Through their Iris Ministries, Rolland and Heidi Baker have planted more than 5,000 churches

After nearly 10 years on the mission field in Mozambique, Americans Rolland and Heidi Baker say they’ve come to know of the love of God more keenly through the suffering orphans they minister to daily.

“The poor, the dying and the orphans we work with show us the face and heart of God every day. It’s a face of incredible love,” Heidi Baker said. “We’re learning to be totally dependent on God, broken and humble.”

Since starting Iris Ministries in 1995, she and her husband, Rolland, say they have seen the lame walk, the blind receive sight, the deaf gain hearing and even the dead raised to life. Explosive church growth of approximately 5,000 churches across Mozambique and into the neighboring nations of Malawi and South Africa, as well as 14 other countries around the globe has accompanied these miraculous signs and wonders.

“There’s such desperation for Jesus in these countries,” Heidi Baker told Charisma. “We go to where there aren’t any other churches, into the darkness.”

Currently the Bakers and their team care for 2,000 orphans living in two children’s centers and in the “foster” homes of pastors and widows. Many of the children lost their parents to AIDS, the killer of an estimated 6,500 Africans a day.

Gitou was an AIDS orphan and a tough street kid when Heidi Baker met him. “He said he was 12, but he looked around 8. His heart was hardened, and he continued telling me off whenever I came near,” she recalled. “But I just kept loving and loving Gitou until his heart melted. Now he preaches out on the street and leads many to the Lord.”

Constancia was a scared little orphan girl of around 5 who was left on the steps of Iris Ministries’ orphanage. “She didn’t speak and couldn’t communicate,” Heidi Baker said. “The Lord just told me to chase her … with His love. I’d chase her and hold her until she fell asleep in my arms.

“The same day Constancia was baptized, she began to speak and even asked to lead the choir. She told us then that she’d been mute since seeing her parents brutally murdered right in front of her.”

Iris Ministries has three Bible schools operating in Mozambique, one in Malawi and another that is set to open soon in South Africa. They train local Christians who feel led to start churches–many of these churches are planted in remote areas of Mozambique where the gospel has never been heard.

The Bakers, who have two children of their own–Elisha, 21, and Crystalyn, 16–hope to see every pastor they train adopt between one and 10 orphans so they can demonstrate the fatherly love of God to the children. “We take such delight in training these pastors, in seeing their hearts set free from their life’s disappointments and seeing them filled to overflowing with God’s love,” Rolland Baker said. “That love can’t help but spill over to the children they adopt.”

The Bakers say the key to all their fruitfulness lies in relinquishing complete control to God. They say it’s a concept the Western church needs to learn in order to sow effective ministry throughout the earth.

Heidi Baker said that while visiting Toronto (Ontario) Airport Christian Fellowship God showed her “the paradigm of His upside-down kingdom. He had me stand upside-down on my head for 45 minutes while someone prophesied God was turning our ministry upside down to reflect His kingdom values.”

The second key to fruitfulness, the couple says, is intimacy with God. “Revival breaks out when people are desperate for God. When they become intimate with Him and lose sight of themselves, then anything can happen,” said Rolland Baker, whose late grandfather H.A. Baker was a missionary to orphaned children in China.

In the Bakers’ book Always Enough (Chosen Books), they recount their adventures leading a ministry that has gained the attention of the president of Mozambique. He has personally met with Heidi Baker three times since 2002. “President Chissano and his government say the Christians are helping to reduce AIDS because a lot of people are getting married and staying faithful once they turn to Christ,” Heidi Baker said.

Missiologist and researcher Justin Long said that the power of the Bakers’ strategy is its potential to multiply the ministry’s impact. “They are battling against injustice, poverty and fatherlessness, taking back ground from spiritual darkness,” Long told Charisma. “They are proclaiming the gospel and being a blessing to the desperate.

“The test will be whether their spiritual children do the same thing. Success could be 2,000 little ‘Iris Ministries,’ each started by an orphan cared for by the Bakers, each in turn raising up a few thousand spiritual children of their would have a profound impact, indeed.”
Josie Newman

Pastor in Pakistan Found Shot to Death

The body of a Christian pastor was found Jan. 5 at the Khanewal Railway Station in Pakistan. An autopsy revealed the Rev. Mukhtar Masih, 50, had been shot in the chest, All Pakistan Minorities Alliance reported. Masih’s son said his father recently had received death threats from local Muslim extremists, some of whom had in the past asked police to ban Masih’s church from using loud speakers. At least 45 people have been killed and more than 90 injured since October 2001, Christian Solidarity International reported.

