Keeping The Main Thing As The Main Thing
As I direct the training of nationals pastors for evangelism and church planting in restricted access countries, once again, I’m convinced of the importance of “keeping the main thing as the main thing” – Evangelism !Think about this… Jesus had 3 years of public ministry, the reason people stopped following Christ is because evangelism was essentially much of what He did, and it got more dangerous everyday…When Jesus preached 5000 would attend as long as He fed them When he cut out the food, only 500 showed up When He said I’m preaching; you’ve got to pray only 120 turned…
This is the story of Jaideep Singh, who recently became a Maryknoll missionary, a societies of apostolic life founded in the United States in the early 1900s. Today he is Fr. Stephen James Taluja. Born in 1981, the youngest child of an important Indian Sikh family, the only male eagerly awaited by his parents after three daughters. Fr. Stephen talks to AsiaNews about his unique and personal story that revolves around his discovery that Christ is the Mighty God "in weakness" and the certainty that "God is faithful." "My mother was a very devout woman who introduced me to the teachings of the Guru Granth Sahib educated us at home in the prayer and recitation of the hymns of the sacred scriptures. My father accompanied me to the Gurdwara, the Sikh temple, and he raised me in the faith of the almighty. My parents instilled in us children love for God and a sense of service to the community."
Our world has been redefined to a faster pace than we thought, especially in the last 5 years. Our world has grown additional tongues, ears and eyes; we call it the virtual world. My mother is still trying to wrap her head around that fact that majority of the ministry work is actually done on the computer. And from the way it seems, the virtual world has taken over a generation itself. From relationships to direct communications, everything seems to be moulded by this world. Now since there are thousands of benefits available, if we are not careful, we may end up becoming slaves to the computer and it in turn affecting our overall job performance, relationships and other activities.