Speak up

8 Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves;

ensure justice for those being crushed.
9 Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless,

and see that they get justice.
Prov 31:8-9 (NLT)




I'll post the worship and sermon from yesterday a little later, but I wanted to get to the heart of it right now. New Hope is a church that stands with the saints in history by declaring the truth that we are all deeply flawed and scarred by sin, that we are in desperate need of a Savior, that Jesus is that Savior, and that by confessing our sins (agreeing with God), and receiving God's forgiveness by surrendering our lives and placing our faith in Jesus, we can be made whole. So we believe that Jesus IS our message. So having done that, how then do we live?

In the past year, we've established relationships to help us live out our faith while loving our neighbors. We work with Valparaiso Elementary, the City, Valp Cable, the Heritage Museum, and more recently Sharing and Caring to reach out in love.

As lead pastor, I believe that the only way I can see the command of Jesus to "make disciples, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded..." is to get people out of their chairs and into ministry - not to the church, but to the neighborhood. So I'm constantly looking for ways to do that here, and around the world. So I'm posting some ideas here today of ways to do just that.



Tom Davis is an amazing servant of Jesus, and the group of people who work with him are showing the American Church that "Yes We Can!" I placed a badge on this blog out of a strong identification with their work.




Then several organizations such as Samaritan's Purse, Heifer.org and others provide gift catalogs with tangible ways your family can be involved in impacting the world for Jesus. Our family is going to choose a project this Christmas, and I'm very excited about that.