Christian Aid is generally considered to be the first missionary agency to support and promote indigenous mission groups. It has been the catalyst behind the present reformation in foreign missions methodology.
Over the years, Christian Aid has provided more than $100 million in assistance to more than 800 evangelistic ministries based in 122 “mission field” countries overseas. These boards deploy a combined total of 100,000 missionaries serving in the most unevangelized nations of the world.
Christian Aid was first established in Washington, DC as a missionary outreach among overseas students and other visitors from unevangelized “mission field” countries. Since millions of foreign nationals come to the U.S. and Canada every year, their goal is toreach these visitors while they are away from home, and lead them to a saving knowledge of our Lord and Savior. Hundreds of highly educated men and women have gone back to provide leadership for indigenous missionary ministries among their own people on every continent.
When they return home to spread the gospel, Christian Aid serves as their supply line. They make known their work to believers in the US; print and mail out their newsletters; maintain their list of personal prayer partners and supporters; and issue tax-deductible receipts for contributions sent in for their work. 100% percent of all gifts received from their personal supporters is used for the support of their ministry.
To learn more about Christian Aid and how you might get involved in this ministry visit www. Christianaid.org.
Is it time for you to move on to a new printer for your ministry? Today’s printers allow you to print directly from the Web using apps or send jobs via phone and e-mail. Here are four good options for the office:
Lexmark Pinnacle PRO901
This color ink-jet printer as a 4.3 inch LCD touchscreen with apps for printing stamps, travel itineraries, calendars and photos from Stamps.com and other websites. It prints 33 pages per minute in black and white. Cost $250
Xerox Phaser 750N
This color laser printer does not have apps, but it can print PDF’s by e-mail. It comes with easy-to-use desktop software for adjusting print quality and handles 35 pages per minute. Cost $2,999
Epson Workforce 635
You can send jobs to this color ink-jet printer, which prints 15 pages per minute, from your iPhone app and Wi-Fi connection. You also have the option of loading photos directly using a memory card. Cost $230
HP Photosmart Premium Fax E-All-In-One
Like the Lexmark, this 24 pages-per-minute color ink jet comes with apps for printing photos, news feeds, and other files from the Web. You can also send job requests to the printer’s e-mail address. Cost $299
In ministry, it is sometimes the seemingly endless administrative tasks that can shift our focus away from what is most important. One of the biggest areas of frustration that I often found was in tracking and filing different sorts of paperwork. Whether it was tracking different expenses or tracking critical information, I often found myself behind. What I found more often than not was that I simply seemed to procrastinate until the last minute only to find mounds of paperwork waiting for me. Being that I did not savor the administrative aspects of my work, I choose to ignore the paper work as long as I could. I quickly learned that the key in these situations was not to ignore the problem, but to find a simple solution that could save time and valuable resources.
At The Neat Company, they believe you shouldn’t have to work to use your information. That’s why they developed a system of intelligent solutions that transform information into something that works for you. Whether it’s bills or expenses, business cards or financial documents, even your collection of newspaper clippings, they free the information trapped on paper—so you can secure it, organize it, and use it. Because when your information is transformed, you move from cluttered to confident, from overwhelmed to accomplished. The Neat Company believes the solution to our paper problem is not to use less paper, but to keep less paper. After all, what we really want is the information on the paper, not the paper itself. Their mission is to help small businesses and consumers at home transform paper into information that works.
They think of it as the digital filing cabinet. You can save, track and manage your information without the paper.
To learn more about if this solutions could work for you, watch the video below and visit www.neatco.com.
George Barna once said, “You cannot make good strategic decisions without reliable information about the people or situations you hope to change.“
Who is the Barna Group?
Barna Group is a visionary research and resource company located in Ventura, California. The firm is widely considered to be the leading research organization focused on the intersection of faith and culture. The Barna Group offers a range of customized research, resources and training to serve churches, non-profits, businesses and leaders.
What is the vision of Barna Group? Barna Group provides leadership and unique, strategic information and resources that help facilitate transformation in organizations, communities and individuals.
