I said in an earlier post that I would try and find a church website in New Orleans with relevant prayer topics etc, but unfortunately I've not found one yet. However, I did come across the following article and photos on the BBC News website.It's brilliant to know that the church is responding to the gospel by reaching out to those hit hardest by hurricane Katrina. In Galatians 2:10 Paul wrote: "All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do." The poor are dear to God and close to his heart and when the church acts to help the needy God is really happy. The following article should warm our hearts too.
The following article is ©BBC.
Top Photo: ‘We’re from Jesus’
The Soul Patrol rolled into Bogalusa, Louisiana, ten days after Hurricane Katrina did.
They brought with them food, water and clothing.
Local residents assumed that they were from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Are you with Fema?” one woman asked.
“No, we’re with Jesus,” was the reply.
Homeless helpers
The dozen volunteers passing out aid were from Raven Outreach, an Evangelical Christian ministry.
Founded two years ago by Pastor Troy Bohn Raven aims to bring the gospel to Sin City itself – New Orleans.
Or it did until Katrina. Now the core of Raven Outreach is itself homeless, camped out in the garden of a friend 60miles away.
‘Can we pray for you?’
They are passing out more than just food and water.
Pastor Troy also asks, “Can we pray for you?” Most people say yes.
His passionate, high-speed prayers range over a wide variety of subjects, including speeding the work of electrical repairmen.
“Because the Lord God cares about that,” he says.
Pizza delivery
They have been on the go since the hurricane hit, Pastor Troy says.
They had taken refuge in Natches, Mississippi, so they started there and have been working their way around devastated communities, distributing food.
“In Natches, Domino’s made us as many pizzas as they could make and we passed them out to people in parking lots,” he says.
Donations
Friends have come to help, including Max Montano (left) and his wife Kimber come from Amarillo, Texas. “I called some people and we had two to three truckloads of donations within a couple of hours. My living room started looking like a warehouse.”
‘Fell into place’
Troy Bohn’s brother Todd also works with Raven. Disaster relief was a natural outgrowth of the church’s mission, he says.
“This is our ministry already.
“We’ve always been feeding people, so it just kind of fell right into place with this tragedy that we knew we could do some good.”
‘People know best’
Many people in Bogalusa are powerfully affected by their meeting with Raven, including Gloria Avery, 44, who is left in tears.
After praying with her and embracing her, Troy Bohn slips a wad of cash into her hand.
“As God brings it into our hands, we’re going to let that stuff loose. How they use it, they know best many times.”
‘Part of the solution’
“We see a lot of people weeping but we bring hope to them through Jesus,” associate pastor Alex Hill says.
“It’s time to start focusing on the good. It’s blessed more to give than to receive.
“People give us donations and as much as they give us, we give out.
“We’re going to give. We’re going to be part of the solution.”
HELP! That is the best way that I can say it right now concerning what is about to happen here in New Orleans.
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly, the whole nation’s attention was upon New Orleans and the whole Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation that followed when our levee system failed and we found New Orleans 80% under water!
Well, the attention that we were getting has decreased and the type of attention that is being paid to the city now is not the attention that will truly have the biggest long term impact.
While the Mayor, the Governor, the President, FEMA, the Army Corp of Engineers and a plethora of other private and governmental agencies argue and debate on the rebuilding of a city—the Church needs to instead be focusing on the unprecedented Harvest and Revival opportunity that this has presented the Gulf Coast and this Nation.
HELP! Is how one could simply break down the vision that Paul received when his brother needed him to come to Macedonia at a pivotal time for that region.
Acts 16:9-10 says, “And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, Come over to Macedonia and help us. Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.”
When we began our work full time here in New Orleans in 2003, the Holy Spirit spoke to us that (He) “was sending REVIVAL upon the Gulf Coast of the USA and that we needed to network with the Body of Christ in preparation for this time” Luke 5:1-7
In a couple of months, February 24-28, 2006, RAVEN Ministries will be hosting their 10th annual Mardi Gras Outreach in New Orleans. This is a gathering of believers from all over the country who come to share the LIVING WORD with a DYING WORLD.
In the months since Katrina we have personally seen approximately 400 people come to the Lord Jesus Christ in the French Quarter and on Bourbon Street. The “harvest is ready to be harvested but the labors are too few.”