Christian Families Forced To Leave Laos Village

Two families were recently forced to leave their village in the Attapue Province because they would not renounce their faith in Christ. According to Christian Aid Mission (CAM), six women and their children arrived in the city of Pakse in southern Laos on Jan. 2 after being threatened for many months. “The situation is getting very unstable and dangerous,” two of the women said. Elsewhere, police arrested 11 believers gathered for worship in Kang village, Somsouk village, Donphai village and Sanamsai City. Authorities reportedly are seeking other Christian leaders who are said to be in hiding. Some reportedly have walked more than 60 miles to avoid arrest, CAM reported.

Korean Aid Worker Imprisoned in China

A South Korean Christian humanitarian worker was recently sentenced to a nine-year jail sentence for helping a small group of North Koreans defect to South Korea. The human-rights group Jubilee Campaign reported that the Rev. Choi Bong-il was arrested on April 12, 2002, in Yanji, located in the Jilin Province in China, and charged with organizing illegal border crossings for helping North Korean refugees attempt to defect to South Korea. During a December 2002 trial, a Chinese court did not render a verdict, but authorities continued to detain Bong-il. In mid-December, the court finally found Bong-il guilty. “Please pray that Rev. Choi’s appeal will be timely heard by the court and that … he will be released,” Jubilee Campaign officials said. “Please pray that God continue to give him spiritual and physical strength.”

Across the United States, dynamic outreaches to inmates and ex-offenders are helping reduce recidivism rates
Christian prison ministries across the country are reducing recidivism rates of countless ex-offenders. But more than simply changing statistics, these organizations are credited with transforming lives.

Robert Valdez, 29, spent most of his life selling drugs in the streets of New York. Today, for the first time ever, he earns honest wages working as a land surveyor–thanks to House of Hope of Alachua County, an after-care prison ministry in Gainesville, Fla., that houses converted inmates immediately upon release.

“I would have gone right back to the things I was doing before if it wasn’t for this place,” Valdez said. “The most important thing I have learned is that without my relationship with Jesus, I am lost.”

Since its humble beginnings in 1996, House of Hope has been home to more than 150 men, and the organization has seen dozens of lives drastically changed.

According to a recidivism report released by the Florida Department of Corrections in July 2003, approximately 40.5 percent of male inmates re-offend after three years of release from prison. This is in stark contrast to House of Hope’s recidivism rates–only 17 percent of their total number of graduates have ever re-offended.

Thomas Johnson, executive director of House of Hope, said his program offers the world what it is looking for: an answer. “The world has no answers for the state of self-destruction that it’s in,” Johnson told Charisma. “There’s no answer other than Christ.”

A recent study conducted by Byron R. Johnson, Ph.D., director of The Religion and Civil Society Program at The Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J., found a significant relation between faith-based mentoring and decreased recidivism rates.

The study reports drastically reduced recidivism rates for Texas inmates who completed InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI)–a pre-release, faith-based program that was launched in April 1997 under the recommendation of then-Gov. George W. Bush.

According to the study, IFI program participants were “significantly less likely than the matched groups” to be either re-arrested (17.3 percent vs. 35 percent) or re-incarcerated (8 percent vs. 20.3 percent) in the first two years after release.

“Findings are consistent across a wide range of studies,” Byron Johnson said. “When religious commitment goes up, crime goes down.”

There are four key elements regarding IFI’s success, Johnson added. The program encourages inmates to experience a spiritual transformation, it relies heavily upon volunteers and mentors, it provides support systems for inmates upon release, and it emphasizes education, work, life skills and mentoring built upon a foundation of biblical principles.

IFI is operated by Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM), the largest prison ministry in the United States, through a contract with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The organization was founded by Charles Colson, a former aide to President Nixon who was imprisoned on Watergate-related charges.

According to Mark Earley, president of PFM, relationships are critical to its participants’ success. “We match them with someone early on so that there is a relationship developed before their release,” Earley said. “Our key to success is that we don’t finish involvement when they leave prison. We get them hooked up with a local church, a job, an accountability partner.”

Though recent statistics are promising, it is the lives of IFI’s graduates that reflect the true change, Earley said.

After serving 13 years of a 35-year prison sentence for the murder of his wife, IFI graduate Robert Sutton said he experienced true freedom before ever walking out of a jail cell. “I was taught that even though my body was confined, my mind and spirit could be freed through Jesus Christ,” Sutton said.

Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives said Sutton’s life reflects the effectiveness of faith-based organizations all over America.

“[Robert Sutton] left prison a different man,” Towey said. “When you look at how he has spent his life since being out of prison, it’s astounding to see the contrast from before.”

Today Sutton is on staff at The Greater Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Houston, where he has been a faithful member since his release in 1998.

It is the story of everyone who has had a spiritual conversion, Towey said. “They are desiring to do good, one day at a time. You can see that in Robert Sutton’s face.”
Suzy Richardson

The Back to Jerusalem movement seeks to take the gospel from China to Israel, to the world’s most unreached people
After a combined 40 years in prison for preaching the gospel, three Chinese house church leaders are reviving an 80-year-old vision to take the gospel from China to Jerusalem–a region that comprises 90 percent of the world’s unreached people.