The company provides primary research; printed resources; leadership development; spiritual training; and church facilitation and enhancement. They seek to use our strengths in partnership with organizations and entrepreneurs to be a catalyst in moral, social, and spiritual transformation. They accomplish these outcomes by providing vision, information, strategy, evaluation and resources.
How Can Barna Group impact me and my church? Barna Group has an incredibly broad range of research topics available for you to view right now online. Visit their site at www.barna.org. On their home page you will see a list of topics; each topic provides a fascinating perspective of today’s culture as it relates to faith. Barna Group encourages the utilization of this information in the church setting, but check out their permissions page for more details.
Established in Nashville, Tenn., in 1891, LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention is one of the world’s largest providers of Christian products and services, including Bibles, church literature, books, music, audio and video recordings, church supplies, and internet services through LifeWay.com. The company also owns and operates 156 LifeWay Christian Stores across the nation, as well as two of the largest Christian conference centers in the country.
Through its publishing division, B&H Publishing Group, LifeWay has produced one of the most accurate and readable Bible translations ever – the Holman Christian Standard Bible. LifeWay is a religious nonprofit organization that receives no funding from the denomination and reinvests income above operating expenses in mission work and other ministries around the world.
TheFish.com offers the latest pop culture news and entertainment reviews from a Christian perspective. Read reviews of movies, DVDs, television, books, video games, and music that will help you apply a Christian worldview to pop culture. They believe that Christians should be active in supporting the arts and storytelling in popular culture. Join them in discussing faith, family, and culture in their online community and blogs. Sign up to receive the latest entertainment reviews and commentary via email from The Fish!
Ministry Centered Technologies was established by Jeff Berg in January of 2006. The company was founded to support a host of products created by Jeff, the most notable being Planning Center Online. Planning Center Online was birthed from a need at the local church where Jeff Berg was currently working. He was employed as the Director of Creative Development and worked in and reported directly to the Pastor of Worship Arts. Aaron Stewart was one of the worship leaders on staff and he and Jeff Berg brainstormed about an easier way to plan and organize the weekend worship service through the use of computer software. The result was Planning Center Online. Jeff originally created it as a windows based program and later redesigned it in Rails and released it as a web 2.0 program at the Saddleback Worship Festival and Conference in June of 2006. From there the company grew through magazine advertising and mainly through word of mouth among worship leaders.
Planning Center Online supplies one central place to organize all aspects of your ministry service and keep your staff and volunteers connected. Creating service plans, scheduling volunteers through simple e-mails, mapping chord charts, transposing mp3s, and reporting to CCLI are just a few of the program’s features. Volunteers receive scheduling e-mails and they have the ability to “accept”, “decline”, or “view the service” all with the click of their mouse. Volunteers will now be able to view all pdf’s and other various attachments associated with your plan in one central place.
Using Planning Center’s “Matrix” view will allow you to plan several weeks in advance through simple drag and drop functionality. Planning Center has specific Media and Song pages that allow you to search, filter and find specific songs or media for your plan.
The People page allows you to search for people to schedule by band position, vocal part, ministry group and the list goes on and on. For example, in just two clicks you can schedule a piano player for your service.
Each user on your account will have their own calendar where they can block out dates they are unavailable. You will be notified immediately of these dates while creating your schedule and be able to work around them. Their calendar will also reflect the dates that they are scheduled to serve.
Planning Center Online is web-based which means you or your users will not have to install any software. You just need an internet connection and you can access the program from anywhere . Check out our video tutorial below or just sign up for a free 30 days and see how Planning Center Online will revolutionize the way you plan your ministry services.
SermonSearch was originally an independent website named ‘Ministers’ Resource Center‘. In 1997, OnePlace.com purchased the site and renamed it SermonSearch.com. The focus of the site became presentation of sermons in text format, available for viewing and downloading.
