ragged.
We visited an adventure science museum which randomly had a gondola (more on that later) and then took the kids out to eat. For all of our sponsor children this was the first time they had ever done anything quite like this. It was amazing to watch them walk around just soaking it up every aspect of the visit.
As the kids were leaving this afternoon one of the English speaking employees of the science museum who had been observing us interact with the kids, stopped me and asked “Why?”
I responded, “Excuse me?”
He said, “Why did you guys come all this way to do this?”
I smiled at him and simply responded with the first word that came to my mind, “Jesus. We do this because we are Christians and this is one of the ways we follow our God by serving others.”
He eagerly smiled back.
But I’m still thinking about his question. Why do we do this? Why have so many of us sponsored children? Surely there has to be a better answer than “because we can.”
For my family I think there are two reasons we sponsor Sammy.
First, our faith compels us to. In Luke 4 Jesus reminded us…
“The Lord has put his Spirit in me, because he appointed me to tell the Good News to the poor. He has sent me to tell the captives they are free and to tell the blind that they can see again. God sent me to free those who have been treated unfairly and to announce the time when the Lord will show his kindness.”
Secondly, we want our kids to know just how blessed they are. We want our kids at an early age to develop a compassionate heart, a spirit of empathy. My kids are growing up in a situation where they pretty much can get everything they want or could ever need. They’re trained in very subtle ways by our culture that there are those who matter and those who don’t.
John Berger said…
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.
To fight this we allow “Sammy” to be a constant reminder of our blessings and calling. Sammy is on our fridge. Sammy gets prayed for every evening at dinner. Sammy gets letters written to him all the time. We refuse to let the poor be “a reminder of nothing” to our children.
Here’s a picture of Brandi and the boys from earlier this week holding up our latest letter from Sammy. Just look a their excitement.
I’m so thankful for so many of you who sponsored kids this week. Your generosity has floored me and restored a new hope within. For those of you who have been thinking about it….why not now?
P.S. I took a little video of our gondola ride. Thought you might enjoy it. And just in case Beth Moore ever reads this… Mrs. Moore I want you to know I had absolutely nothing to do with your daughter being on this contraption. However she does need to start “Breaking Free” from some of her fears.
I read an anonymous quote the other day that went something like this…
“Sometimes I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, suffering, and injustice when He could do something about it.”
“Well, why don’t you ask Him?”
“Because I’m afraid He would ask me the same question.”
I thought about that quote today as we drove back from the Compassion project and the “Why?” question kept dancing around in my head. I saw some things today that will be burned into my memory for a lifetime even if I didn’t have this photograph that captured the moment. For example, I saw these girls…
Today these girls were standing ready and available, looking to lure their next customer into a small room for sex. They pose, they smile,and some of them even wave. But if you look beyond the surface you’ll see a deep sadness in their eyes. A sadness that will cut straight to your heart.
Every day 20,000 men seek out the services of the some 6,000 women who work the streets. Many of these women are just young girls. There are tens of thousands of these girls throughout India. Many are tricked into leaving their homes with the promise of a well-paid job. Some are abducted. Others are sold by their own families. They are drugged, terrorized, locked in brothels and raped repeatedly. They’re rented out for sex for as little as 15 minutes at a time, dozens of times a day for 30-50 rupees… which is equal to less than one US dollar.
The soaring number of prostitutes believed to have contracted HIV in India’s brothels has helped give India the second-largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world, just behind South Africa.
But just blocks from this heavy darkness, I found hope in a 12 year-old girl named Kiran. We had the opportunity to visit her home in the Basti slum and what an experience it was. Because one of you faithfully sponsor Kiran she along with almost 300 other children are a part of the Hasting Compassion project located at the United Missionary Church. A place where young boys and girls are fed, loved, and taught about the hope of Jesus Christ.
When you looked in Kiran’s eyes there was not oppression and hurt, but love and joy. Her smile and wave were sincere and her invitation into her home was not for sex, but for prayer.
