A surprising fact and a great opportunity on Giving Tuesday:

Fact – Evangelicals Favor Secular Charities

A 2022 survey revealed that while 84% of evangelicals stated that they preferred to support Christian organizations to non-Christian ones, only 46% of evangelical donors indicated a faith-based organization as their preferred charity. Furthermore, only 5% of evangelical donors donated exclusively to ministries, such as Empowering Action, engaged solely in Christian work of preaching, teaching, or missions.

It is true that through common grace God demonstrates that, without renewing the heart, He can exercise such influence that even the unsaved are enabled to perform good deeds toward their fellow man. However, surprisingly 12 of evangelicals’ top 19 organizations were also found in non-evangelicals’ top 20 organizations. And in some instances, evangelicals might be shocked by those entities’ values and activities, which are incongruent with a biblical worldview.

Opportunity – Year-End Matching Campaign

On this Giving Tuesday, Empowering Action reiterates our commitment to giving the truth of the Gospel and the life-changing precepts of Scripture. Our current Year-end General Fund Matching Campaign allows you to commemorate our 10th anniversary and partner with a ministry that strives for biblical fidelity in both belief and behavior.

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. – 1 Cor. 2:16

Source:

The favorite charity: Evangelical giving priorities. Infinity Concepts & Grey Matter Research & Consulting (2022).

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday designated as “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer,” let us find inspiration in the commentary of Charles Spurgeon below on Deuteronomy 8:3-6 regarding humanity’s propensity to forget God’s mercies:

We trace our joys in the sand, but we write our afflictions on marble.

 We forget the streams of mercy, never ceasing, which flow so continually parallel with our pathway.

 If we thus, ungratefully forget, it should cause us serious reflections when we see that God does not forget.

Here in this Book He brings to His people’s memories all the mercies they have received, because they were always present before His own mind.

 The child may forget the kindness of its mother, but the mother does not forget what she bore, and what she has sacrificed for her child.

 The friend may forget what he has received, but it is not likely that the benefactor will forget what he has bestowed.

 If God’s memory, therefore, records all that He has given me, let me be ashamed to let my memory suffer these things to slip.

 What God counts worthy of His Divine recollection let me record on the pages of my memory, and often let me peruse the record.

Let us give thanks to the LORD for His faithful love and His wonderful works for all humanity! (Psalm 107:31)

Above is one of the earliest pictures of Empowering Action. By God’s grace, next month marks the completion of our 10th year of ministry. Over the years, we have often found inspiration in the life of George Muller, an amazing man of God, who cared for 10,000 orphans in the 1800s. At the end of his life, when asked if when he first began the work he had any idea how it would grow, he responded,

“I only knew that God was in it and was leading His child into untried and untrodden paths. The assurance of His presence was my stay.”

Similarly, as we look back over the past decade, we recognize and celebrate God’s sustaining presence and provision as well as the privilege of serving Christ’s Church.

Please consider joining us in celebrating EA’s 10th Anniversary by participating in the following:

1. SUPPORTING OUR YEAR-END MATCHING CAMPAIGN

 A generous EA supporter is sponsoring a special Year-end General Fund Matching Campaign (up to a total amount of $80,000) until Dec 31st.

Click HERE to give.

2. SUBMITTING A SHORT VIDEO

We are creating a celebration video which will be a great encouragement to all who have been a part of the Lord’s journey for EA over the past decade.

Click HERE to record your video.

3. ATTENDING OUR CHRISTMAS AND ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Please join us on Sunday, December 11th for dinner, a time of worship and highlights from 10 years of ministry.

RSVP HERE for the party.

This year’s State of Theology survey revealed that 71% of U.S. adults and 65% of evangelicals agreed with the statement, “Everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God.”

Commenting on the finding, Ligonier Ministries explained:

• When God created the world, everything He made was good (Gen. 1:10, 21, 25, 31). Yet through Adam and Eve’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden, humankind became corrupted. The Bible teaches the concept of original sin, which means that since the Fall, every human being inherits a sin nature from the time of their conception (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12). In other words, we are not sinners because we sin; rather, we sin because we are sinners.
• It is unsurprising that most U.S. adults believe that humans are born innocent, given the influence of humanistic philosophies and worldviews that teach self-determinism and a view of humankind as basically good.

Theologians contend that Genesis chapter 3 is arguably the most important chapter in the Bible, explaining,

“Those who do not understand the Fall cannot diagnose properly the human dilemma…It is impossible to understand man’s behavior if you do not understand that it is all a product of sin. And all sin in the world is a result of what happened in Genesis 3.”