Peter Xu Yongze, Enoch Wang and “Brother Yun,” whose dramatic testimony of torture and imprisonment is recounted in the book The Heavenly Man, are spearheading the effort known as the Back to Jerusalem movement. The campaign seeks to mobilize 100,000 Chinese missionaries who would die to evangelize the estimated 2 billion people in the area known as the 10/40 Window.

The vision was first articulated by China’s Jesus Church in the 1920s, and was implemented in 1949, the same year the Communist Party took over China. Most of those missionaries were imprisoned and died before being freed.

Yongze, Wang and Yun explain their strategy in Back to Jerusalem: Called to Complete the Great Commission, written with Paul Hattaway, who has authored several books about the church in China.

The initial 36 workers were sent out in 2000. Hattaway said that number has climbed to about 1,000 today. “The number of Chinese missionaries is growing every week, and many hundreds more are being trained inside China right now,” he said.

The 10/40 Window, which includes much of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, is home to the three largest spiritual strongholds in the world today–Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism.

“The Chinese missionaries will face opposition in these regions,” said Luis Bush, who heads the World Inquiry, a ministry that assesses missions activity inside the 10/40 Window. “But they believe the persecution they have already endured was like a training ground for this difficult mission that left them equipped to take the gospel through these territories. That is a very deep conviction.”

Patrick Johnstone, editor of Operation World, a prayer compendium on the various nations of the world, said the missionaries could face an excessive amount of persecution “if their zeal is not tempered by wisdom and a deep understanding of the cultures that they seek to reach.”

Hattaway said Chinese missionaries are receiving language, cross-cultural and religious training, and plan to work closely with local believers in each nation they visit. He added that 100,000–a tithe of what house church leaders estimated to be 1 million full-time Christian workers in China–is the minimum number of missionaries organizers plan to send out.

Journalist David Aikman, who has written extensively about China’s Christians, said the Back to Jerusalem movement has gained strength in the last decade. “There is no part of China that I have visited in which house churches are active where ordinary Christians are not aware of the movement and in most cases, eager to support it,” he said.

Bush believes now is a good time to revive this vision, noting that China recently joined the World Trade Organization, which significantly opened communication with the outside world. He also points to the country’s anticipation of the Olympics in Beijing in 2008, which is spurring a more world-friendly attitude.

Johnstone said publishing a book on the Back to Jerusalem movement may be premature, but he noted that the Bible encourages evangelism nonetheless.

“This type of movement will take time and years of language learning, and there will be a steep learning curve with many mistakes,” Johnstone said. “There needs to be an effective network of support and pastoral oversight with adequate accountability, which is not yet there.”

Still, the Chinese house church leaders have pledged to do whatever it takes to fulfill the Back to Jerusalem vision. “The leaders are concentrated on getting the job done in the power of the Lord,” Hattaway said. “The details of how this happens they are leaving up to the Lord.”
Jennifer LeClaire

Leaders say their U.S. assignment is complete, and they want to help other nations plan their own events
Three years after California pastor Lou Engle issued an urgent call for youth to convene in Washington, D.C., to pray for their nation, the leader of what has become a national prayer movement said the mission has been accomplished.

“I believe in some small way, The Call helped heal the broken covenants of the past, thereby bringing our nation under a measure of covenantal protection,” said Engle, pastor of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena. “My assignment was to help shift the courts of America through prayer back to righteousness. I believe we opened that door.”

In the future Call organizers say they will help other countries host their own Call events. Meetings are scheduled for Sydney, Australia, in 2004, and Berlin in 2005.

The last U.S. Call event–dubbed The Call Texas and held Nov. 27-29 in Dallas–brought 25,000 participants to the Cotton Bowl for three days. Attendees fed the poor on Thanksgiving Day, then spent seven hours at a worship banquet the following day. There evangelist Tommy Tenney issued a charge “to break strongholds, sow seeds and change destiny. Hitler proved there is power in a rally. We’re here to activate.”

The next morning The Call Texas began at 7 o’clock and was marked by fasting, repentance, worship and prayer spanning the next 12 hours. Its goals were to pray that God would right the injustices committed against the unborn and various ethnic groups, to reconcile the generations, and to transform the culture.

The seven previous Call events drew 640,000 people to pray for such concerns as national security at the Boston event–held 11 days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001–prayer in schools at the New York Call; and the media during the Los Angeles and San Francisco gatherings.

Participants in The Call Texas came from across the country. Allen Lao, an engineer from California, came to pray that the spirit of grief lingering over the nation since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963 would be broken. Kana Steinmayer, a housewife and evangelist who attended with her husband and teenage children, came to show her support for the emerging young leaders.

