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June emphasis is: World Mission Broadcast
The annual World Mission Broadcast Offering provides resources to reach millions around the world for Christ via broadcast media, especially radio. Received in June each year, the World Mission Broadcast Offering provides funding for program production, airtime, and follow-up materials. Holiness programming, delivered by radio, television and the Internet, reaches around the world with the message of Jesus and his redeeming love and helps to disciple those who respond.
As of April 22, 2008, World Mission Broadcast is reaching the unreached in:
- 30 Languages
- 73 Countries
- 94 Programs
- 7,012 Broadcasts*
Yet to reach with the Good News of Christ via World Mission Broadcast programs:
people in 122 Countries**
Your participation is needed to reach the unreached through World Mission Broadcast. In addition to the offering, prayer support of individuals and local churches is vital to this broadcast ministry.
While NMI promotes the World Mission Broadcast Offering for June of each year, contributions may be made at any time by sending a check. Mark check for World Mission Broadcast, make it payable to “General Treasurer, Church of the Nazarene,” and send to: Global Treasury Services, Church of the Nazarene, PO Box 843116, Kansas City MO 64184-3116.
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July emphasis is: Bible Schools and Seminaries
International Ministry
Nazarene educational institutions around the world are training preachers, teachers, evangelists, nurses, and vocational and lay leaders. This education is essential to the success of evangelistic efforts. Please remember the students, faculty, and their staff in your prayers.
August emphasis is : LINKS
The LINKS program of the Church of the Nazarene is a network of personal connections between missionaries and Nazarenes around the world. Missionaries are assigned to districts and, then on the district level, connected to local churches. This gives each church an opportunity to become personally acquainted with the missionary family and their field of service. Typically, churches send cards, cash gifts, packages, and other remembrances to their LINKS missionaries.
In return, the churches feel a sense of involvement with the global mission enterprise of the church through regular correspondence from the missionaries, updates from their field, and even through deputation services while the missionaries are on home assignment. The missionaries are encouraged, knowing people care and pray for them. The relationships built over time personalize names and faces that both the missionaries and their LINKS churches value highly.
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How Does The Kingdom Grow? (Mark 4:26-29)
Mark S Copley, District Missionary
"This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. (Mark 4:26-27)
I remember a childhood rhyme which asked an interesting question:
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
The answer to the question in the rhyme was no answer at all, except that Mary is a very strange gardener indeed. (Silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row?) But, please allow me to pose a similar question. It’s a question that anyone who enlists in the work of the Kingdom of God eventually asks:
Father, Father, not to bother,
But how does your kingdom grow?
This passage from the Gospel of Mark, chapter four, gives us Jesus’ answer to that question. The Parable of the Growing Seed (4:26-29) tells us that the Kingdom of God is like a farmer who sows the seed then does practically nothing else. He sleeps and rises—the daily cycle of living—meanwhile, the seed is mysteriously growing, quite apart from his effort. The farmer is clueless about how all this growth happens.
When she was about five, my daughter Bethany came home from preschool one day singing a similar rhyme. She sang:
Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley grow,
Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley grow,
Do you or I or anyone know?
How Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley grow?
The correct answer is, of course, “No, we don’t really know,” yet she proclaimed her answer in the second verse:
First, the farmer plants the seed.
Then, the farmer takes his ease.
He stamps his foot and claps his hands.
Then he turns and views the land.
Now even Bethany understood that all that stamping and clapping and viewing has nothing to do with whether the oats, peas, beans and barley grow. In fact, the picture of the farmer is a little foolish—out there stamping and clapping in the middle of the field.
In the same way, Jesus teaches that the kingdom’s “seed” (the “word” according to 4:14), once scattered, grows all by itself, independent of any human effort—“automatically” to transliterate the Greek word. The kingdom’s means of growth is hidden and mysterious.
The parable should discourage us from our harried attempts to “build the kingdom” by ourselves. The metaphor used for the worker in the kingdom of God is not a soldier, conquering the world by force, but a farmer, patiently waiting for the seed he has planted to grow. The growth of the kingdom is God’s business. In fact, we are even told not to bother trying to “weed the garden” (Matt. 13:24-30).
The farmer is not to lay awake at night worrying about the fruitfulness of the field, for to do so is foolish. It is here that we find the church’s encouragement in the parable. Though our efforts at kingdom work—preaching, teaching, giving, and serving—often seem to yield no immediate, visible results; we are promised that the seed is being grown even while we sleep. Apart from our observation, and even our understanding, the scattered word will not return void, and the harvest, in God’s own time, will come. As you look across the fields of our great state freshly planted with corn and beans, and as you consider the churches of our great district, be at peace – where good seed is planted, the harvest will come! Only pray for the Lord of the harvest to send workers. (Luke 10:2)
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on the church board for the past 47 years. She is retiring from her position this year. Her faithful service to the church over the years has been a wonderful example of how God can use people in many capacities. We are so grateful for all of her years of service. We also know that although she is no longer serving on the board that she has no intentions to stop serving the Lord and our church. Mary is a wonderful example of a woman of God and we are blessed to have her with us. (Pictured with Mrs. Strode is Pastor Donald Harrison) ---- Pastor Donald Harrison