What do I look for in a Pastor?

Greetings All,

     Another week, another message!  I so look forward to sending out these gems I glean from my reading of Christian authors.
     This week's "thought"  has to do with the trend in the church to court or win the approval of the movers and shakers in the world by conforming Christian ministry to standards people in the world would find more acceptable.  It addresses the attempt to make ministry more proper, legitimate, credible and well-received in the eyes of the world -- more professional.  And to a degree the thought may seem good. But it must be approached with caution, lest the faith be made into something it was never intended to be - just one among a plethora of other legitimate admirable professions to pursue.

     This thought comes to you from John Piper in one of his less-well-known books, "Brothers, We Are NOT Professionals."   It's a good reminder in a world that often seeks to pressure the Church to conform to its standards. Though written primarily to pastors, it has a message for every Christian. Try to understand what he's saying and I believe you will see the validity of his points.  And at the end, ask yourself: What do I look for in a pastor?  Enjoy.

     "We pastors are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry.  The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the mentality of the slave of Christ. Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian ministry.  The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness (Matt. 18:3); there is no professional tenderheartedness (Eph. 4:32); there is no professional panting after God (Ps. 42:1).  But our first business IS to pant after God in prayer. Our business IS to weep over our sins (James 4:9). Is there professional weeping?  Our business IS to strain forward to the holiness of Christ and the prize of the upward calling of God (Phil. 3:14); to pummel our bodies and subdue them lest we be castaways (I Cor. 9:27); to deny ourselves and take up the blood-spattered cross daily (Luke 9:23). How do you carry a cross professionally?  We have been crucified with Christ; yet now we live by faith in the one who loved us and gave Himself up for us (Gal. 2:20).  What is professional faith?

     We are to be filled not with wine but with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). How can you be drunk with Christ professionally? Then, wonder of wonders, we were given the gospel treasure to carry around in clay pots to show that the transcendent power belongs to God (II Cor. 4:7).  Is there a way to be a professional clay pot?  We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus (professionally?) so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested (professionally?) in our bodies (II Cor. 4:9-11). I think God has exhibited us preachers as last of all in the world. We are fools for Christ's sake, but professionals are wise.  We are weak, but professionals are strong.  Professionals are held in honor, we are held in disrepute. We do not try to secure a professional lifestyle, but are ready to hunger and thirst and be ill-clad and homeless. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slaughtered, we try to conciliate; we have become the refuse of the world, the scum of the earth (I Cor. 4:9-13).  Or have we?

     Brothers, we are NOT professionals!  We are outcasts. We are aliens and exiles in the world (I Pet. 2:11).  Our citizenship is in heaven and we wait in eager expectation for the Lord (Phil. 3:20).  You cannot professionalize the love for His appearing without killing it.  And it IS being killed.  The aims of our ministry are eternal and spiritual. They are not shared by any of the professions. It is precisely by the failure to see this that we are dying. "The life-giving preacher," says Richard Cecil, "is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom, by the power of God's Spirit, the flesh and the world have been crucified and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river." 

     ...The professionalization of the ministry is a constant threat to the offense of the Gospel. It is a threat to the profoundly spiritual nature of our work. I have seen it often: the love of professionalism (the desire for equality in status and pay with the world's professionals) kills a man's belief that he is sent by God to save people from hell and make them Christ-exalting, spiritual aliens in this world. If the world sets the agenda for the professional man; God sets the agenda for the spiritual man. The strong wine of Jesus Christ explodes the wineskins of professionalism. There is an infinite difference between the pastor whose heart is set on being a professional and the pastor whose heart is set on being the aroma of Christ -- the fragrance of death to some and eternal life to others (II Cor. 2:15-16).  God deliver us from the professionalizers!

     God, give us tears for our sins.  Forgive us for being so shallow in prayer, so thin in our grasp of holy truths, so content amid perishing neighbors, so empty of passion and earnestness in all our conversations.  Restore to us the childlike joy of our salvation.  Frighten us with the awesome holiness and power of Him who can cast both soul and body into hell (Matt. 10:28). Cause us to hold to the cross with fear and trembling as our hope-filled and offensive tree of life.  Grant us nothing, absolutely nothing, the way the world views it.  May Christ be all in all (Col. 3:11). Banish professionalism from our midst, Oh God, and in its place put passionate prayer, poverty of spirit, hunger for God, rigorous study of holy things, white-hot devotion to Jesus Christ, utter indifference to all material gain, and unremitting labor to rescue the perishing, perfect the saints, and glorify our sovereign Lord. Humble us, O God, under your mighty hand, and let us rise -- not as professionals, but as witnesses and partakers of the sufferings of Christ. In His awesome name. Amen." 