“The kids get inspired by all the moms and dads of the faith championing them in their call,” she told Charisma.

“Joining the generations is the most important thing God is doing right now,” noted Colorado pastor Dutch Sheets of Springs Harvest Fellowship in Colorado Springs, who was among the prayer leaders during the event. “It’s the key–even flashpoint–of revival.”

Lynne Chapman fasted 40 days in preparation for the event. Having had three abortions, Chapman now leads a San Francisco-area ministry for others who have had abortions. She told Charisma: “I came here to break the back of abortion. In order to do that you get to the root.”

Addressing the legacy of abortion, which was legalized as a result of a court case that began in Dallas, was one of the meeting’s primary goals. Engle believes abortion also has roots in the Sand Creek Indian Massacre, which took place on Nov. 29, 1864, in Colorado. On that day U.S. soldiers tore open pregnant women and impaled them on swords.

Sheets said that God takes covenant-breaking seriously, and he led the crowd in repentance for the historic atrocity. Jay Swallow, a veteran evangelist whose great-great grandfather was killed in the massacre, responded: “We forgive. Today is a new day. We’ll walk as equals now–no more underlings. I release forgiveness. We forgive in Jesus’ name.”

In keeping with the theme of repentance, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., asked forgiveness for crimes against both First Nations people and African Americans, as well as the aborted unborn.

In addition to planning international Call events, organizers want to help mobilize groups to go to their state capitals to spend five hours in prayer for local and national concerns, especially the elections.
Karen Tom in Dallas

Christian nightclubs are popping up in cities across the country, providing unique evangelism opportunities
Christians are taking back the night as more and more faith-based nightclubs are popping up in cities across the country. Sponsored mostly by churches and Christian youth ministries, these venues ban cigarettes and alcohol, are open to all ages and feature bands with positive lyrics.

“Christians want a place to go to hear music and have fun that’s not church and not a bar, and they’ve wanted that for a long time,” said Russell Hobbs, owner and founder of The Door in Dallas, a club he opened in 1998.

Once lone rangers, Christian club owners such as Hobbs are part of a growing crowd. In October, Club Three Degrees moved into the heart of the downtown Minneapolis club scene after occupying two previous locations under a different name, the New Union. After a $3 million renovation, Club Three Degrees has the largest capacity of any Minneapolis nightclub.

In addition to its regular club activities and concerts by such groups as ZOEgirl, Kutless, GRITS and Skillet, Club Three Degrees–an outreach of Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, church services on Sunday and Wednesday evenings that include rock-inspired praise and worship and “relevant, keep-it-real teaching.”

“We’re so accessible now,” Club Three Degrees co-pastor Nancy Aleksuk said. “Thousands of people walk by on their way to other clubs and come in.”

In the six weeks following the club’s opening in its new location, 43 people had accepted Christ, including a crack dealer who came off the street for a nightclub-style church service.

The Murray Hill Theater opened in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1995 and has a 500-capacity concert hall, a cybercafe and music shop. The Murray Hill Theater even sparked an economic revival in its declining area of Jacksonville.

“We’re hoping the Christian community will use the theater not just as a place to come and have fun and Christian social interaction,” Murray Hill Theater President and founder Tony Nasrallah explained. “But our vision is to have Christians invite non-Christian friends to a concert setting, not in a church where it would be threatening, and use it as a place to hang out and build relationships.”

Those relationships are being built at clubs across the country, including the Underground in Cincinnati; Club Praize in East Orange, N.J.; The Wreck in Kendalville, Ind.; Rocketown in Nashville, Tenn.; and Club Jubilee in Atlanta.

Creating a safe nightspot for youth is an attractive idea in itself, but making it financially profitable isn’t so simple. The Door is one of the few self-sufficient clubs, partly as a result of Hobbs’ wealth of experience. He started an entire club scene in a depressed area of Dallas in the 1980s before his conversion. That business savvy has reaped benefits for The Door, which recently opened a second club in Fort Worth.

Club Three Degrees in Minneapolis is mostly self-sufficient, but relies on support from Living Word Christian Center in tight financial times. “I think that’s the reason we were the first and have been around since 1989,” Aleksuk told Charisma. “I really believe it’s because we have the backing, spiritually and financially, of a local church committed to reaching people in their area.”

However, leaders at the Underground found church-sponsorship to be a hindrance. After Tri-City Assembly of God started the outreach in their basement, other local ministries complained that they were trying to steal teens.

“We’ve tried to tell youth pastors and senior pastors that this is not anything about building our own church,” said the Underground’s Chris Human. “It’s about building the kingdom of God.”

Still the Underground recently left its church to form a nonprofit organization, teaming with Christian music show The Zone and building a new 13,000 square-foot facility set to open this spring.

