While many Western Christians believe that persecution is a main story in China today, China Puzzle Author Mike Falkenstine shows us why Persecution is not the main story.

The New Testament without the old, as incredible as it is, is an incomplete story. Without the Old Testament providing the context for truly understanding the need for a Messiah, the intended Gospel message is diminished; it’s power compromised.  Even though most children’s Bible resources contain stories from the Old Testament, they are taught with little or none of the Jewish roots remaining. This oversight can create huge learning challenges and confusion for any Bible student, regardless of age and even more for Jewish believers or those of Jewish decent.

The Solution

To restore the Gospel to its original fullness and power, believers must rediscover their Old Testament heritage and the Jewishness that goes with it. A Roots and Shoots learning system designed to promote a whole Bible perspective can preempt some of the more difficult questions young believers face as they enter and grow in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Opportunity

After researching existing children’s Bible resources currently containing culturally relevant Old Testament and Jewish content, the materials available are few, limited in scope and expensive when you can find them. At the same time, there is an immediate demand from the international Church community, Jewish Roots churches in America and Messianic congregations in Israel and around the world for such resources.

The Model

Roots and Shoots will unite Word and Spirit, Holy Scriptures and New Testament, young and old, as well as traditional and contemporary modes of learning. By combining proven Bible curriculum development methodology with culturally relevant Jewishness intact, a new and exciting Messiah focused children’s Bible curriculum could emerge as the new international standard for national churches seeking children’s ministry resources – brimming with richness in both Jewish and Christian heritage.

The Team

Gospel Light Worldwide in partnership with Messianic Rabbi Jason Sobel and his hand selected Fusion Team have started development of Roots and Shoots, the first non-denominational age appropriate, culturally relevant children’s Bible curriculum to bless Israel and the Jewish People, the International Church community, Jewish Roots churches in America and Messianic communities in Israel, the United States and around the world.

Project Distinctiveness

This is a non-duplicated effort. No other ministry is attempting this approach. Gospel Light Wroldwide president and Jewish beliiver Marc Stein says, “My belief is the use and impact of these materials could go beyond Messianic congregations to the Gentile Church interested in rediscovering their Jewish roots. This may be another way to establish Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah into the hearts of the Gentile Church while teaching their young people about their true heredity and God’s plan for them. How much better to teach Matthew 23:39 than to this next generation!”

Seed Funding Needed

$144,000 is needed immediately for curriculum development, design, priniting and testing of Grades 4-6 of Teacher Guide and Student Activity Pages. Please contact our offices for more information.

For those of you involved in children’s ministry, this version also includes a new twist on the popular matching funds program to help you subsidize (or completely finance) your children’s ministry budget.

We want to see your church and children’s ministry vibrant! We know your church is seeking creative, new ways to engage your members and raise funds “beyond the tithe”, without incurring new expenses. That’s why this offer is so incredible. Unfortunately, this offer is only available for a limited time – so, your immediate response is required!

This version was created as our ministry response to help ease some of the suffering churches and church goers are experiencing from the economic downturn.

Gospel Light Worldwide president Marc Stein said, “When we consider how important entertainment becomes during troubled times, creating the expanded Free Church Movie Night platform seemed like a reasonable thing for us to do. To be relevant today, we need to make quality Christian entertainment accessible, affordable and desirable.”

If you have already received your free movie but want to receive the expanded offer information, click here to receive Your Thinking Globally, Acting Locally Form.

For your Free movie, please complete the form below:

The One Million Children campaign was developed to focus attention, rally support and spread awareness of the significance of helping children around the world know Jesus. The One Million Children story is now being shared through a storytelling website and a One Million Children movie entitled, ‘A Journey of the Heart’ that is currently offered free in DVD or digital formats. There is even an infectious One Million Children song that causes toes to tap and hearts to move to a Bob Marley like reggae beat.

Dr. Towns says, “I so approve of this program that I give one-half of my tithes and that’s over and above my local church tithe; one half of my tithe from my books goes to this campaign. Why? Because, I want to reach the children of the world.”

Dr. Towns is using his “Mr. Sunday School” platform to challenge the local church and their mission boards to partner with him and Gospel Light Worldwide to reach One Million Children. He says, “For $83 per month, we can train one thousand children a month.” $1 covers the total cost for an entire year of children’s Bible study or Sunday School, including a culturally relevant translation, teacher training, printing and distribution of the materials, delivering the lessons and evaluation.

Dr. Towns has a long standing relationship with the entire Gospel Light family and currently serves as the Chairman of our Board of Directors. We are blessed to have him.

To see the video larger format, please click here.