     Some of us (myself included) have lost elements of the passion we once had when we started out in the ministry.  In some cases wisdom has thankfully tempered a lopsided zeal, a blatant omission of duty, or a pride-motivated (rather than Christ-motivated) passion for service.  But in other cases the passion that drove us into the ministry can get driven out of us by the ministry -- sometimes by the expectations placed upon us that we need to be more like the successful worldly professionals around us.

     Yet other times it may even be due to the pastors themselves adopting the subtle worldly idea that ministry is a "profession" rather than a "calling."  One that is to be carried out even if there are no "competitive benefit packages."  Yes, carried out even if it were to mean persecution, the loss of all our possessions, or even our life (Hebrews 11:32-40 / Rev. 2:8-10).  Piper's point is well taken --  professionalization of the ministry can (and has) brought spiritual apathy to the church.  Maybe it's time to consider afresh what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and remember that the call to follow Jesus is a call to serve Him for His sake, at whatever the cost, no matter what comes our way as a result -- something most of the professionals I know would not be inclined to do in their particular professions.

In His Service, Pastor Jeff

When I Don't Desire God

Greetings!

For over a year I've been engaging numerous young people in conversations about God, church, and simply life in general.  In the process one major theme has repeatedly come up: Many young people are struggling to experience joy in God.  As a result some gave given up on God.  Many say their friends are depressed and struggle to find meaning and motivation in life.  I know there are various reasons for this, but I send out this week's "thought" because it offers at least one possible remedy for the problem.  It's found in John Piper's book, "When I Don't Desire God," the sequel to his best-selling book "Desiring God - The Confessions of a Christian Hedonist."  Both books are well-worth reading if you have not yet done so.  Enjoy.

     "One of the greatest witnesses I know of to the power of regular disciplined reading of the Bible for the sake of love-producing joy is George Mueller (1805-1898), who is famous for founding orphanages in Bristol, England, and for depending on God for meeting all his needs.  He asked the very question this book is asking: "In what way shall we attain to this settled happiness of soul? How shall we learn to enjoy God? How shall we obtain such an all-sufficient soul-satisfying portion in him as shall enable us to let go of the things of this world as vain and worthless in comparison? I answer: This happiness is to be obtained through the study of the Holy Scriptures. God has therein revealed Himself unto us in the face of Jesus Christ."  

     That's what we have seen so far in this book: Happiness in God comes from seeing God revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ through the Scriptures.  Mueller says, "In them...we become acquainted with the character of God. Our eyes are divinely opened to see what a lovely Being God is!  And this good, gracious, loving, heavenly Father is ours -- our portion for time and for eternity."  Knowing God is the key to being happy in God.  "The more we know God," says Mueller, "the happier we are... When we became a little acquainted with God... our true happiness... commenced; and the more we become acquainted with him, the more happy we become.  What will make us exceedingly happy in heaven?  It will be the fuller knowledge of God."  Therefore the most crucial means of fighting for joy in God is to immerse oneself in the Scriptures where we see God in Christ most clearly.

     When Mueller was seventy-one years old, he spoke to younger believers: "Now...I would give a few hints to my younger fellow-believers as to the way in which to keep up spiritual enjoyment. It is absolutely needful... we should read regularly through the Scriptures, consecutively, and not just pick out here and there a chapter.  If we do, we remain spiritual dwarfs. I tell you so affectionately. For the first four years after my conversion I made no progress, because I neglected the Bible. But when I regularly read on through the whole Bible with reference to my own heart and soul, I directly made progress. The my peace and joy continued more and more. Now I have been doing this for 47 years. I have read through the Bible about 100 times and I always find it fresh when I begin again. Thus my peace and joy have increased more and more.

     He would live and read his Bible for another twenty-one years. But he never changed his strategy for satisfaction in God. When he was seventy-six, he wrote the same thing he had learned for over fifty years: "I saw more clearly than ever, that the first and primary business to attend to every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord."  And the means stayed the same: "I saw that the most important hing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation upon it... What is the food of the inner man?  Not prayer, but the word of God; and... not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds like water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.""