Perhaps that is why it is so encouraging to listen to Dominican Pastor Roberto Araujo King of Iglesia Bíblica Bautista Mi Esperanza, after ten months of study in the Genesis Family Life Program, explain the vital importance a proper understanding of sin and theology play in the spiritual transformation of the mind (Romans 12:2).

I just wanted to pass along an encouraging photo and note from Raydel Riquelme below regarding ministry in Cuba amid unrest and rolling power outages throughout the country in the wake of recent hurricanes.

The simplicity and fervor communicated by the image reflects the words of Charles Spurgeon:

 The Devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. Providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the Church. The need is biblical doctrine, so understood and felt that is sets men afire.

 What a privilege we have to be a part of biblical training that leads to individuals and churches equipped and aflame for Christ!

 The Lord promises in Isaiah 55:10-11,

 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And do not return there without watering the earth
And making it bear and sprout,
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
It will not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”

As we pray for those in the path of Hurricane Ian as it makes landfall in Florida today, we also ask that you remember those in Cuba amid the storm’s aftermath. We have five regional facilitators in Cuba overseeing our efforts there, including Pastor Yalexis in the province of Pinal del Rio, who reported that while he and his family are doing well, there is significant damage in his area as seen in the pictures below.

As we observe the following pictures, we get a sense of the damage and suffering caused by Hurricane Fiona for more than 8,000 families living on the east coastline of the Dominican Republic.

Patience is vital to faithful ministry. Ask Adoniram Judson or William Carey who both labored over six years before their faithful ministry was rewarded. Or the prophet Jeremiah who saw no visible fruit after decades of ministry.

McKitterick (2020) cautions below regarding how impatience can cause even the best-intentioned servant to become unfaithful in their pursuit of being fruitful, while in the words of Hudson Taylor, “Attempting great things for God!”

We live in a society that expects everything now! We don’t like to wait for anything. You could say we live in a society of impatience. While this sin is concerning to the Lord in every believer’s life, its danger becomes exponentially greater when shepherding the church. Impatience illustrates an attempt to usurp the workings of God by taking matters into one’s own hands. Impatience can lead to rash decisions, manipulative leadership, and discontentment. It can frustrate the church by either dragging them along, or worse, running so far ahead that they are left in the dust. Impatience is often friends with irritability, anger, self-will, and other ministry crippling sins.

The team at Empowering Action is keenly aware of this danger. It wasn’t until our 8th year of ministry that our Savings Groups program was finally launched, which could have understandably resulted in frustration from staff members with both passion and proficiency in financial ministry. And yet after three years now and a slow methodical rollout we are grateful to the Lord for his acquiescence to be serving: 500 individuals at 25 churches in Haiti, 275 participants at 8 Haitian churches within the Dominican Republic, and 120 persons at 6 Dominican churches.

Faithfulness may require that we, as William Carey said, plod, while others foolishly rush ahead.

References:

McKitterick, J. (2020, July 21). Are we there yet? The need for patience in pastoral ministry. The Expositor’s Seminary. https://expositors.org/are-we-there-yet-the-need-for-patience-in-pastoral-ministry/

The Apostle Paul described how word of the faithful ministry of the Thessalonian church was spreading throughout his missionary travels.  

For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. (1 Thessalonians 4:8)

The term sounded forth carries the concept of reverberation, conveying how the ministry of the Thessalonians had resulted in:

• local outreach to Thessalonica,
• national outreach to Macedonia and Achaia,
• and international outreach to regions beyond.

As Raydel and Carlos depart today to present at the Precept Ministries International conference in Guatemala, we are grateful for the Lord’s gracious use of the ministry in local, national and international settings.

In the nonprofit fundraising world, the summer months have become known as the Summer Slump, as historically, donations typically cool down when the weather heats up. So if you are in a position to offer EA some extra prayer and financial support over the next few months, we would be most grateful.

We are incredibly enthusiastic about how the Lord continues to graciously use our efforts for His glory. With the recent easing of travel testing requirements we are anxious to soon see a return of visiting groups laboring alongside our staff and partnering churches in seeing individuals and communities “turning from sin and false gods to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).

Amid the rapid growth of early Christianity, the leadership of the Jerusalem church would send leaders to investigate remarkable developments:

• “Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent them Peter and John.” (Acts 8:14)
• “…a large number who believed turned to the Lord. The news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch.” (Acts 11:21-22)

In a somewhat similar fashion, EA ministry partner, Precept Ministries International, has requested that our team travel to Guatemala to update the regional leadership regarding the growth of our K2:42 church network development program.

Recognizing that it is “God who causes the growth” (1 Cor. 3:7) and, as the great missionary George Muller said, “The Lord condescends to use us as His stewards,” we are excited to be able to share how God has graciously allowed us to minister to 5,314 students in the past 5 years, including 596 church leaders.