Happy Memorial Day - Don't Forget Them

Beginning a Military Ministry - Integrating Military Families into Your Church

When military people are saved and discipled they make great church members. They are different than the average church member due to the nature of their work:

• They may not be in your church as long as your average civilian members.
• They must be integrated on purpose.
• There is the possibility that they have been trained in a good military church.
• Don’t treat them as outsiders. Realize their great need and their great potential for the cause of Christ. Below are some pointers on integrating military families into your church.

1. Realize That Their Families Have Unique Needs

• The children—they have moved many times and need to be embraced quickly by members, teachers, and other children.
• The teenagers—the teenagers have made friends and left them on more than one occasion. The best teenagers in the church must reach out to the military teens.
• The wife—she has many special needs. She needs a good Christian friend. One who will be there when troubling news comes (his unit came under attack—or worse). She needs a weekly opportunity for a mother’s day out. Forming a support group for wives of deployed soldiers would be a great blessing. She needs an accessible, loving pastor’s wife. She needs to be offered the opportunity to serve in the church. Many times in a well established church every job is filled by an ‘old timer,’ and the military wife is looked upon as temporary. Make a place for her to serve. Be there for her. Keep in touch with her regularly. Someone should know about the car or any repair that needs to be done at the house. The teens could be led to take care of the yard while her husband is deployed.

2. Remember Deployed Soldiers

• Pray for soldiers privately.
• Pray for soldiers publicly. Call their names in church meetings, Sunday school classes, prayer meetings, and the pulpit.
• Correspond with deployed soldiers.
• Send deployed soldiers gift boxes periodically.
• Lead your people or a class to adopt a deployed soldier and his family.

Battle Hymn Of The Republic

http://frankbutkind.blogspot.com/2009/07/battle-hymn-of-republic.html

Get a load of these high school kids singing. At the conclusion listen to the high notes on the trumpet, played by a high school kid! One of the fathers recorded it, added some graphic enhancements to the recording, and posted it on the web. The song, of course, is the ' Battle Hymn Of The Republic.' Be prepared - it could send a few shivers up your spine or at least a tear from your eye.

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Racism: Alive and Strong in America

Look. I understand. It's only been a few generations from slavery, when unimaginably cruel things were done to our darkskinned brothers and sisters which necessitated the mental classification of people being "below us" to justify what was done. I understand that deeply seated biases die hard, that your parents and my parents may have considered themselves nonracists, while we might classify them as slightly racist, and their parents as even more racist. I understand the need for a scapegoat; the human deisre to classify based on our own judgement, and the fear of going against the mainstream.

The fact remains that there is one race. The human race. God did not create different races. He did not put some humans under another group of humans for thousands of years because of something their great great great grandpappy did. God did not prohibit marrying "between the races".

Why do we judge based on skin color, hair type, eye shape, nose crook or other superficial basis? Where did these come from if not for us to judge and seperate ourselves according to?

I submit that these characteristics arose because of the tower of babel, when God divided mankind acording to language. Suddenly, the available gene pool for procreation was greatly reduced...and certain characteristics strongly arose in the various groups as they moved away and settled the earth.

It has nothingto do with a "black skin curse". Little do to with geography, and much to do with the gene pool. How dare we look with disgust, distust, contempt or even simple non-acceptance at our brother and sisters around America and around the world who share our blood, and yes, our race?

"God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring."

Article of interest: Click HERE