Doug Landro, who works with several churches among the Roma gypsies in western Ukraine, tells a story of how the elderly in the Roma community don’t have enough food, and sometimes even have their homes taken away from them because they don’t have legal land rights. A few members of the church among the Roma came to Doug, “We want to develop a feeding program that buys food for the elderly Roma.” One elderly lady, who never came to church, learned about the once-a-month feeding program at the church. Eventually she invited her daughter in law, then her son, and they heard about Jesus, and both became followers of Jesus. Doug says, “When we meet people’s needs, when we show the love of Jesus, not in words but in action, that’s the best way to share Jesus.” Ladies come up to Doug when he visits the church, give him a hug and say, “I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for you.”
Podcast
A church that is not impacting a neighborhood will become irrelevant
Bob Moffitt interviews Pastor Wale Adefarasin from Nigeria, who shares many stories about how his church, in a relatively affluent neighborhood, chose to go into another neighborhood with 5 teams to meet the needs of the people, so that they could experience the love of Jesus. In one example, a local high school had just 2 toilets for 2,000 people and 10 staff, and the church built a block of toilets and replaced roofs. As they started meeting medical needs,