Even independent clubs are thankful for the support from individuals and local churches. Nasrallah started the Murray Hill Theater with money from his own pocket. Today the club manages to break even, thanks to the support of individual donations and local churches.

No matter how they’re funded, the clubs meet Christians’ desire for places where they can be entertained without feeling threatened by the negative aspects of the bar scene, or stifled by the traditional aspects of church, leaders say.

“God is pushing the church out of the Sunday morning box,” Hobbs said.
Kevin D. Hendricks

Bill Prankard and his wife, Gwen, have seen thousands come to Christ through their preaching in the northern territories
When God called Bill Prankard in 1972 to take His word from “sea to sea and to the ends of the earth,” the Canadian pastor didn’t dream that meant raising up Inuit spiritual leaders north of the Canadian Arctic Circle.

“I experienced the Holy Spirit in an incredible way at a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting in 1972,” said Prankard, 58, an ordained pastor with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada.

“Right after that, God gave Gwen, my wife, and I Psalm 72:8 as our ministry mandate to take the gospel to our own nation first and then to other countries–‘He will rule from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.’

“So we left the church we were pastoring, preached all over Canada–from ‘sea to sea’–then on our first trip up north of the Arctic Circle, we fell passionately in love with the Inuit.”

On that first trip in 1973, a church was established in Povungnituk, in northern Quebec, within a few days. An elderly Inuit man who had never heard the gospel asked Prankard why he hadn’t come sooner and pointed to a white cross marking the grave of his wife, who had died just months earlier never having heard of Jesus. It changed Prankard’s whole life perspective.

“That man’s plight touched me so much that I made a commitment then and there to bring Jesus to the Inuit,” he said. Today, 90 percent of Povungnituk’s residents are reported to be born-again believers.

Prankard’s commitment has taken him and his wife across northern Canada. The couple has seen thousands of Inuit converted and hundreds brought back from the brink of suicide and addictions. Today, they frequently visit all the Inuit communities they influenced and hold huge conferences for them once or twice a year.

“In many of the communities, almost everybody’s born again. It’s a real book of Acts revival up there. White men introduced the Inuit to alcohol and drugs and destroyed their culture,” Prankard told Charisma from the Ottawa headquarters of Bill Prankard Evangelistic Association (BPEA). “Now the government leaders are Inuit Christians, and they hunt and fish the way their ancestors did because their minds are clear.”

In Nunavut, a new Canadian territory that was formerly part of the Northwest Territories, many of the government’s leaders are Inuit Christians. Louie Arreak, the wife of James Arreak, former director of finance for Nunavut Territory and an associate of BPEA, led an unprecedented revival in 2002 during which a mighty, rushing wind reportedly swept through a church in Pond Inlet, Baffin Island. David Aglukark, a land negotiator representing Nunavut to the federal government, is another one of the Inuit spiritual leaders Prankard has nurtured through the years.

These and other transformed Inuit Christians help Prankard minister to nonbelieving Inuit. Nain, a town of 1,500 in northern Labrador, is renowned for its animist beliefs and high suicide rate. BPEA workers distributed groceries for a complete Christmas dinner to every family in Nain in December 2002. The ministry is currently building an outreach center there for troubled residents to visit at any time for prayer, encouragement or practical assistance.

Manitok Thompson, minister of education and human resources for Nunavut, said Prankard is widely accepted by the Inuit because he respects their culture and wants to empower the people rather than condemn or criticize them. “Whenever Bill holds a meeting, people from all denominations come because they know he’ll give a positive message filled with hope,” she said.

Recently, Prankard began taking his team to remote northern Russia to spread the gospel to the thousands of Inuit there. “Their culture is very similar to that of the Canadian Inuit, so they can relate to what our workers are saying,” said Prankard, who visits Russia twice a year.

Although Prankard’s passion is to reach the Inuit and other northern peoples, he started the River Outreach Centre in Ottawa in September because he believes Canadian revival needs to start in the nation’s capital. The charismatic church already boasts several hundred members and a school of evangelism. BPEA hosts two TV shows, and Prankard preaches in churches around the world, from Ireland, England and Sweden to Korea and Japan.
Josie Newman

Since the death of their 6-year-old daughter, Harry and Cheryl Salem have been helping people find healing from grief
After spending years traveling to encourage congregations to become people of dynamic faith, Harry and Cheryl Salem are finding a new audience–through some of their prayers that were not answered.

The Tulsa, traveling ministers are helping people struggling with loss find new hope by sharing their own personal story of tragedy.

Although close friends such as Oral Roberts, Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland prayed for her, the Salems’ 6-year-old daughter Gabrielle died of cancer in 1999 after battling the disease for almost a year.