Please come and help us! You can get more information and contact us through our website at www.BigGrace.com and then click on the Mardi Gras Outreach button or you can email me, Pastor Troy D. Bohn, at ravenmail@cox.net or call me at our offices anytime at 504-304-6535
We NEED you here with us for this time. THIS is where we can break the back of the devil over this city and see revival spread throughout this nation—but we need your help to do it.
GOSPEL BEGINS WITH "GO"
ReplyDeleteIt was three years ago when the Lord Jesus spoke to Melanie and I and said, “Go to New Orleans.” We had labored there in Amarillo, Texas for thirteen years; pastoring the church that we had planted, reaching the lost, feeding the hungry and equipping the saints for the work of the ministry.
Our families were there. Our closest friends were there. Our fondest memories were there. The only thing that was not there was God’s will for what He desired us to do next. In just three months time from announcing to the church that we were leaving, we had loaded all of our earthly possessions in a school bus and began ministering full time in the streets of New Orleans.
I have discovered that each step and each place that God takes us is typically a wonderful learning experience and time of preparation for the next step in which He will have us take.
Many in the Body of Christ though grow too comfortable “camped out” in the experience and never truly get to experience the true realization of God’s destiny for their lives. We experience a tremendous move of God in our midst and instead of taking what He has taught us through that experience and using it to reach a lost and dying world, we instead “build a memorial” to the experience and spend the next 25 years trying to remind ourselves of what once was.
Across this nation there is a trend towards the Mega-Church (churches with membership over 1,000). There are even churches in the US that boast membership at 30,000 or more! With that many Mega-Churches being pastored by Mega-Ministers one would think that the Mega-Problems in our cities would be quickly solved by a mobilized army of high-powered, Holy Ghost filled disciples being churned out in these faith factories!
But therein lies the problem: Churches, or more accurately “leaders of churches” are no longer “equipping the saints for the work of the ministry”, but have instead adopted a “come and watch me minister” mentality.
On the basketball court it is referred to as being a “ball hog.” There is one person taking (or calling) all the shots and getting all the points on his personal stat sheet, but the team is suffering through yet another losing season. Friends, the time is too short for the Body of Christ to suffer through another losing season! We have got to start functioning like the CHURCH was meant to function.
SAVED
SANCTIFIED
SENT
Pastors, ministers, elders, leaders (or whatever is in vogue this week in regards to titles) have got to get back to the true work of the ministry!
Ephesians 4:11-12 “It was He (Jesus) who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”
Instead of spending multi-millions on state of the art, multi-media comfort centers for the spiritually impotent—why not use the resources to reach the lost, equip them (discipleship) for the ministry, and then send them out to win more people to Jesus before they get too comfortable and too convinced that the GOSPEL message is somebody else’s responsibility to share with the world!
Last year in the NBA (National Basketball Association) a young player for the Phoenix Suns won the award as the leagues Most Valuable Player.
The player, Steve Nash, was the teams point guard. He was the one who called the plays on the court, he was the one who the ball came to first, and he was the leader of the team. Yet, if you looked at Nash’s statistics you would see that there were other players in the league who had better numbers in one area or another.
Nash did not lead the league in scoring or in rebounding—but he did what an MVP should do, he made everyone around him better! The one area that Nash was the very best in the league was that of assists. For those unfamiliar with that term, it means the number of times he passed to others so that they could score instead of him taking the shot!
For the season Nash had 861 total assists. The second best in the league had 668. That is 193 more than his closest competitor! The true MVP’s (most valuable preachers) in the Church today are those who make others better. Nash did such a great job that there were other members of his team that some thought might eventually be league MVPs themselves. He ELEVATED the play of his team mates.
Philippians 2:3-5 says “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”
Rarely, if ever, in professional basketball has the team with the leagues highest scorer ever won the championship. While the individual may boast great accomplishments on his own—he is not able to win the whole thing by himself.
This is the picture of the church of today. There is very little if any genuine equipping the saints for the Gospel Ministry. I qualify that by inserting the word Gospel, because there is much going on in the Church-but very little of it results in people taking the Gospel to a lost and dying world.
While there are many activities filling the schedules of a great many in the Christian Church of today; meetings, conferences, retreats, and even a great many Bible studies and prayer gatherings—how is it that with all of these activities being done in the Name of Jesus that so few people are out doing the actual work of Jesus?
“The Son of Man (Jesus) came for only one reason, and that was to seek out and to save lost people.” Matthew 19:10
That sounds pretty clear to me!