     In a society that tries to get us to question the uniqueness, validity, authority and divine origin of the Scriptures as being "God-breathed" revelation (II Timothy 3:16-17), it is not unusual to see people laying aside the priority of Bible reading, Scriptural meditation and Bible memorization.  Yet they do it to their own peril and the impoverishment of their own soul. They rob themselves of the possibility of the peace and joy that come from knowing God.  For as both Mueller and Piper note: "This happiness is to be obtained through the study of the Holy Scriptures...." "Happiness in God comes from seeing God revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ through the Scriptures...."  "Knowing God is the key to being happy in God."  "The more we know God the happier we are."

     Did not Jesus essentially tell us the same thing regarding the soul-feeding and soul-satisfying function of God's Word in the Scriptures?  Is He not looking out for our greatest good -- our spiritual happiness, contentment and satisfaction in God -- when He says:  "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."  And as we know, by the word "live" he is not simply speaking of physical life as opposed to death, He's speaking of being alive inwardly, or thriving spiritually, of finding our soul-sustaining nourishment in the Scriptures.

     With prayers that you may seek to feast more earnestly and consistently upon the Word that was given to sustain your happiness in God, Pastor Jeff

A Selection of Short Thoughts

Greetings All!

     Sometimes you can say a lot in very few words!  Therefore,  today, instead of one longer thought, I offer you many short thoughts -- all which struck me as worthy of sharing.  I trust one or more may hit home for you as well!   Enjoy!

     “Prosperity cannot be a proof of God’s favor, since it is what the devil promises to those who worship him.”

John Piper

     “When we deal seriously with our sins, God will deal gently with us.”

Charles Spurgeon

     “Evangelism must start with the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the demands of the law, and the eternal consequences of evil.”

Martin Lloyd-Jones

     “I frequently hear persons exhorted to give their hearts to Christ, which is a very proper exhortation. But that is not the Gospel. Salvation comes from something that Christ gives you, not something you give to Christ.  The giving of your heart to Christ follows after receiving from Christ the gift of eternal life by faith.”

Charles Spurgeon

“I’m just a nobody telling everybody about somebody who can save anybody.”

Anonymous

“Your personal testimony, however meaningful to you, is not the Gospel.”

R. C. Sproul

     “In our day it is considered worse to judge evil than to do evil.”

Os Guiness

     “Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible.  Faith begins where man’s power ends.” 

George Muller

     “Worry is believing God will not get it right, and bitterness is believing God got it wrong.”

 Tim Keller

     “You will derive far more benefit from a single verse of Scripture read slowly and prayerfully and duly meditated on than you will from ten chapters read through quickly.”

A. W. Pink

     “I must listen to the gospel. It tells me not what I must do, but what Christ the Son of God has done for me.”

Martin Luther

     “If you are really saved, brethren, not a hair of your heads belongs to yourselves. Christ’s blood has either bought you or it has not. And if it has, then you are altogether Christ’s – every bit of you – and you are neither to eat nor drink, nor sleep, but for Christ.”

Charles Spurgeon

     “The doctrine of grace and redemption keeps us from seeing any person or situation as hopeless.”

Tim Keller

     “God has given me everything, forgiven me everything, promised me everything, and I lack nothing except the faith to believe it.” 

Martin Luther

     “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”

Elisabeth Elliot

     “You have become blind when you see nothing wrong with something God has called sin.”

Anonymous

Many blessings in Christ, Pastor Jeff

A Godward Life

Greetings All,

     This week's "thought" comes to you from John Piper and is found in his book, "A Godward Life."  This selection speaks of the extraordinary gifts of a man named Charles Haddon Spurgeon -- a man who has been called by many, "The Prince of Preachers," or "the best preacher that ever lived."

     After reading of his life accomplishments, it's nearly impossible for any pastor not to envy -- even though the 10th Commandment forbids that!  Yet, even though what Piper shares about Spurgeon's amazing life relate to his work in the pastorate, the things we can learn from our reaction to his accomplishments can apply to anyone we admire who is extraordinarily gifted. Thus I offer it to you for your consideration. Enjoy.

"Mountains Are Not Meant to Be Envied"

 Awed Thoughts on Charles Spurgeon

     "... If you try to make a Minnesota hill imitate a mountain, you will make a fool of your hill.  Hills have their place too. So do the Nebraska plains. If the whole world were mountains, where would we grow wheat for bread? Every time you eat bread say, "Thank God for Nebraska!"