The floods were caused by monsoon rains, which were forecast to continue into early August and were described as the worst in this area in the last 80 years. The death toll from Pakistan’s floods has risen to 1,600 with the situation worsening as raging river waters move from the northwest part of the country to the Punjab–the nation’s agricultural heartland–and to Sindh, south of Pakistan. Hundreds of villages have been submerged; at least 2.5 million have been displaced and that number is expected to increase. In all, more than 4.2 million people are in some way affected by the flooding.

The most urgent needs these victims have are: Food, Clean drinking water, Plastic Sheets, Clothes, shoes, shelters (tents) and Medicines.

PSSM has made survey in two areas; Charsada (North of Pakistan) and Sukkur-Ghotki (South of Pakistan) where we recently established our south branch. We are planning to help at least 2000 families at early stage with food, clean water, clothes and shoes for children. To reach 2000 families with said items we will need US$30/each, which means we need a total of US$60,000 to show them love and care which Jesus has taught us.

100% of all donations will go directly to relief efforts. Please pray for Pakistan and her people; and donate generously today.

Thousands of children are enjoying “not being at the games” and learning about Jesus through well planned puppet shows and other Bible story programs. Our team, along with resident churches, stage these kind of fun-for-all mini-VBS events before matches and attract kids from far and wide.

So, what’s better than a victory at the World Cup?

The victory that comes from helping children know Jesus. In anticipation of their special victory, we have an immediate need for $7,000 to help 7,000 children enter and grow in a personal relationship with Jesus. $1 covers the total cost for an entire year of children’s Bible study or Sunday School, including a culturally relevant translation, teacher training, printing and distribution of the materials, delivering the lessons and evaluation.

Our $1 Campaign makes it easy to invite your friends and church to join in this incredible opportunity. In fact, we just heard from a small church that challenged their members to raise $100 and when they counted all of the money collected from the adults and the children, the Lord multiplied their $100 seven times! What a remarkable blessing and reminder of God’s incredible promises.

You, too, can be blessed by helping needy children in South Africa receive the greatest victory of all. Please give generously, start a challenge with friends or at your church and feel free to share this post with your entire address book.

Together, we can make a huge difference. Join us now!

“Mr. Sunday School” and our Board Chair Elmer Towns says, “I so approve of this program that I give one-half of my tithes and that’s over and above my local church tithe; one half of my tithe from my books goes to this campaign. Why? Because, I want to reach the children of the world.”

The One Million Children campaign was developed to focus attention, rally support and spread awareness of the significance of helping children around the world know Jesus. The One Million Children story is now being shared through a storytelling website and a One Million Children movie entitled, ‘A Journey of the Heart’ that is currently offered free in DVD or digital formats. There is even an infectious One Million Children song that causes toes to tap and hearts to move to a Bob Marley like reggae beat.

He says, “For $83 per month, we can train one thousand children a month.”

To kick off our effort, we specifically chose the International Children’s Day, June 14, 2009, to officially release the ‘One Million Children: A Journey of the Heart’ movie.

In Matthew 18, Jesus asks us to look after children, yet historically, children have received disproportionately less attention than ministry involving adults. We’d like to believe this is simply an oversight, but the facts are difficult to ignore. It’s estimated that 80 percent of new believers worldwide are younger than 15 years old, yet fewer than 20 percent of the resources donated to global missions go to children.

We believe in generously and joyfully supporting the Lord’s work in all areas of ministry. Jesus taught about one-person planting and the other harvesting and by ignoring children, have generation after generation missed the main harvest? Together, we can change that.

Please pray and consider making a personal statement of support for International Children’s Day. Every dollar you donate provides a needy child to enter and grow in personal relationship with Jesus through a complete year of Bible lessons. You can make a difference!

The “Pareto Principle” became commonly known as the “80/20 rule,” has stood the test of time and scrutiny. Many would agree that the 80/20 imbalance can be found in almost every aspect of modern life.

Upon examination, you may notice that 80 percent of your accomplishments come from 20 percent of your daily to-do list or that 80 percent of the money tithed at your church is given by 20 percent of the people. The actual calculation may be 67/33 or 83/17 or some similar ratio, but the larger the sampling of data the closer to 80/20 the result will be.

How does the 80/20 rule apply to the Great Commission?

It’s estimated that 80 percent of new believers worldwide are younger than 15 years, yet fewer than 20 percent of the resources donated to global missions go to children.

Shocking? Yes. So, the next logical question is, “now what?”

According to the response protocol developed specifically to invert an 80/20 imbalance, very few things really matter. In essence, start putting the resources where they are most productive.