The family faced the ordeal publicly. They continued to travel in ministry, with the young girl appearing to sing hooked up to an IV drip on occasions.

Many joined in praying for Gabrielle, but after her funeral one man approached Harry Salem–formerly a senior leader in Roberts’ ministry–and told him his daughter had died because Salem did not have enough faith.

Just three months later, while they were still reeling from Gabrielle’s death, the couple discovered that Cheryl, a singer and former Miss America, had cancer and needed surgery. Their message of faith was being challenged.

“It’s easy to have faith when everything is going good. Faith really comes out when things are tough and when you don’t see what you are hoping for,” Harry Salem said. “We went from faith to trust. Faith is believing for something good in the future; trust is going on when it doesn’t happen.”

The Salems have recounted their journey in two books–From Mourning to Morning and From Grief to Glory–and in numerous TV appearances. They have also found themselves speaking on grief and ministering to individuals they meet as they continue to travel to churches with their two sons, Harry III, 17; and Roman, 14.

“We have a deeper message,” Harry Salem said. “Our ministry has exploded because there are more people out there waiting for their miracles because they didn’t get their first one, people sitting in churches asking: ‘What did I do wrong? Where did I fail?'”

Now cancer-free, Cheryl Salem said she had learned “you can’t have religious ideas about grief. It has no economic lines, no political lines; people deal with so many forms of loss–maybe a loved one, sometimes a career or a marriage. People grieve over some of the strangest things.”

They encourage people to be honest about their feelings and doubts. “People say a faith person shouldn’t ask why,” Harry Salem said. “Jesus hung on a cross and asked, ‘My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ Our flesh has a voice.”

For the Salems, part of their healing came from gaining a higher perspective. “God showed us that Gabrielle was not in our past, she was in our future,” Cheryl Salem said. “She is healed, whole, happy, filling heaven with joy. You can’t go forward looking back. … We had to begin to let God give us a new vision for our life.”

The Salems were not strangers to adversity. Harry lost his father at age 10, while Cheryl overcame the injuries of childhood sexual abuse and a serious car wreck. They knew they had to work hard to avoid the marriage and family breakdown many who suffer serious loss experience.

“If you focus on what you don’t have, you will lose what you do have,” Harry Salem said. “Gabrielle is where we want her to go; we still have two boys and still have choices to make. We can’t neglect them.”

They said the outpouring of love and support they received from around the country helped them. “We had to decide, do you still go on when you have no answer? That’s the real question in life,” Harry Salem said. “Can you go on when you don’t always get a yes? We all go through stages when we don’t understand, and the question is, ‘Do I still serve God when I don’t understand?'”

They find reliving their experiences tiring at times, but satisfying. Cheryl Salem said one day God showed her that “only scars that have changed other people’s lives will be seen in heaven. This [loss] is one of those scars that we have, and we want it to be one that we keep for eternity because we want it to change other people’s lives.”
Andy Butcher

BOOKS

Fatal Distractions
By Joyce Rodgers, Charisma House,

224 pages, paperback, $.

Church of God in Christ evangelist Joyce Rodgers is a minister who seeks to prevent Satan from using one of his most lethal weapons, distractions, to poison our hearts. In Fatal Distractions she discusses the attitudes that distract us and bring about spiritual death, specifically “the death of our God-ordained purpose in this life.”

Rodgers’ seven deadly sins are envy, loneliness, anger, bitterness, hurt, despair and rejection. They build until we cap them with the most insidious distraction of all: ourselves.

Fortunately, she reveals how to stop Satan dead in his tracks: by practically applying the Bible and prayer to our lives. She emphasizes, much like Bible teacher Joyce Meyer, whom she quotes, how we can block internal distractions with godly attractions–such as replacing fear with unrestrained praise.

Having a heart for women, Rodgers addresses her primary audience like an older sister. She tempers a deadly serious message with humor and
compassion.

Sometimes the author goes for the jugular. For example, she writes, “Women in particular are susceptible to the subtle yet insidious distractions that ‘dress themselves up’ to be something beautiful, yet inside are rotten to the core.” Some women might not appreciate the stereotyping here, since men are certainly vulnerable to the same temptations.

Nonetheless, Rodgers’ powerful statements cut through to our hearts. She directs our passion toward God and away from fatal distractions. Rodgers’ audience appeal, which is evident by her many appearances on TBN, Daystar and radio, is strong. Her message brings life to defeat the power of Satan’s deadly arsenal.

Pamela Robinson

Optimize Your Marriage: Making an Eternal Impact on Family and Friends
By Phil and Susy Downer with Ken Walker,
Christian Publications, softcover,
264 pages, $.

Although this is a book about marriage, its primary focus is on Christian discipleship and training and how they affect not only the family but also all of life. This is not surprising, seeing that authors Phil and Susy Downer are the founders of Discipleship Network of America (DNA) and conduct conferences on aspects of Christian living.

