Reaching the Generations Together,
Multiplying Healthy Churches Among All People
May News & Resources
District Conference Recap
Conference summary, NCD reports, etc.
Pastoral Care Update
Hope-Filled Marriages Read more
Missions Update
Mission team recruitment ideas. Read more.
Women's Ministry Coffee Get Together - May 23, 2012, New Hope Church
Read more
EFCA Night with the Twins - July 17
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Zipline Newsletter - May 2012
Hidden Treasures
By Tom Mouw
Is the average believer today “spiritually impoverished,” and if so, why? How does God use “ordinary sufferings” to lead us back to utilizing spiritual muscles? Can simply serving in holistic ministry provide an antidote to our common “diseases of the soul”? For simple yet profound insights, join me in reading this brief excerpt from a devotional written to Safe Families for Children staff and volunteers by Dr. Monte Pries, SFFC Family Coach Supervisor, Santa Ana, CA . –Tom Mouw
The more obvious focus of Safe Families is to look at the population of people we seem to most commonly engage with. We reach out to families living on the outer edges of physical, financial, and relational poverty. But poverty as it relates to you and me is most likely not to be physical, but poverty of spirit. Even for us, as born-again Christians, forgiven by the Blood of the Lamb, we are spiritually impoverished by the lack of the experience of God in our lives. We are saved, and yet we are experientially comatose and forgetful of who we are and who God is, and how we are designed to live in His ways, through His power. Isaiah (Isaiah 53:6) speaks of how we have all turned our backs and gone our own way. We are not trained; we are not devoted to living richly in His Spirit and Presence. We rely on ourselves, our own energy. We live in poverty.