Last week we had some friends of ours (the Berkleys) and a group of students from Crossroads Church here with us (both of the groups are from Georgia, USA). We were on-the-go all week and there was no time at all to blog, so we’re re-capping the trip each day this week, so here’s where we left off yesterday:
Wednesday morning we went to a place in Piraquara (a city outside of Curitiba) that has a program that takes local street kids, whose parents are involved in drugs and who live in extreme poverty, and they teach them music and dance. They also have a food pantry and a place where they give clothing to people in the program. They're able to generate money for the program through a bakery they have on site and a thrift store. It's a really good program that keeps the kids off the streets and provides a safe place for learning.
When we arrived that day, the kids sung for us before we did our ministry program for them. To hear these beautiful little kids singing and harmonizing was actually pretty amazing.
When all the kids left for the day we had a chance to sit down and have lunch with the director. After talking to him we found out that although he was a christian the program didn’t have any discipleship program in place or any kind of spiritual emphasis at all. They were only meeting physical needs, nothing spiritual. As we talked I asked if he was opposed to adding some type of spiritual aspect to the program and he said, “not at all, he’d love to but there’s nobody to do it.”
We (Hope and Life Brazil) will be meeting later this week and I’m gonna propose that we volunteer once a month to go and start some type of discipleship program there. Piraquara is only about 30 minutes away from our house and this could be a great opportunity to make disciples without over-extending ourselves. We just need to pray about it, together as a ministry team, to make sure it’s what we should do. As awesome as it is to meet the needs of the physical man we can’t neglect the spiritual man. That’s the part that’s eternal, right?
It seems like, before we left the States, a lot of churches were doing a great job meeting physical needs through food ministries and benevolence ministries, but somehow they lost focus of what the primary reason was that they were there... to share the Gospel and to make disciples. Sure, as christians (and as the church) we’ve got to meet physical needs, we can’t turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to people in need. But, it can never be at the expense of neglecting the reaching of people spiritually with the Gospel. So, any time there’s an opportunity to share the Gospel and make disciples, I think we need to take advantage of it... and this is one of those times.
Be sure to come back tomorrow. We’ll be telling you about our day at a different kind of orphanage that we visited with the mission team. It’s actually a model for an orphanage that we’d like to set-up here on the mountain. So, come back tomorrow: )
Love Ya,
Jim
No comments:
Post a Comment