Clearly, Optimizing Your Marriage was born out of the authors’ personal experience and ministry.

On the brink of divorce, this couple discovered that God’s grace could mend their broken relationship. Now they share the worst and the best of times, including the practical tactics they have learned to circumvent their personal weaknesses and turn them to strengths.

There is a strong call to mentorship here–to pass along this wealth of experience and understanding to others. The content is solid, basic principles that may be review for some readers and fresh insight for those new to the faith.
Deborah Delk

MUSIC

Illuminate
By David Crowder Band, Sixstepsrecords.

Worship leader David Crowder follows up his impressive 2002 debut with another groundbreaking modern-worship album. Produced by Charlie Peacock, Illuminate explores the theme of light, capturing God’s creativity on “Stars,” and emphasizing our earnest desire to be light and be filled with the light of truth on standouts such as the alternative arrangement of the hymn “Heaven Came Down” and “How Great.”

It’s difficult to find a weak spot on this well-crafted modern-worship feast. From the acoustic opening interlude “Sparks Fly” to the 1960s-turned-1980s electronic-flavored fun of “Revolutionary Love” and the catchy rocker “No One Like You,” Illuminate lights up the crowded modern-worship category.

As an added bonus, Crowder partnered with the makers of Propellerhead software to allow him to put a copy of the music program on the disc. Listeners can see and mix the tracks to their own taste, proving that Crowder remains a step ahead of the rest.

Natalie Nichols Gillespie

The Heavens Are Telling
By Karen Clark Sheard, Elektra Records.

Karen Clark Sheard, considered one of gospel’s premier vocalists, recently released her third solo project, The Heavens Are Telling. A member of the trend-setting group The Clark Sisters and daughter of the late gospel icon Mattie Moss Clark, Sheard showcases her strength as a live vocalist with the first half of the CD consisting of tracks recorded at her home church in Detroit.

Strong live cuts include a moving remake of Andraé Crouch’s “We Are Not Ashamed” with guest artists Mary Mary and the worshipful tune “God Is Here,” penned by Israel Houghton (of Israel & New Breed) and CCM artist Martha Munizzi. Other favorites include the calypso-influenced “Glorious (Make the Praise)” and the gospel rendition of R&B artist Jill Scott’s “He Loves Me.”

The second half of the CD includes five studio cuts, all produced and written by Sheard’s cousin J. Moss and Paul “PDA” Allen. Other urban-
flavored tracks include the inspiring “Go Ahead” featuring mainstream artist Missy Elliott and the funky “Praise Up.” “I Owe,” with special guest Ramiyah, draws the listener in with its infectious melody and gratitude-laden lyrics.

Sheard has sealed her place as one of gospel’s finest with this project.
René Williams

Songs 4 Worship: The U.K. Collection
By various artists, Integrity Music.

Songs 4 Worship: The U.K. Collection introduces or reintroduces listeners to modern praise songs made popular or recently emerging from the British Isles and Australia.

Tim Hughes performs his international hit “Here I Am to Worship” and Delirious rouses listeners with “Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?” Brian

Doerksen adds “Come Now Is the Time to Worship,” and Robin Mark leads worshipers with an Irish touch on “Forever.” Paul Balcohe closes disc one with the popular song “Open the Eyes of My Heart.”

Darlene Zschech is featured on “The Power of Your Love,” and Irish worship leader Eoghan Heaslip closes the two-disc collection with “O Come Let Us Adore Him.”
Natalie Nichols Gillespie

The Art of Praise
By various artists, Integrity Gospel.

This collection allows a variety of talented worship leaders in gospel-laden churches to show off their best side and work their background choirs into a frenzy of praise.

Desmond Pringle shines on the opener, “You Are Good.” Other standouts include the jazz-infused “Above All” by the Take Six-like harmony group J-4 Twenty3, the smooth silky vocals by Daryl Coley on “Desperate Desire” and the give-and-take by Joe Pace & The Colorado Mass Choir (featuring Alicia Williams and Maurice Carter) on “I Will Bless the Lord at All Times.”

The Art of Praise easily brings down the walls between “gospel” music and “modern worship,” allowing the body of Christ to benefit from both musical styles.
Natalie Nichols Gillespie

Professional Rapper
By John Reuben, Gotee Records.

John Reuben, known for sharp wit and occasional musical quirkiness, gets more serious with his third Gotee Records release, Professional Rapper. Sure, quirky John Reu makes his mark. But a probing Reuben teams with Adrienne Liesching (The Benjamin Gate) for the haunting confessional of “I Haven’t Been Myself,” which states: “I’m not all right / I haven’t been myself lately / I’m not OK with the way I’ve let my thoughts overtake me.”