     I'm talking about Charles Haddon Spurgeon. I am warning my wavering self he is not to be imitated.  Spurgeon preached as a Baptist pastor in London from 1854 until 1891 -- thirty-eight years of ministry in one place. He died January 31, 1892, at the age of fifty-seven. His collected sermons fill sixty-three volumes equivalent to the twenty-seven volume edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and stand as the largest set of books by a single author in the history of Christianity.  He read six books a week and could remember what was in them and where [on one occasion quoting both the page and paragraph where a quote was found]. He read Pilgrim's Progress more than 100 times.

     He added 14,460 people to his church membership and did almost all the membership interviews himself. He could look out on a congregation of 5,000 and name the members. He founded a pastor's college and trained almost 900 men during his pastorate. Spurgeon once said he had counted as many as eight sets of thoughts that passed through his mind at the same time while he was preaching. He often prayed for his people during the very sermon he was preaching to them.  He would preach for 40 minutes at 140 words per minute from a small sheet of notes that he had worked up the night before. The result? More than twenty-five thousand copies of his sermons were sold each week in twenty-seven languages, and someone was converted each week through the written sermons.

     Spurgeon was married and had two sons (twins) who both became pastors. His wife Susannah (who died the same year as Charles, though three years older) was an invalid most of her life and rarely heard him preach. He founded an orphanage (funded mainly through the sales of his sermons), started a home for poor widows, edited a magazine, and produced more than 140 other books (three of which sold over 1,000,000 copies and one of which is still a best-seller). He responded to 500 letters a week and often preached ten times a week in various churches as well as his own. He suffered from gout, rheumatism and Bright's disease, and in the last twenty years of his ministry, he was so sick that he missed a third of the Sunday's at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. He was a politically liberal and conservative Calvinistic Baptist who smoked cigars, spoke his mind, believed in hell, and wept over the perishing, ten's of thousands of whom were saved through his soul-winning passion....

     What shall we make of such a man?  Neither a god nor a goal. He should not be worshiped or envied. He is too small for one and too big for the other. If we worship such men we are idolaters. If we envy them we are fools. Mountains are not meant to be envied. They are meant to be marveled at for the sake of their Maker. They are the mountains of God. More than that, without envy, we are meant to climb into their minds and hearts and revel in what they saw so clearly and what they felt so deeply. We are to benefit from them without craving to be them. When we learn this, we can relax and enjoy them. Until we learn it, they may make us miserable, because they highlight our weaknesses. Well, we are weak, and to be reminded of it is good. But we also need to be reminded that, compared with our inferiority to God, the distance between us and Spurgeon is nothing. We are all utterly dependent on our Father's grace.

     Spurgeon had his sins. That may comfort us in our weak moments. But let us rather be comforted that his greatness was a free gift of God -- to us as well as to him. Let us be, by the grace of God, all that we can be for the glory of God (I Corinthians 15:10). In our smallness, let us not become smaller by envy, but rather, larger by humble admiration and gratitude for the gifts of others. Do not envy the mountain, glory in its Creator.  You'll find the air up there cool, fresh and invigorating and the view stunning beyond description. So don't envy. Enjoy!" 

     There are few preaching pastors who did not study Spurgeon, and of those that did, probably most have coveted some of the many gifts he had or the things he was able to do.

     He had preached 600 times before he was 20 and had such a booming voice he once preached to a crowd of 23,654 people with no microphone or amplification.  He had a photographic memory, pastored the largest independent congregation in the world in his day, and was not tempted by money, giving most of it away to charity or missions. He worked 18 hours a day, had an uncanny ability to paint pictures with words, came up with phenomenal illustrations from everyday life on a regular basis (many of which I have used), and would frequently ask his members NOT to come to church the next Sunday so that the lines of visitors who waited outside each week might be able to get in to have a seat.

     Yes, it's easy to envy or want to be like Spurgeon (I have often)!  But that would be to question God's sovereignty. That would be to forget that God makes each person just as he desires, not that we may wish we were someone other than who we are, but that we might praise His wisdom and be content to simply be who he's made us to be -- weaknesses and all. The giants of the faith are there to inspire us, and we can thank God for their example. But they can actually be a distraction and cause us harm if we end up idolizing them and lamenting us.  God gives us mountains to admire, not imitate, for as Piper points out, the rolling hills and the flat plains have their particular purposes too! 

