Prioritizing Not Easy

Once more I returned to the University Hospital in Tirana, Albania. I didn't want to forget! And I thought,

Tomorrow as I board a plane for the comforts of home in the USA, I want to keep those gray little faces made of skin, stretched so tightly over the lemon-sized skulls, with so little flesh between that you can see every blood vessel and often the bone itself, constantly before me.

This wasn't the first such experience for me. I'd seen the starving hordes in Ethiopia, the helpless orphans in Romania, and the frightened refugees in Yugoslavia. Each time it was haunting. But to know that we can save a whole generation in Albania from starvation and perhaps lead most of this generation to Christ, caused me to ask some questions.

Isn't it time to seriously prioritize our giving? Is my alma mater's multi-million dollar expansion project, that is not crucial to continuing its process of educating, more important than teaching the lost and feeding the hungry? The $150 gift I had planned to send may be better spent, right now, influencing a family for Christ and saving a baby's life.

The new athletic center being built by the Christian school where your children attend would be nice, but ... the auditorium for your congregation would be nice, but ... after all, you don't fill the one you have but once a week now. I keep asking if those millions of dollars worth of stone are more important than saving souls from hell and children from starvation. We need not wonder what Jesus would tell us to do.

I was hungry and you gave Me meat. I was thirsty and you gave Me drink ... In as much as you have done it unto one of the least of these you have done it unto Me ... Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you ... (Matt. 25:31-46).

Go Teach All Nations

What about all those other good works: Christian education, local congregational buildings, and orphanages? Then I remembered, "For everything there is a season...... There will be times when there are not opportunities to save children from starvation or teach hundreds of people whose names and addresses in Eastern Europe we have that are waiting to be taught. There will be the time and the season to support again these lower-priority programs as I did in the past, but the time to save a starving child cannot wait until next year. The time to teach people begging to be taught cannot wait until later. So I'm going to prioritize my giving and pray you will also.

Reports from the Field

Albert Gardner and Bill Bates returned from India on January 25, 1993. They report 151 baptisms (one denominational preacher was baptized) and 7 new congregations. They carried a cross of bad water, bad food, bad roads, and bad mosquitoes. The problems pale to insignificance when a harvest of souls is reaped and the kingdom of God on earth is extended.

Stateside

The church at 203 North Claiborne Street in Goldsboro, North Carolina, reports a successful evangelistic training program. A large percentage of the congregation is now at work in teaching the lost about Christ and the church in their home community. Four Bible studies are in progress and one person has been baptized.

Dear Old England

J. W. Wealand is encouraged by the fruit of his labor in Britain. He also warns that a new book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, an international best seller, is dangerous. The book promotes a millennial view of the second coming and represents Jesus as sensual and deceptive.