Solid Rock
Climbers Reaching Climbers for
Christ
Email Update/Message – Volume 4, Number 7 (Issue 72)
From Calvin Landrus,
National Director
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Contents:
·
“What are we afraid of?” by Bruce & Stan
·
Day of Prayer for the Climbing Community
·
Missionary Internships & “On The Road” Contacts
·
Webmaster is Needed
·
Looking for 200 to make an Annual
Donation!
·
April/May Calendar
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If you plan on being at an event, please let the
organizer know ASAP
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Use the “hyperlinks” to go directly to the website
for more information
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What are we afraid of?
I’m reading a book by Bruce Brickel and Stan Jantz called “Sharing
Your Faith”. Over several
Updates, I have passed on to you great thoughts from them. Here are the last of these I am privileged to
share.
1. We have an irrational fear of humiliation.
What if someone makes fun of us for having a belief
in God? They might say that religion is
for weaklings. We just couldn’t bear it
if they called us . . . “sissy”. Oh, the
shame of it all.
2. We have an irrational fear of rejection.
What if the people we are talking to are so offended by
what we say that they don’t want to be our friends anymore? What if they run around telling everyone else
we know that we are wild-eyed religious fanatics? We will be ostracized from society. We will
be friendless. Oh, the indignity of it
all.
3. We have an irrational fear of embarrassing God.
After everything God has done for us, we want Him to be
proud of us. We wouldn’t want to do
anything that embarrasses Him. So, we wouldn’t want to talk about Him to the
people we hang out with, because what if we are asked a question about God that
we can’t answer? If we can’t answer a
question, it will make us look dumb, and since we are a “child of God”, then
our friends might think that our spiritual stupidity is an inherited
trait. That would mean they’d think God
is dumb, too. If we make God look dumb,
He is going to be really ticked at us. He might even send a plague our way.
Perhaps a bit too sarcastic! Let’s look at this whole thing rationally for
a moment. It just isn’t realistic to
think that sharing your faith will cause total calamity in your life. What is the worst that could happen?
1. Someone may disagree with you.
Big deal.
So what? You don’t have an
emotional breakdown when you argue about politics or who is going to win the
Super Bowl. Sure, I know that a person’s
salvation is really serious and I’m not intending to demean or trivialize
Christ’s death on the cross by comparing it to the Super Bowl. But we are talking about you and your hesitancy
to talk about God because of an unwarranted fear of rejection and
humiliation. All I’m saying is that a
difference of opinion is nothing new for your friends.
2. You might not have a great answer for every question.
Not having an answer or two is better than being viewed as
a “know-it-all.” People will actually
respect you if you are willing to admit that there are a few things about God
that you don’t know or understand. (That’s one of the things that makes God so amazing – we can’t know everything about
Him.) If someone stumps you with an
honest question, make a promise to find the answer. You now have a reason to
talk with that person again about God.
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Day of Prayer for the Climbing Community
As you
may have observed, many climbers are escaping broken relationships and running
from what they see as insurmountable life problems. Climbing can be an escape
that gives them a false sense of controlling their own destiny. Also, the
intense feelings of accomplishment that climbing brings can be temporarily
stuffed into their heart’s God shaped vacuum. Climbers often have a
non-conforming attitude.
For these
reasons, Solid Rock's vision of reaching climbers for Christ is a tremendously
difficult task. Add the strategic challenges of being a rather small ministry
with a rather large national scope, the mission looks almost impossible.
However, we serve a great God who wishes all people to come to salvation!
Now, our
only hope for us to see these salvations in the climbing community is for us to
cry out to God and ask that the Holy Spirit shall move among us in a powerful
way. Will you join with me, and set aside a time of prayer and fasting for the
climbing community and the salvation's of those who are part of it?
We would like to have climbers praying for the
climbing community from sunrise to sunset in half hour time slots. You
would pass the “baton” with a phone call (even if it is long distance).
We would ask for prayer requests from SR members and names of climbers they
would like to see come into the kingdom. We would add some general
requests for the ministry.
SIGN-UP
AT: http://www.srcfc.org/activity1/NDP.asp
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SOLID ROCK SHORT-TERM MISSIONARY Opportunities
Last summer, Nathan Young of
The new arrangement promises to train workers for the
harvest by exposing applicants to the full scope of Solid Rock’s ministry. You will be based out of
“On The Road” Contacts
“On The Road” Contacts are Solid Rock Members who desire to
be short-term missionaries to the climbing community. You will be with a partner, climbing
full-time and ministering as you go.
This is a “full-on” approach to doing missionary work. You will go to existing Solid Rock members in
an area that you visit and join them in reaching the climbers in that
area. If not much is happening, you will
be responsible for getting things going!
For information on applying for either of these short-term
Missionary Opportunities, contact Calvin Landrus at
INFO@SRCFC.ORG.
Webmaster is Needed: If you
have basic web skills and can give about 2-3 hours a week, let us know. Thanks!
Over 40 have sent
in an Annual Donation. It’s with great
thanksgiving we received these gifts. I’m
asking the Lord to provide at least 200 who will help sustain the mission of
SRCFC in 2003 by giving financially.
Members are not required to give but are encouraged to (Thanks to those
who have communicated they can’t this year!).
For 2003, a $30 donation is suggested.
Solid Rock will give a resource to each person sending in an Annual Membership Donation. That item is a packet of 10 laser-printed business cards with your contact information, a statement about Solid Rock and the gospel on the back. It can be passed out to new contacts when addresses are exchanged while you are climbing.
Solid Rock – Climbers for Christ
John Blaubach
– Treasurer
Checks should be made to Solid Rock – Climbers for Christ
and include a note saying,
“Annual Membership Donation”.
Or go to http://www.srcfc.org/member1/donate.asp
for form to complete and mail in!