She may live in a 24 square foot room with her family but she’s free. She’s free in this world and she’s found a freedom in Christ which will extend into eternity.
So you can ask “why?” Or you can do something about it. It’s your choice.
I’m praying you will go HERE and help another young girl or boy find that same freedom today.
I’ve been sick as a dog for the past 24hrs. I’m talking the kind of sick where you start praying those crazy prayers. Those “God I promise I’ll never…God if you get me through this I’ll do whatever you want… I’ll even go to India and be a missionary.” Oh crap, I’m already a missionary in India so I guess I got nothing.
Against the advisement of some wisepeople I chose to go on today’s excursion. Trust me when I say the video WILL NOT do it justice. We took the bus as far as we could go and then jumped on rickshaws. The only good thing about this road trip was the company (Keely on the way there, and Melissa on the way back) and the incredible project where we eventually arrived. It was a child survival project which focuses on helping moms with their newborn through 3 year-old children.
The whole way there I kept thinking, Where in the heck are we going? This is truly the middle of nowhere. I was reminded of this verse in Acts…
Acts 13: 47 For this is what the Lord has commanded us:
” ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’ “
Today more than 26,500 children will die of preventable causes related to their poverty. And guess what? It will happen again tomorrow… and the next day… and the next. Around 10 million children will be dead in the course of a year.
How do we live with this? How does this not dominate our minds?
Because for the most part it happens on “the ends of the earth.” Let’s be honest. We simply have less empathy for people who live faraway. Richard Stearns said, “Our compassion for others seems to be directly correlated to whether people are close to us socially emotionally, culturally, ethnically, economically, and geographically.”
This makes total sense. It’s why if you hear a child was killed in a car accident you might find it sad, however if the child was one that lives in your neighborhood…one you saw on a regular basis…one who you knew the name of…it would stop you dead in your tracks.
We’re numb toward “the ends of the earth” and yet God has clearly called us to go there. And not JUST go there, but go there with His light.
You might not be able to jump in a rickshaw and take the “road trip” I took today, but you can be God’s light here. You can go to “the ends of the earth” right now, RIGHT HERE.
You can make a difference.
**I just heard Tuesday was the largest single day of child sponsorship for any Compassion blogging trip ever. You guys are the best.**
This morning before we left for a day of visiting Compassion projects I read this verse during my quiet time.
Revelation 3:17 “You say, “I am rich, and I have become wealthy and do not need anything. But you do not know that you are really miserable, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.”
Less than two hours later I met this young man at the Kestopur project here in India.
As I heard him sing I felt God’s convicting spirit rush through my body. “Pete, who do you think you are? You think you’re here to simply write about poverty and child sponsorship, and you are, but there is more. I want to remind you that you’re the one poverty stricken. Pete, you’re spiritually poor.”
In the midst of everything I’ve been blessed with I’ve started to live with a delusional sense of self-sufficiency. Somehow, I’ve missed what this 7 year-old boy could fully grasp. This is the day. This is the day I should rejoice in Him.
Not because I’m rich.
Not because my relationships are going well.
Not because I’m enjoying a season of success.
Not because I have a secure job.
Because, this is the day. This day. With all of it’s potential troubles and unexpected crisis and interruptions is the day for me to be spiritually rich.
You and I can do a lot to change the lives of these kids (and I believe we should), but we could never replace the richness they’re finding in Christ. Just one more reason I’m such a fan of what Compassion and so many other great organizations are doing to take a bright light into a dark world.
Anyone else need a reminder that “This is the Day”?
Here was my one and only attempt at cricket. There’s a reason we don’t have church cricket leagues (for you rednecks this would be crick-it). Spence and I got spanked at the sport! Before you make fun of me please keep in mind it was almost 120 degrees (India is having a heat wave and it’s hotter than it’s been in 29 years).
Honestly, what sport are you horrible at? Fess up.
