For the past few weeks I have been visiting different churches around the Topeka area promoting TMP's biggest fund-raising event of the year, and I have observed a few really encouraging things.
I listened to a Pastor talk about how in the early church, during the Roman occupation, Christians felt very out of control. But the way God moved in them to fix this problem was to combine two streams: Compassion and Evangelism. Many churches believe that the goal of the church is to do acts of service, and treat physical, emotional, financial, and material needs of the impoverished. While other churches would say that you cannot focus on the aforementioned needs, but have to solely provide care for spiritual needs, even going so far as to say that they would not send people with full stomachs to hell.
God moved in a powerful way in the early church, visible in Acts 1, where the disciples were sharing everything and selling possessions to be able to support one another, but also boldly declaring the Gospel where it needed to be preached.
These two streams were separated in the middle ages, but in the last 100 years have come back together, and TMP partnering with the churches of Topeka is a perfect example of the merging of these two streams.
Trash Mountain Project, o the surface, may seem to focus its work on the physical needs of the communities we are planted in. But, by partnering with local churches, we are planting churches all over the world to bring the hope of Jesus Christ to a people group that not many people know exist.
It has been very encouraging to see God work though TMP and Topeka churches to combine the compassion and evangelism into a common purpose aimed at these communities in poverty.
I am still "shopping" for churches, but appreciate the encouragement and prayers from everyone!
John3:30
-Daniel
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