In the Bonds of Christian Charity, Pastor Jeff

Lord, Fill Me With Your Spirit

Greetings Friends!

     Today's thought comes to you from a gentlemen named Jon Bloom, co-founder and staff-writer for desiringGod.org, a ministry most closely associated with John Piper (whose thoughts I have passed on to you before). This article was found on the desiringGod.org website.  I pass it on to you for your serious and prayerful consideration. To simply read it is one thing, but to read it and then pray in the manner he advises is another thing altogether -- and surely the author's hoped for response on any readers part.  Read. Pray.  Enjoy.

Lord, Fill Me With Your Spirit

     “The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (I Corinthians 4:20).  If we are not disillusioned with how much we have allowed our talk to pass for our walk, discontented with the sparse amount of spiritual fruit we are truly bearing, and disappointed by the impotence of our own efforts, we will never be distressed enough to really plead with God to fill us with the Holy Spirit.  If we’re not disturbed by how little we can do in our own power, we’ll never be desperate enough to ask God for his.

What Is the Filling of the Holy Spirit?

       But when we pray for this, what are we asking God for? In the words of Wayne Grudem, we are asking God for “an event subsequent to conversion in which a believer experiences a fresh infilling with the Holy Spirit that may result in a variety of consequences, including greater love for God, greater victory over sin, greater power for ministry, and sometimes the receiving of new spiritual gifts.” (Grudem 1242)  Now, of course every Christian receives the Holy Spirit upon conversion. Being born again is the greatest miracle any human being can possibly experience, and it only happens by the omnipotent power of Holy Spirit (John 3:3-8, I Corinthians 12:13).

       But the reason we talk about the filling of the Holy Spirit as “an event subsequent to conversion” is because that’s how the New Testament usually talks about it. Paul was exhorting born-again Christians when he wrote, “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). And almost all of Luke’s description of Spirit-fillings occurred to people who were already born again (see Acts 2:4, 4:8, 4:31, 9:17, 13:9, 13:52). And we’re actually talking about events (plural) because, just like the same people received repeated fillings of the Spirit in the book of Acts, we also need to be filled repeatedly. According to the New Testament, we need to be repeatedly filled with the Holy Spirit for two primary purposes: empowered worship and witness.

Intoxicated with God

     When Paul told the Ephesians Christians to “be filled with the Spirit,” he was talking about Spirit-empowered worship: "And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 5:18-20).  Be careful as you read these verses. Don’t let your familiarity with it or your experience-based preconceptions about worship styles or other things cause you to dodge the punch the Holy Spirit intends to land here.  Paul is saying, don’t be intoxicated with alcohol, but be intoxicated with God! 

      His words confront each of us with the penetrating question, “Are you intoxicated with God?” Does our heart so overflow with love for God that our heart, whether light or heavy, can’t help but sing, both to God and to one another? No matter what our circumstances, are we overflowing with thanks to God?  If not, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit because we are not worshipfully enjoying God according to the grace available to us. That means we are not glorifying God as we ought, and are we not experiencing satisfaction in God like we might.

Empowered by God

     When Luke described this experience of Spirit-filling among Christians, its purpose was for Spirit-empowered witness: "And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness" (Acts 4:29-31).  Those early Christians were feeling fear from the threats of the religious authorities, the same ones who had crucified Jesus. But their response was to ask God for boldness to preach the gospel and supernatural power to minister to people. And God answered their prayer.

     Don’t let yourself be immediately distracted by popular controversies, like whether all the miraculous gifts in the New Testament continue, or some have ceased. Those questions are important in their place. But there are more fundamental questions for us here. “Are you responding to your fears of real physical threats, disapproval, or scorn with desperate prayer for God to empower you to overcome?” Are we laying hold of God until he answers? If not, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit because we are allowing fear and unbelief to gag or mute our witness to the reality and gospel of Jesus Christ. And because we are silent, people who need the gospel aren’t hearing it.

