Founder of Jews for Jesus

Moishe Rosen, founder of Jews for Jesus, died May 19 around 8:30 p.m. in San Francisco after a battle with bone cancer. Rosen, who founded the evangelistic organization in 1973, was 78.

“Moishe Rosen’s innovative thinking and commitment to Jewish evangelism built the largest Jewish mission organization in the world,” Jim Sibley, director of the Pasche Institute of Jewish Studies at Criswell College in Dallas, told Baptist Press, “but more importantly, they have been used to reach countless Jews and Gentiles for the Lord.

“His concern began with the Jewish population in the United States, but later embraced the major Jewish populations of the world,” said Sibley, a former Southern Baptist representative in Israel and former director of Jewish evangelism ministries for the North American Mission Board.

“Often provocative and controversial, he was always unashamed of the Good News of salvation,” Sibley said. “He has been a friend, a brother and a fellow soldier; he will be greatly missed.”

Mike Saffle, president of the Southern Baptist Messianic Fellowship, recounted a bit of Rosen’s spiritual history: “Moishe was born to an Orthodox family, yet became an atheist. After his wife, Ciel, began an earnest search for God, Moishe finally admitted what he’d known all along: there IS a God, and His Son is Y’shua, Jesus.”

Rosen, a native of Denver, became a believer in Jesus in 1953.

As recounted by Susan Perlman, a longtime assistant, in an article at the Jews for Jesus website, http://www.jewsforjesus.org, “In 1950, when they were both 18, Moishe married his high school sweetheart, Ceil, who is also Jewish. Three years later, Ceil came to know Jesus and was instrumental in leading her husband to the Lord. And so, at the age of 21, Moishe, the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, gathered his family together to tell them the news: ‘I’ve been studying the Bible lately and I’ve decided that Jesus is really the Messiah. We’ve all been wrong and I wanted you to know that I’m going to believe in Him and follow Him and give my life to Him.’

“The response that came from his father after hearing that somewhat abrasive announcement was equally jarring: ‘You can just get out of my house and don’t come back until you’ve given up this Jesus business!'”

The rejection by his family “didn’t deter him from following his destiny,” Perlman wrote. “If anything, it brought him closer to his Messiah, who was ‘despised and rejected’ by so many.

(Read more about this man and the Godly work he did to impact Jews and others with the good news of salvation in Jesus  Jews for Jesus founder dies : )

Reaching Public School Kids

I have posted before I don’t believe the children of Christian parents should be in the public schools or as I call them government schools. However I do believe us who are followers of Jesus should do what we can to reach the children in those schools with good news. If it be through Bible clubs, youth groups, esc. A good way that far too few churches take part in is a program called Release Time. This is where children are allowed to go from a government school to a church or other ministry setting. It is legal!

To find out more about this program listen to short radio commentary on it mp3.

Catholics debate:Who was America’s first black priest? | …

More than a year after some African-Americans scrutinized the blackness of the nation’s first black president, America’s Catholics are now wrestling with the same questions to determine who was the nation’s first black priest.

The debate emerges as the Archdiocese of Chicago seeks sainthood for the Rev. Augustus Tolton, long hailed in Chicago as the first African-American clergyman to serve in the U.S. Catholic Church.

A rival for the title is Bishop James Augustine Healy, who was ordained in 1854, the year Tolton was born. But Healy, son of an Irish-American landowner and a mixed-race slave, was light-skinned enough to pass as a white man. And in many cases, he did.

Chicago’s Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry, the prelate leading the charge for Tolton’s sainthood, argues that Tolton’s story reflects the authentic African-American experience of overcoming racial discrimination to pursue a calling.

“Tolton is being proposed (for sainthood) because his ministry as a priest and a young lad trying to go to school was plagued by racial apartheid in this country,” Perry said. “He suffered a great deal. In the midst of that suffering, he remained steadfast. He remained endeared to the Catholic faith. … The Healy family never shows up in the African-American saga.”

(Even  though I don’t believe a saint is some super follower of Christ I did find the above article about who the first black priest an interesting article and you might feel the same after you read it Catholics debate:Who was America’s first black priest? |.)

Communities built block by block

Too often today  those who are part of the true church of Jesus Christ  remain in the church instead of  impacting the culture along with the world for the things of God. Bible based values most likely will be caught by those who don’t believe seeing those of faith take their faith to the streets. It tells in the book of James that faith without works is dead.

One ministry from my hometown which is doing that is the ABIDE network.

For Ron and Twany Dotzler  the founders of ABIDE and others involved with the ministry , the idea of “adopting a block” means more than picking up trash and mowing, although that’s part of it.

Their goal is  to  transform the city, one neighborhood at a time.

The ministry of ABIDE  trains Christian leaders and prepares  volunteers for doing good works in the community. It’s headquartered in an old, 15,000-square-foot converted hospital laundry and boiler building. Abide’s headquarters serves as a neighborhood hub.

In 1993,  two neighbor girls were slain near the Dotzlers’ home. Some family and friends urged them to move away.  Ron Dotzler said that as he prayed about it at 4 o’clock in the morning, he felt God pointing out the neighbors with troubled lives. They couldn’t leave and neither should he..

Read more about  these amazing folks and the Godly work they are doing. May Bless them and keep doing things through them and in them. (Communities built block by block)

Cal Thomas Thoughts on Faith

Cal Thomas did a radio commentary a few days ago on faith and what people believe today. Take sometime and listen to it_CTS_Commentary.)