With that same transparency, Reuben narrates his insecurities on the romantic “5 Years to Write.” Reuben deserves credit for stepping outside his comfort zone, providing inspiration and comfort to listeners who identify with struggles like his. His passion and sincerity make Professional Rapper one of his best and a milestone for Christian hip-hop.
DeWayne Hamby

MUSIC SPOTLIGHT

Stacie Orrico Is Staying True

With her song “More to Life” being the No. 3 dance single in the United States and following right on the heels of her wildly popular hit “Stuck,” Stacie Orrico is on her way to reaching her goal.

Orrico, 17, sings edgy R&B, has toured with Destiny’s Child, appears repeatedly on MTV’s TRL, and is popular in Europe, Australia and Japan. Yet this pop star is a Christian who says she wants to “change some people’s lives along the way.”

“I want to set a new standard in the mainstream market and show up-and-coming artists that you can be a respectable woman, stay true to the things you believe in, and you don’t have to take all your clothes off to be successful,” she says.

Her music is making a difference. “Stuck” made one young woman reconsider a relationship she was in. Orrico explains: “I said in a show that relationships are supposed to add to your life and bring you joy, and that person should be teaching you things. … You should be growing together. This girl had never heard anyone say that relationships were actually meant to be beneficial to your life.”

Orrico’s lyrics are about growing up, guys and family. “I’m writing music that doesn’t say Jesus, doesn’t quote a Bible verse, but it’s about things that every girl–I don’t care if you’re a Christian or a Buddhist or an atheist–you’re going to go through this. But it’s music they can groove to as well.”
Marsha Gallardo

The first step in prayer is clearing the channel, making it ready for God’s love.
In February, my thoughts always turn to love–not only because of Valentine’s Day but also because 32 years ago this month I met my true love, my wife. Yet as wonderful as the love is that I have for her, as important as it has been in my life and as much happiness as it has brought me, it is but a speck compared to the love of God, which is manifested to us in the form of His Son, Jesus.

The Bible teaches us that God is love. It is the very essence of who He is. What small child doesn’t learn that in Sunday school? But for most of us, coming to understand His love is a process that occurs as we grow and mature spiritually.

It is as infinite as the sky appears to be. And God’s ways of manifesting that love are, Glenn Clark writes in The Soul’s Sincere Desire, “as uncountable as the stars of the heavens.”

Clark’s book has opened new realms of prayer to me recently. Through his words I’ve begun to see that if I want a message from the God of love my receiving apparatus must be pure and vibrant with love. Any unloving thoughts will interfere with the flow of communication between us, just as rusty pipes prevent the flow of life-giving waters from reservoirs in the mountains.

This means that hindrances such as unbelief, selfishness and fear must go. John, the disciple of love, considered fear one of the major sins that separates man from God. In fact, he believed that love and fear could not abide together. He wrote, “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers … shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” (Rev. 21:8, KJV).

John also wrote that “there is no fear in love; [for] perfect love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18). According to Clark, John could have added, “Absolute fear casteth out love”–and without love we cannot have perfect prayer.

The first step, then, in preparing ourselves for prayer, is the clearing of the channel to make it ready for the inflow of God’s love. “This is best done,” Clark points out, “not by thinking of one’s self but by fixing one’s eyes on God. Think of Him as all-loving, all-powerful, all-perfect, with no anger and no distrust and no fear.

“Remember that every residue of wrong thinking, of malice or of selfishness in your heart or brain clogs the reception of the downpouring light of love.”

The cleansing of the soul Clark recommends is intended to liberate us, to “make the way straight for the message of God to come to us.” To be truly free, he says, “we must first remove all the beams and motes of Self, with its vanity, covetousness, and egotism; of Anger, with its brood of jealousies, envies, and faultfinding; and of Worry, with its children of fear and cowardice.”

When we have done this, we will be able to see God in a way we couldn’t when the channel was blocked. And merely to see God, Clark says, is to have Him. “One who sees–that is, one who possesses in his soul,” he continues, “is one whose prayers are answered.”

In light of Clark’s teaching, let’s use February, the month during which we direct our thoughts toward love, as a time to meditate anew on God’s love, a love that surpasses human understanding. Perhaps the following affirmation by Clark–what he calls a “psalm of love”–will help us to focus on it more during the holiday and beyond:

Thou and Thy Love are infinite;
Thy Love therefore fills all space,
There is no space where Thy Love is not,
Otherwise it would not be infinite.
It is filling the very space which we are
occupying,
Here and Now.
That Love is in us and we are in that Love.
We could not escape it if we would,
And we would not if we could.
It abides in us and we in it.
Therefore when we let go doubt,

and irritation, and self,
And resign ourselves completely to the great All-Power
That resides within and about us,
We are Love, even as God is Love.