This week’s Monday Music comes from North Carolina. We have a great One Year Challenge site in Boone, NC.

From Thomas A. Jones’ God’s Perfect Plan for Imperfect People:

As instruments of his peace, we will find ourselves to be targets in a great spiritual war.

Someone once said “there are no ‘solos’ in the Kingdom of God”. Missionary work is not a solo performance, but a team effort for the Gospel. Ann Hasseltine Judson was the first wife of Adoniram Judson, who was a missionary to Burma. She is credited with being the first American woman foreign missionary, known for her devotedness to her husband and her devotedness to the mission. While we would not agree with all she taught, her supportive role for her husband’s missionary work is an example to us all to be good team players for the mission.

For a year and a half Mrs. Judson, with her baby in her arms, followed her husband from prison to prison, supplying him with food, for it was not provided by government, and working in every way to secure his release.

Read the whole thing. 

Don Downs gives an excellent and thorough overview of the history of Christianity in China up to today, and concludes with hopeful expectation, that China is now in a unique position in its history to seek God and His truth. Greater things are yet to come!

Perhaps because Chinese traditions were so savagely attacked over the past decades, and then replaced with such a naked form of capitalism, China might actually be at the forefront of this worldwide search for values…..May the Chinese people find that they do have a reason to hope and that there is a place in which those hopes can rest secure.

Read the whole thing.

If you have any questions for The OYC Guys, visit oneyearchallenge.org.

Check out this graphic explaining the major themes of the book of Jude.

See the full-size image.

This week’s Monday Music is a gospel classic from Alabama. We have a great OYC site in Auburn.

From Thomas A. Jones’ God’s Perfect Plan for Imperfect People:

Jesus clearly showed us what God had been doing all along — facing pain for us. But in Jesus we see God does not love us by sitting on the sidelines and shouting, “I love you.” No, enters into our suffering and bears burdens we could not bear. This is not because we deserve for him to do this. It is an act of pure grace. And now we are called to go into the hard places and live among others “just as Christ loved us.

John Geddie served as a missionary on the island of Aneityum, which is in modern day Vanuatu. He bravely shared the Gospel with a people that practiced strangling and cannibalism and in his day saw 25 churches established and even a translation of the New Testament. While we would not agree with all that John Geddie taught, his example of compassion should be imitated.

Force will not do. Only the compulsion of love will avail. Was it not the love of Christ that softened your hard hearts? Use no weapon but that which our Redeemer uses, the weapons of love. Let us constantly keep our hearts open ‘unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins.’

Read the whole thing.

It’s easy to rely on statistics and numbers as a measure for how well a ministry is doing. While statistics are indeed helpful, Karl Vater reminds us that every person attending church “has a name, a history and a future.”

Everyone in a church service, a discipleship class or a small group is a person for whom Jesus died. And knowing how many of them are in the room is a vital first step in ministering to them.

But it’s just a first step.

Read the whole thing.