Name:David Country:United States State:California Metro:Los Angeles Birthday:9/1/1985 Gender:Male
Interests:"God had an only Son and He was a Missionary. I am a poor imitation, but in this service I hope to live and in it I wish to die." - David Livingstone Expertise:Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee.
Destitute, despised, forsaken,
Thou from hence my all shall be.
Perish every fond ambition,
All I’ve sought or hoped or known.
Yet how rich is my condition!
God and heaven are still my own. Occupation:Military Industry:Government
I am at about 45% of my support goal as of today and OMF is trying to get me started this month but obviously I'm having a lot of problem starting before all my support is in.
I have talked to 150 people personally about missions support and of those 150:
40 have responded
$17,000 has been raised
the average donation has been $450
the average age of each donor has been 22
and $19,000 still needs to be raised
110 have made no response
Please pray that the other 110 people I have talked to will at least respond in some way or other! Cuz if people continue to give at the current average amount and just half of the 110 people respond then I hit my goal!
I've been serving in the Youth for 5 years now and before our current pastor came, I lead worship and gave the message every Friday and Sunday for a year. Throughout all this, our leadership received no help from most of the parents but youth group is usually like that everywhere. So tonight when I shared about my need for OMF and how without people's partnership I can't start my job I was hoping to at least have prayer partners. But honestly, when most of the parents make over $100,000 a year it would have been nice to see people partner with me financially too.
The part that was heartbreaking though was when I gave each parent a free copy of my first book and my support letter. I wanted them to read through my book and letter and see if God was moving them to partner with me. To my surprise, right after my presentation one of the parents came up to the person next to me and used my support letter as scratch paper and handed it to another person. That tore my heart out, as I watched her walk away with the book I gave her, knowing I have served her youth and see that she wouldn't even consider reading through my letter to see if she wanted to support me. What was really tough was watching her do it right in front of my face and not even think twice about it.
I can endure 26 miles of running, months of hunger and the risk of being jailed for life but to see the parents of the kids you serve slap you in the face like that. It's just too much.
I love creative strategies for missions. It would be hypocritical for me to praise traditional methods of missions becuz I use bodybuilding as a primary means of breaking new ground. But....
Businessmen are limited in their ability to church plant (you just don't have the time)
you're limited in your ability to produce/translate resources (a lot of this has to do with education/training experience)
ability to train leaders under you for vocational ministry (this again goes back to mostly education and experience)
While I agree that we need to seek creative solutions in reaching restricted countries we need to realize that a full time business person is seriously handicapped by the fact that they aren't getting the hands on experience of pastoring or church planting. I think that is a serious handicap we need to consider because the focus of evangelism should be through churches and not individuals.
