McKinney Report

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 dea...

I spent most of my time in  João  Pessoa during the months of August and September.  During this time I taught a Finance class, a 30 hour Bible course and worked with the congregation to establish a budget for the rest of the year and all of next year.   The average offering amount for the year of 2013 was R$1,400.  It was just enough to cover the expenses at the building.  The men of the congregation made a budget of R$3,260, covering the normal expenses and adding more support for missions, an accountant as well as other expenses.   After four or five meeting with the congregation to explain the budget and ask for members to commit how much they could give to meet the budget, not meeting the budget, talking to the members again and receiving new amounts, as a congregation we committed R$3.415, surpassing the original amount.  How great is that!  October, was the first month that the collection would be put towards the new budget....

         Here we are in a thanksgiving service for Samuel’s cancer cure, and telling people about the new life that Christ gives, and God provides a live demonstration of the simplicity of deciding to follow Jesus. Raniere Menezes, who works with the Mangabeira congregation, announced that a couple he had been studying with was ready to give their lives to Christ. Emerson and Ana were baptized for the remission of sins.           Many years ago we had a Bible Study at a lady’s house; her name was Gerusa. She was not baptized, and we lost contact. Emerson, though, is her son and had participated in some of the studies when he was a teenager. He married, had a severe accident that almost crippled him, and he and his wife started seeking God and visiting the Mangabeira church meeting. He is doing physical therapy still, but on the inside, Emerson and Ana are whole, one more reason to tha...

         We have so many reasons to be thankful. When Jesus brought Jairus’ daughter back to life and then told him not to tell anybody, imagine the difficulty of trying to keep something like that a secret, the joy bursting out, the uncontrollable urge to shout to the world his encounter with the Almighty God in the flesh. Fortunately for us, the Lord has given us an easier command: tell all to everybody. Jesus has cured us of the spiritual cancer that sucked our life away, resurrected us to eternal life. Go, tell everybody what he did! The Father cured my son Samuel of cancer through his love and power, a big, ugly, life-sucking tumor. We have to tell everybody!          I never imagined that this disease could unite so many people around the world in prayer. So many congregations, so many messages, so many positive thoughts and prayers coming our way, that when God acted in our son’s body - no...

I know I have not written or sent any news in the past couple of months.  I am alive and doing well.  I have been very busy and have not taken the time to sit down and write about what has been going on.  I am sorry for not writing.  I will try to catch you up on the main things that have been going on over the past three months. I travelled to Patos this past weekend to teach a course on Minor Prophets and to meet with the evangelists throughout the state. Twelve members of the congregation in Patos participated in the course, two of these had left the church and have recently come back and are eagerly seeking fellowship with other Christians. The meeting with the evangelists had a representative from seven congregations. The Minor Prophets bring a message of judgment and salvation with a tone of wrath and love. Not one of the students present had ever read all of the Minor Prophets. There is a great need for teaching and motivating the Christia...

What does the youth group and parents have in common?  O.k., the youth, but besides that?  Not much nowadays.  I remember when I was growing up there was no youth minister to take care of the teens at my congregation.  The parents did it.  They planned the activities and  stayed with us as we learned about Christ .  They opened up their ho me s and had devos that they gave  and taught us to do the same .     I am not saying that having a youth minister is a bad thing.  Here in João Pessoa we have a good group of young people.  We have had some  individuals couples  spend  time  with the youth but  our youth  need ed  more involvement from the adults, the parents.   The parents were the ones who saw this need so  We, the parents started meeting in August with the youth group.  We sang and prayed together.  The youth would have their Bible study and the p...

One of the most experienced surgeons of Brazil said to us, "I took out an orange of cancer from your son's colon." I looked for an orange the right size, but could not find one big enough. The one in the picture is 3.5 inches in diameter; Samuel's tumor was 4.4 inches. It had swollen lymph nodes, it had burst through the colon walls, it seemed to scare the doctors who saw it, and our surgeon with decades of combating colon cancer under her belt didn't give us much hope. She imagined that Samuel would have to go through months of chemotherapy, the chance of the disease returning was high, and possibly his life would be shortened. Our family decided from that moment to pray and fast for one purpose: for God to do a miracle, to confound the doctors by chang...