Some of the greatest coaches in any sport will often say, “We have got to work on the fundamentals. The game is won or lost based upon the fundamentals.” This is the same with the Gospel. It all will really come down to whether or not we are raising up people (a team) that is solid in the fundamentals. The fundamentals are pretty simple:
Love God with all your heart and life.
Then tell as many people about Him as you possibly can.
If I, as a minister, do not lead the league in assists, then I am really not my teams MVP. The church, and especially those in leadership have got to get back to the basics (fundamentals) of equipping the saints for the work of the ministry of reaching people for HIS KINGDOM and not just establishing another flesh-based, low-impact, man-centered program that might make the “spiritual highlight reel,” but will never make the type of eternal impact that HEAVEN DEMANDS.
“Ball-Hog” Christianity may fill up stadiums (or sanctuaries) but it will NEVER win the ultimate prize: “Well done My good and faithful servant.”
Jesus raised up (12) and then told them, “You will do even greater things than I have done.” That was His goal– to teach them how to take it to the next level. Yet, a “have your best life now” mentality has slipped into the church under the guise of positive Christianity that has been the death knell to global evangelization. Instead of raising up a generation of blood bought, word taught, Holy Spirit filled warriors of the Cross– the church at large has cloned a brood of spineless, powerless pew-sitters with no urgency for those outside of the walls who have not had the opportunity to hear the Gospel themselves!
2 Cor 4:3-5 “But if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord;
Bigger buildings, more luxurious surroundings, a more relevant approach and a more welcome atmosphere seem to be the mantras being chimed by today’s diminished standards.
Jesus said the “fields are white and ready to be harvested”, yet the “fields” that He spoke of where the harvest fields of souls filling street corners and the market places of this world-that demand that we GO and take His message to the masses.
Today the “harvest field” has instead become the proverbial “field of dreams” and the empty promise is “if you build it...they will come.” Buildings, programs, pizza parties, lattes, and grinning greeters will never draw a person into His presence. These things are things that man has power over! These things are man-made and man-centered.
Romans 1:21-23 “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man…”.
The GOSPEL demands GOING. The GOSPEL demands DYING to SELF and LIVING for JESUS. This is rarely a comfortable situation! Can you imagine these book titles in your local Christian Bookstore:
“Go through hell NOW so that you can experience heaven LATER.”
(Rom 5:3, Rom 8:18, Phil 1:21, Phil 3:10-11)
Or perhaps this one
“How To Be Hated”
(Matt 10:22, James 4:4, John 17:14)
These titles would obviously have a more scriptural foundation! Now am I saying that living the Christian life is just some hard, negative, drudgery? Not in the slightest way! It is the GREATEST LIFE that one could ever know and experience-but with it there are GREAT DEMANDS and great CONSEQUENCES involved.
To see someone’s heart miraculously changed and transformed by the Holy Spirit upon hearing and receiving the Word of God is indescribable!
Watching an alcoholic pour out the drink he just paid for in the street and then kneel down in front of thousands weeping before Jesus defies description.
Suddenly seeing a light come on in the darkened soul of a young man set free from years of homosexuality is the most amazing thing!
All THESE things require GOING out where the broken and bruised are. If your Gospel doesn’t REQUIRE you to GO, then it is not GO-SPEL, but just a SPELL!
Galatians 3:1 “Oh, foolish Galatians! What magician has cast an evil spell on you? For you used to see the meaning of Jesus Christ's death as clearly as though I had shown you a signboard with a picture of Christ dying on the cross.” NLT
It is time to break free from the spell and then GO do that which God has repeatedly commanded in His Word.
Most Christians would readily agree that “this world is not our home” and that we are all just “strangers and pilgrims” in this place—–yet why is it that the core of our time and investments are made in those things that are so temporary and this-worldly? I lay it squarely upon the shoulders of pastors and teachers who have failed to equip, empower and release His people into their God-given and God-required mandates to reach people for HIS KINGDOM.
As long as winning the lost (with the Gospel—not a bounce house, hot dog or cappuccino machine) remains on the backburner of Christendom and not our primary purpose in this life, then the church will remain a place of “ball hogs” and “bloated statistics” with no true victories.
If we genuinely believe that our stay is temporary, then why not “pass the ball” and get other people involved in the game rather than building more coliseums to showcase our religious superstars.
Church buildings, gymnasiums, air conditioning—there is nothing inherently wrong with those things—but once THEY become the focus, THEY become the idols that testify against us and set us in difference toward the TRUE Gospel of GO.