Today SermonSearch.com is your online central source for sermon outlines, sermon illustrations, and church media. With over 20,000 Bible sermons on topics like love, prayer, faith and more from popular pastors and authors including Adrian Rogers, Charles Stanley, and more, SermonSearch helps make preparing for Sunday easy! Get sermon ideas and help for occasions like holidays, funerals, revival, and weddings. SermonSearch.com also has over 2,000 church and worship media resources including worship backgrounds, sermon PowerPoint backgrounds, video illustrations, and more! Create dynamic church services with powerful sermons, illustrations, and worship media from the central online sermon resource – SermonSearch.com.
SermonSearch.com Resources:
20,000+ Sermons
4,800+ Motion Backgrounds
3,600+ Still Backgrounds
2,200+ Video Illustrations
600+ Church and Worship Countdowns
Bible Study Tools with more than 29 translations, commentaries, concordances, lexicons and many more resources for studying the Bible.
Marriage Missions International exists to inspire, encourage, and equip those who are married and those who are preparing for marriage, by providing practical, Biblical resources through e-mail, their web site, teaching, and one-on-one opportunities, revealing the heart of Christ within marriage, so they are better able to:
“Be imitators of God as dearly beloved children and to live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2)
Through God’s leading, Marriage Missions International will communicate the Biblical worldview that marriage is ordained by God and that when we marry, we enter into a binding covenant with each other, with God at the very center of that agreement. Then, helping couples to prepare for and live within their marriages, Marriage Missions International will endeavor to:
Provide an ever increasing number of free, biblically based resources through the Marriage Missions web site
Serve couples throughout the world by sending weekly e-mail Marriage Messages that will challenge and help them to apply God’s Biblical principles in their marriages every day
Collaborate with other like-minded ministries, organizations, and individuals in order to broaden their scope and depth of ministry to those who are struggling in their marriages
Help pastors, counselors and lay people in third world countries through their web site to enable people to have biblically based materials to use in helping couples in their indigenous lands
Present training opportunities both nationally and internationally to couples who want to become leaders in re-igniting the passion in Christian marriages to be a “living picture” of God’s love to the world
Inspire couples and individuals to strengthen their own marriages so they can then reach out to help other couples who need healthy role models
Help those who are in full-time Christian service (pastors, missionaries and their spouses, etc.) deal with the issues and pressures of their profession that can tear their own marriages apart
Guide individuals and couples who are questioning and struggling to always look first to God’s Word, the Bible, and then to other resources for the answers/solutions they are seeking
One Day’s Wages (ODW) is an international grassroots movement dedicated to ending extreme global poverty. The numbers are staggering:
25,000 children under the age of 5 die each day due to poverty-related causes.
Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Nearly 900 million people do not have access to clean water.
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. The good news is that there are individuals and organizations around the world already doing amazing work to end extreme global poverty. One Day’s Wages (ODW) is not trying to re-invent the wheel but rather to collaborate and partner with others. In short, One Day’s Wages is joining them in the fight. Consider the impact of your one day’s wages, which is equivalent to about 0.4% of your annual salary.
$20 can provide clean water for one person for 20 years.
$10 can purchase a bed net to help prevent malaria.
$45 can pay annual school tuition for one child.
$100 can provide a woman with a sewing machine and job training.
Will you join the movement? Visit the website and calculate your one day’s wages. Choose the organizations and causes to support. Nominate your favorite organizations around the world for ODW to consider supporting. 100% of your donations go directly to organizations working to end extreme global poverty. Help spread the news and engage in the conversation on their blogs, forums, and website.
Christian Aid is generally considered to be the first missionary agency to support and promote indigenous mission groups. It has been the catalyst behind the present reformation in foreign missions methodology.
In ministry, it is sometimes the seemingly endless administrative tasks that can shift our focus away from what is most important. One of the biggest areas of frustration that I often found was in tracking and filing different sorts of paperwork. Whether it was tracking different expenses or tracking critical information, I often found myself behind. What I found more often than not was that I simply seemed to procrastinate until the last minute only to find mounds of paperwork waiting for me. Being that I did not savor the administrative aspects of my work, I choose to ignore the paper work as long as I could. I quickly learned that the key in these situations was not to ignore the problem, but to find a simple solution that could save time and valuable resources.
SermonSearch
Marriage Missions International
