McKinney Report

The first year of the AME program has been a success. Oh sure, we have made mistakes, learned a lot, thought of several things that could be done better, but that is the challenge of life. Overall, AME has been positive to the João Pessoa church, to the youth group, to the AME students and their families, and soon to three congregations about to receive freshly trained, fired up workers for a year and a half. These are in the cities of Feira de Santana (Bahia state), Palmas (Tocantins state), and Bogotá, in the country of Colombia.             This week we finish their last week of classes. I have been teaching about Evangelizing Other Religions . Our practical exercises have been interviewing priests, mormons, spiritists, etc. We visited a candomblé hut – an eye-opener: idolatry with animal sacrifices is still strong in our modern times. We saw rooms that would be a great setting for a horror movie. The strangest religion we visited is called Valley of the Dawn – it is the mo

On a bright and beautiful Sunday afternoon, I travelled to  Alagoinha , about one hour and thirty minutes from  João  Pessoa to meet with the church and teach on worshipping God through our finances. Instead of the usual sermon, I taught more of a Sunday School class type lesson on how Jesus, the apostles and the early church dealt with money.     Most of the Christians in  Paraíba  either came from the Catholic or denominational doctrine of tithing and free will offerings.  Yes, the Catholic church does tithe now.  Free will offerings are seen as giving the left overs.  Completely different from what the Bible teaches.  So how do most Christians give to the work of the church here in  Paraíba ?  They usually fall under one of the two categories that I described above.  Can you guess which one most of them fall into?  I bet you can.  Why is it that Jesus, the apostles and the early church dealt so much with the money topic?  I think it must have been a problem then, too.