The secret is not to do less of everything, but to do fewer of the things that don’t bear fruit and more of the things that accomplish what we want, or more accurately, what the Lord has asked of us.

In Matthew18, Jesus asks us to look after children, yet historically, ministry to children has received disproportionately less funding than ministry involving adults. We’d like to believe this is simply an oversight, but the facts are difficult to ignore.

We believe in generously and joyfully supporting the Lord’s work in all areas of ministry. We also remember what Jesus taught about one-person planting and the other harvesting. By ignoring our children, generation after generation has missed the opportunity to change our world.

Dr. Wess Stafford, president of Compassion International says, “If we could see what’s going on and the priorities through the eyes of Jesus, children would go from the end of the line to the front of the line and it would make sense on every front. It simply has to change for the Kingdom to be advanced.”

There may be more questions than answers but, as Winston Churchill said, “Never worry about action, only inaction.” By passively allowing the 80/20 rule relevance to Christian ministry, are we actively participating in the “Great Omission?”

A heartfelt confession from D.L. Moody in his later years provides an apt answer: “If I could relive my life, I would devote my entire ministry to reaching children for God.”

Article by Kristy Kauffman

When she was 14 and frightened for her life as flood waters threatened the second floor of her Johnstown, PA home, Ruth Delaney (name was changed to preserve anonymity) did what many people may have done – made an impassioned promise to God.

Sick to her stomach with fear, the teenager vowed to God that if she survived the disastrous 1936 flood, she would one day build an orphanage to take care of other children who were also afraid.

Unlike many people who make promises to God, Delaney is making good on her promise… 73 years later.

Less than a month ago, Marc Stein, president of Gospel Light Worldwide, made an annual trip to Chicago to visit a ministry where he used to work. It was there Stein first learned of Delaney, 88, of Pittsburgh, and her God-inspired dream to create a haven for orphaned children, in, of all places, South Africa.

Stein learned that an opportunity with another organization had just fallen through for Delaney. She was reaching out to different ministries, as she had been doing for years, determined to find another way to fulfill her promise to God and care for some of his youngest children.

Amazingly, Stein knew of a project to do just that. It was two years in the works and half a world away. It was amazing because the project was not known to the public, the two years construction preparations were almost complete, and, it was in none other than South Africa.

When Stein contacted the leaders of the Lonehill Village Church project, he learned they were a single signature away from having all of the permits in place to start construction.

“They were working under the belief that the Lord was going to provide the provision when the process was completed,” Stein said.

That two-year process involved detailed plans, proposals and prayers for a new type of orphanage. Lonehill’s plan is to create foster homes for children who have lost parents to HIV and AIDS, of which there are almost 2 million in the country of South Africa alone.

Under a Nelson Mandela mandate, instead of institutional-type orphanages where older children were known to bully and abuse younger ones, orphans would be provided a more traditional family type of environment.

Lonehill’s proposal builds three four-bedroom, two-bathroom homes, which will each hold eight children and two house parents, in Cosmo City, South Africa. The corner lot and two adjacent parcels will be fenced in together, adding security in an already safe neighborhood for children who have had anything but.

Three local churches will each adopt a home and bring up the home’s children in its church family. Instead of a cold, institutional setting, these children will grow up in the closest thing possible to a real family.

They were one signature away, and after 73 years, Ruth Delaney was now one phone call away.

With her gift established, Gospel Light Worldwide was soon working to arrange her trip to the Cosmo City site.

Stein continued to be amazed by how every detail for the trip fell smoothly into place.

“I believe it was literally being held for her,” he said.

“He (Stein) called it a divine appointment,” Delaney said, “and I agree with that. It seems God is taking care of everything.”

Travel visas, a passport and other sometimes frustrating travel details worked out with ease.

Delaney leaves November 15 for nine days in South Africa in the midst of its rainy summer. Groundbreaking on the three foster homes will occur at the season’s end in late January or early February. Project leaders say it will take 20 weeks from the day of the groundbreaking to the day the children and house parents move in. Delaney plans to be back in Cosmo City in June to work at the site.

Stein calls Lonehill Church’s first 3-home development in Cosmo City a “beautiful model that will be replicated across South Africa.” He hopes other churches will do similar projects and calls Delaney “the catalyst.”

According to Delaney, this 73-year chain of events was entirely the work of God – from the frightened teenager in a historic flood – to Marc Stein’s visit to Chicago – to the orphanage construction project ready for funding.

God provided her a way out of the flood. Now God is using use her to provide a way out to other children in distress.

For it all, Delaney gives the glory to God, from start to finish.

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$24,000 is still required to complete these Foster Homes, please call (805) 535-2424 for more information.