Tag: missionaries

Rejoice In Everything

Carl Pollard

Kentucky used to have several species of wolves, but in the 1980’s they were officially labeled extinct. Back in the 70s and early 80s there was a special bounty offered for wolves caught alive. Each live wolf brought into captivity would bring $5,000! 

That turned two men, Sam and Jed, into fortune hunters. They headed for the forest. Day and night they looked for their $5,000 wolf, but they couldn’t find him. It was hopeless. One night, as they camped in a clearing, Sam awoke to find more than 50 wolves surrounding the camp. 

Their eyes were flaming and their teeth were bared. He nudged his friend and said, “Jed, wake up! We’re rich!” That’s a pretty good attitude to have despite the situation. 

A positive attitude will take you far in life. What about the day when attitude won’t carry you through? What about the day when life’s circumstances are simply overwhelming? We tend to lose sight of Who our God is in these times. That’s when we need encouragement the most. Encouragement is “the action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope.”

In the days that we are overcome with troubles, sometimes a good attitude alone isn’t enough. The peace that passes all understanding is one of the most precious forms of encouragement that God has ever given us. It’s the solution for the pursuit of peace. It’s the peace that comes when we avoid impure actions. And it’s the satisfying answer in our chase for contentment, for the ability to truly enjoy life. If your desire is to experience the peace of God that surpasses understanding you must 

Choose Joy (4) 

Before Paul ever wrote his letter to the church at Philippi discussing the idea of unity, he had already been there in person. 

When Paul first visited Philippi, it didn’t take him long to find trouble. He and Silas were arrested, stripped of their clothes in front of a crowd, and brutally beaten. (Acts 16:22) 

When Paul and Silas regained consciousness, they were in the most secure portion of the Philippian jail, surrounded by prisoners. Their wounds were fresh, and the dirt of the prison floor must have added to the torment. With their feet in stocks designed for discomfort, it made for a day when Paul and Silas needed encouragement about as badly as they ever had.

So what is their reaction to a really bad day?

Acts 16:25 says, “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them,”

I’ve always found that passage of scripture nearly unbelievable. Two men serving God were singing praise to God, on a day when God was apparently nowhere to be seen. 

Paul had seen God’s power before. 

In fact, a miracle of God was what led to all the trouble. So where was the miracle during the arrest, the humiliation, and the beating? 

Why had God let His missionaries sit in the rot of a prison dungeon all afternoon, and half the night? The bigger question: is, “Why would Paul and Silas sing praise to God under such conditions?”

This is rarely our reaction when we face trials. While they are praising God an earthquake shook the prison, Paul and Silas were freed from their chains, but the prison didn’t collapse upon them. By morning, their wounds were clean, and the gospel was sweeping across the city and the guard of the prison believed and was baptized. There must be a connection between what happened to Paul in Philippi on his first visit, and what he wrote to the church there several years later.

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul wrote 4:4. 

Could they have forgotten Paul the prisoner who sang at midnight? “Don’t be anxious about anything. Instead, pray. And God’s peace will cover your heart.” Choosing joy in the midst of anxiety is faith lived out.

Paul and Silas used an opportunity that most would see as rock bottom to spread the word. Their response to choose joy led to the establishing of the church that Paul is writing to. They aren’t just being told to rejoice always, they saw firsthand two men who were anxious about nothing, and they had God’s peace! If you want this same peace that lets you rejoice in the worst of circumstances, choose prayer instead of worry. Choose to rejoice, because we have the ability to control how we respond. 

God can take you through your hardest moments.

“SMALL CONGREGATIONS”

 

Neal Pollard

I grew up in Georgia mostly attending congregations that weren’t numerically large.  I never attended a church of more than 200 until I went to college, but even then the two churches I preached for during that time were smaller than that. I have preached full-time for three congregations, and two of them were smaller than 200. Yet, when I speak of small congregations, I am talking about those less than 50.  They typically have a hard time supporting a preacher full-time, almost never have elders or much spiritual leadership at all, and would often consider themselves to be “struggling” in some way.  While they have their share of weaknesses and reasons for being small—from internal strife to a lack of evangelistic zeal—they are special and valuable to God and often striving to get Christ into their communities.  Out here in the west, I’ve attended several of them in Colorado, Utah, Kansas, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, and California.  But it is not a phenomenon unique to regions outside the Bible belt.  My father works to help and strengthen churches in the Carolinas in that state, as he did for so many years in Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, and even Tennessee.  My brother and I both began full-time preaching in small churches in Alabama.  Rural America is full of small churches, but we are fully aware that these exist on every continent and many nations.  Some countries have fewer than 50 Christians in them, and there are even nations where the Lord’s church does not exist.

Having recently been with a small congregation, I was reminded of how big their faith, sense of family, and desire to make an impact for the Lord such churches can be.  I visited with a man who was one of about 5 members in a church about 50 miles from Twin Falls, Idaho.  They support a preacher in Kenya, mass media via Gospel Broadcasting Network (GBN), and buy Bibles to distribute in several nations. Their building is paid for and they are so desirous of doing whatever they can to reach their tiny community but also the global community.  Would you really call them a “small congregation”?

I have been exposed to more than one church where hundreds or more attended that rarely grow except through membership transfer, whose activities are heavily weighted inwardly—focused on entertaining, pleasing, and spending on themselves, and whose leaders are visionless and whose pulpits are powerless.  Couldn’t we call these “small congregations” in a way much more tragic?

I don’t want to ever be a part of a small congregation.  Even if the group with whom I work and worship are a few dozen or a handful, I pray I will do what I can to help them dream, plan, and do big things and not be small.  Our Lord is big and great.  The church is His body and as such should never be small!

A Wonderful Legacy

Neal Pollard

It is a blessing to be in a family of preachers.  Though the men in my personal heritage have not necessarily been well-known to our entire brotherhood, their faithfulness and steadiness has proven exemplary to me.    Three uncles are or have been gospel preachers for several decades.  A cousin is a Bible professor in one of our Christian colleges.  His father was a preacher in the Atlanta area for many years.  My brother, brother-in-law, and father-in-law all preach.

My father, who has been preaching the gospel for 50 years, has started a program called “Carolina Outreach” to try and help struggling congregations in the Carolinas.  There are scores of congregations in both states doing all they can to keep open their doors.  Of course, like so many works, he is in great need of financial help to aid his ability to do this (the work is overseen by the North Charleston congregation in Charleston, South Carolina).

What is ironic in the most wonderful way is that my dad is standing on the shoulders of another man in our family.  My great-grandfather, Gilbert F. Gibbs, worked with T.H. Burton to establish the “first congregation of present churches of Christ in South Carolina” and “directly or indirectly had part in most now there” (from a tract published about him in Lawrenceburg, TN, in 1970).  A 1918 graduate of David Lipscomb, Grandpa Gibbs went to Union, South Carolina, with brother Burton to establish the work there.  In 1921, they went and held a tent meeting in Greenville and planted the church there.  In both cases, Christians converted in other places moved to South Carolina and found that the church was not in existence in their communities.  Grandpa Gibbs did local work in Tennessee and Indiana and did foreign missions in Canada, Puerto Rico, St. Croix and on the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa.  But perhaps his greatest evangelistic legacy may have been in the Carolinas throughout most of the 1920s.

We don’t think of the Carolinas as a mission field, but it is certainly not part of the Bible belt as we think of it.  The need continues to be great to evangelize and edify the church of this part of the world.  I can think of no one more capable than my dad.  We do not have very many wealthy or famous relatives, but I could not want a better family legacy than I have.  Please pray for “Carolina Outreach” and help if you can!