Whatever It Takes, Lord

     Here’s wonderful news: our heavenly Father loves to give his Holy Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11:13)! “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Luke 11:10).  Do you feel dry? Are you weary? Are you tired of talking so much about glorious theology, but not experiencing the reality of it? Does your worship feel distracted and hollow? Are you lacking in gratitude to God? Do you long for more fruit, both the internal fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:28-29) and the external fruit of empowered ministry?  Then you are a good candidate for the filling of the Holy Spirit. Your dryness and discouragement may, in fact, be invitations from God to press in to him. The desperation that comes from living with low-ebbing affections and spiritual impotence can itself be a gift from the Holy Spirit, because it's when we become disillusioned enough with our mere talk, our anemic worship, and our weak selves that we really become prepared to pray:  Whatever it takes, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit and any gifting you would be pleased to give me."

     As one who has been preaching and sharing the Gospel for 37 years in various capacities now, I must confess his opening words rung true.  It is because I have frequently been, "disillusioned with how much [I] have allowed [my] talk to pass for [my] walk," and have indeed been,"discontented with the sparse amount of spiritual fruit [I am] truly bearing," and have been deeply, "disappointed by the impotence of [my] own efforts," that I habitually, "plead with God to fill [me] with the Holy Spirit."  I find it impossible to think there is even one person involved in Christian ministry of any sort who does not do this. For ministering in merely human strength, and nothing else (and I know when I am), cannot help but bring bring about fruit that will not last. That's what we must eventually ask ourselves: Do we yearn for fruit that bears the stamp of a power that is not from us?  For only if we do will we confess our inability to produce it in our own strength and plead for the power of the Spirit to do through us what only he can do.  Lord show us our weakness that we may plead for your strength.

In His Service, Pastor Jeff

The A21 Campaign

Greetings All!

Stop!  Before you're tempted to close out this 'thought' because it's "too long" (which in our fast-paced society tends to be anything more than a paragraph or two) I would encourage you to read on. What is shared in this thought is VERY important -- both for you and many others around the world -- 27,000,000+ others to be exact.  Believe me it will be worth you time; and all the more so if it moves you to do something in response to it.
It comes from a lady named Christine Caine, and is found in a book called, "Passion," edited by Louie Giglio, and containing articles by many authors including Francis Chan, John Piper, and others. Christine is the  founder of the A21 Campaign, one of the largest non-profit 

organizations in the world, dedicated to rescuing the victims of human trafficking (labor and sex slaves) in 12 countries. This article tells why she chose to get involved. It is impossible (if one has a heart) to read what she writes and not be moved. Please do.

Divine Interruptions

     "I found myself speaking at a conference in Greece around the time that a little girl named Madeline went missing in Portugal. Her picture was plastered across the TV, in airports, and in magazines. Interpol was searching for this little girl everywhere. I was, of course, very saddened by the disappearance of this little girl, but I didn't know her.  I hadn't met her... Then I saw a second poster for another girl that was missing. This child was named Sophia -- the same name as my second daughter... Suddenly these missing children weren't numbers. They weren't posters and they weren't statistics. They were real -- someone's daughters. Someone's sisters and classmates. I stopped and began to wonder if that were MY Sophia on that poster, what would I do to find her? What wouldn't I give up to see her safe? 

     I later found out that these children were the alleged victims of human trafficking, something that at that time I didn't even know existed. I assumed that the slave trade was abolished with William Wilberforce, but I was wrong. On my watch, in my generation, the current state of slavery has been flourishing in the dark rooms of the world.  With all our great Christian gatherings, our tremendous churches, our wealth of worship songs and resources, right now in the 21st century, there are more slaves on earth than ever before.  It was incomprehensible to me.  How could this be true? How could this happen in our day?   Yet it's true. During our day, more people are being trafficked and sold for labor or sex than ever before in human history. This is unacceptable not merely from the standpoint of human rights; it's unacceptable from the standpoint of the teachings of Jesus...

     With knowledge comes responsibility. We know the slave trade is alive and well right now. We know this, and because we do, we are responsible to do something about it... We might be tempted to equate compassion with getting sad watching a movie or hearing a story. That's not compassion; that's sentiment.  Compassion isn't compassion until you are actually interrupted. It's not real until it inspires you to action.  It was the action of the Good Samaritan, not his sentiment, that separated him from the others that walked by the beaten man on the side of the road... In our choice about whether to cross the road, we must begin by realizing that at one point or another, we were the one lying in the ditch and Jesus crossed the road for us.

