This morning Paul Myhill (President of World Orphans) & I had the opportunity to speak before 100 Haitian pastors at a Campus Crusade for Christ training conference in Port Au Prince. The training was being led by Esperandieu Pierre – who I mentioned in my last post.
Esperandieu asked us to cast vision & encourage these pastors in their love & service for the orphans in their community. We didn’t have much time & because Esperandieu had to translate for us the time we had was cut in half.
When I woke up this morning I began asking the Lord what He wanted me to communicate to these men. It had to be short, easy to remember & useful. As I worked through my thoughts & reflected on a couple of passages I realize the best place to start & finish was at the very cornerstone of all we believe. I distilled it down into two main points:
- The gospel is the basis for WHY we care for orphans
- The gospel frees us to love others – we love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).
- The gospel frees us to look outside ourselves towards the needs of others – we look at Christ who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped (Philippians 2:5ff).
- The gospel provides the power by which we can love sacrificially when it doesn’t make sense for us to (Romans 6:11ff).
- The gospel is the model for HOW we care for orphans.
- The gospel is offered free of charge – we are to care for orphans without expectation of receiving anything from them (John 3:16).
- The gospel is not dependant upon our abilities – we are to care for orphans irrespective of their physical, mental or emotional capacity (Ephesians 2:8-9).
- The gospel addresses the whole person – we are to care for the spiritual, physical & emotional needs of vulnerable children. This is more than just basic food, clothing & shelter (James 1:27, 2 Corinthians 4:16ff).
- The gospel cost Christ his life – we are to spend ourselves for the cause of the orphan, the vulnerable & the defenseless (Romans 8:32, Romans 5:8)
At the end of the day orphan care should tie back to the grace of God made fully known in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.
Here are a couple of pictures from the conference:
[...] address 100 or so pastors – knowing I had limited time I chose to focus on the fact that the gospel is the foundation of our orphan care initiatives – so that was still fresh on my mind when this footage was [...]