     I am a rescued person. I did not discover I was adopted until I was thirty-three years old. Though our parents never told us the truth, on a single day we discovered this family secret and the truth was jarring to say the least. Suddenly I didn't know who I was.  I didn't know whether I was conceived in an adulterous affair or a one-night stand. I didn't know if I was the result of a rape or an underage pregnancy.  But as the panic set in, the Lord reminded me I didn't have to know the specific facts to know who I am... I may not know who I was, but I know who I am; I have been rescued by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  Jesus walked across the road between heaven and earth so that I might cross the road for the sake of others.  I was saved by grace that I might walk in the way Jesus did in the world. This is the plan of God -- to use rescued people to rescue people... Jesus has set us free so that we might set others free. He rescued us so that we might rise up, reach back, and rescue others... It could be any one of the twenty-seven million slaves in the world right now.

     But that twenty-seven million must cease to be a number.  Just like you and me, these people are living, breathing human beings created in the image of Almighty God, full of God-given destiny and God-given promise. The same Jesus who set me free can set them free, but how will they hear those words if we do not go tell them? How will they ever know the truth if we, together, don't raise our voices and declare that we will not allow this injustice to prevail? The Apostle Paul said that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1), and we must take that declaration to the world.

     Not long ago I was sitting at one of our shelters with Sonia, one of fourteen rescued victims. One of these young women, one that wasn't a statistic anymore, began telling me about how she was shipped to Istanbul in a container with sixty girls. During the trip, the oxygen tank broke, and when the crate was actually opened, thirty of the girls were dead.  The ones left alive had no passports because the traffickers had taken them. They were locked in an apartment and raped several times a day by men wearing law-enforcement uniforms, so the girls would not trust the police. Then, they were put in a little rubber dingy to be taken from Istanbul to Athens through the Greek Islands. While en route, the traffickers were spotted by a coast guard patrol, and so they threw the girls overboard. Keep in mind that these girls were from villages and had barely seen running water, let alone been in a body of water to swim. Only five survived. Sonia was one of them.

     She was eventually brought to our shelter when police raided a brothel in Athens. It was about that time in this unbelievable story that a Russian girl sitting near us (who had been rescued only one day before Sonia) began to ask me loudly in broken Greek: "Why did you come?" As best I could I began to tell her about how Jesus had rescued me and so I wanted to help her. I told her that God has a plan, a purpose, and a destiny for her life; that it didn't matter what she had gone through -- God was big enough to redeem her past. But it's what she said next that I'll never forget. As I was telling her this good news, she yelled back at me, "If what you are telling me about your God is true, then why didn't you come sooner?"

     Why didn't I come sooner? Those words are haunting. What is so important in our temporal lives that will distract us from the eternal purpose God put us on earth for? What deserves more attention than the very people Jesus died for?  Safety, comfort and security are NOT the goal of Christianity; freedom is.  And because it is, we must rise together to declare that this will not happen on our watch.  Not today.  Not ever again." 

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     I have heard many sermons on the Old Testament passages which speak of the "watchmen" posted on the walls of the city of Jerusalem. Men who scanned the roads and dark outlines of the surrounding terrain all day long, and all night long, watching for danger or any signs of the approach of invading armies. But Christine is right. As Christians we are to do more that simply watch out for threats to the people of God, or the Church. We are to watch out for evil and injustice wherever it occurs, and sound the alarm for other's outside "Jerusalem" who are being mistreated, abused, or are victims of the new forms of human labor or sex slavery.  Many of these victims who are forced into labor or prostitution are children as young as 11 years old (some younger). The question is what are we doing to stop it? To use her words, "we must rise together (as the Church) and declare that this will not happen on our watch."  We are placed on the walls to ensure such things do not go unnoticed or unaddressed.

     The question facing the Church in every generation is: Will we speak up?  Will we somehow get involved?  Will we take the necessary risks and make the necessary sacrifices? Or will we turn a blind eye, and like the majority (at least here in the States), pretend it's not happening around us so we can continue to pursue the three gods of our culture -- "safety, comfort and security."  If it were your 11, 12, or 13 year old daughter (or son) would you simply express your sad "sentiment" or would you be "moved by compassion" to do something to put an end to such evil -- even if your part is to rescue just one of the twenty-seven million slaves worldwide?  God has placed you as watchmen on the walls -- will you allow such a thing to happen on your watch without lifting your voice, or pen, or hands to do something to stop it? As the old Christian hymn declares: "Rise Up Oh Church of God..."  Will we?   Will we think, "How sad..." or will we be,  "moved by compassion..."

In the Bonds of the Gospel, Pastor Jeff