Subculture

According to a study published in Scientific American, we each speak an average of 16,000 words per day. We like to imagine ourselves conversing with a very rich and diverse variety of people every day. But separate research studies show that we routinely talk to a very small group of the same people over and over again.

Although most of us converse with 7 and 15 every day, about 80 percent of our words are shared with a small group of about five trusted confidants, allies, and buddies. That means that close to 13,000 of our 16,000 daily words are directed at a very small group of friends and confidants. These closest coworkers, team members, family members, and friends make up our true inner circle. These are the people who think like us, care about us, and believe in us.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Evangelism; Outreach; Neighbors—This can illustrate the need to break out of our Christian "huddle" and build relationships with people outside the church or with people who don't know Christ. (2) Community; Body of Christ—This stat can also show the need to build friendships with people we don't know at church.

In 2011 New York Times editorialist Nicholas Kristof wrote a column praising the work of many evangelical Christians. Kristof begins by noting that at times evangelical leaders act hypocritically and don't reflect Christ. However, he also goes on to write:

But in reporting on poverty, disease and oppression, I've seen so many others. Evangelicals are disproportionately likely to donate 10 percent of their incomes to charities, mostly church-related. More important, go to the front lines, at home or abroad, in the battles against hunger, malaria, prison rape, obstetric fistula, human trafficking or genocide, and some of the bravest people you meet are evangelical Christians (or conservative Catholics, similar in many ways) who truly live their faith.

I'm not particularly religious myself, but I stand in awe of those I've seen risking their lives in this way—and it sickens me to see that faith mocked at New York cocktail parties.

Scientists have identified a specific, love-inducing, trust-building chemical called Oxytocin. Psychologists refer to it as the "hormone of love." When oxytocin is present in our brain, we want to reach out to help and bond with other people. However, a 2011 New York Times article explains that apparently this "love hormone" has its limits. Recent research suggests that human oxytocin produces a brand of "love" that only extends to people in our "in-group." In other words, in sinful human beings oxytocin unleashes a narrow, ethnocentric kind of love—a love that extends to "our kind of people."

In recent studies from the Netherlands, a number of students were given doses of oxytocin and then presented with hypothetical dilemmas. In one scenario, Dutch students were asked "whether to help a person onto an overloaded lifeboat, thereby drowning the five already there." In another scenario, the Dutch students were asked whether to save "five people in the path of a train by throwing a bystander onto the tracks." The five people who might be rescued were nameless, but the person who might be sacrificed was given either a foreign or a Dutch name. Students who sniffed oxytocin prior to these tests were much more likely to favor their own kind and sacrifice ethnic outsiders.

The study concluded that oxytocin only increases our love and loyalty for people in our in-group. Conversely, it makes us more likely to exclude those who aren't like us. Clearly, in our fallen state, our love doesn't stretch very far.

How radically different is the love of God! Christ specifically healed, embraced, and then died for blatant outsiders—even his enemies—not just insiders. Then Christ calls us to love enemies and outsiders.

There's over 2,500 verses in the Bible that deal with the issue of helping the poor, the sick, the hungry. God set it up that we are to address this issue and that he works through us. His Plan B? Well, I don't know what Plan B is. Plan A is the way he set it up.

—Tony Hall, former U.S. ambassador for humanitarian issues, on the global food crisis.

It was an episode of Law & Order that confronted Christian recording artist Natalie Grant with the horrors of child sex trafficking in South Asia. When she turned off the television set, she knew she was being called to do something for the 6 million children who are sold and abused worldwide. Later that evening she discovered two faith-based organizations that rescue children from prostitution: Shared Hope and International Justice Mission. In an article for Today's Christian, Grant tells the story of how this one startling night led to a trip overseas that forever changed her outlook on life and ministry:

Within a matter of months, my husband, Bernie, and I traveled to Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, with Shared Hope and its founder, former congresswoman Linda Smith. There we were able to see, firsthand, the tragedy of child slavery and what is being done to stop it.

I will never forget what I saw there. I don't want to forget.

There I was in broad daylight, walking down the street in Mumbai, when I spotted a precious little girl looking down on us from an upper-story window. She couldn't have been more than seven. Her piercing, dark eyes stared out at me. Her hand was reaching out from between the bars of a cage, not unlike something people here in the States would keep animals in. My eyes locked on hers, for just a few seconds, and I knew that…there in that cage, that was her life. I knew that every day people walked by on the street below, and they didn't even notice her.

There was an Indian man named Deveraj who runs a rescue ministry walking with us. He said, "That's where they hold the new girls. They only let them out to service clients." It was all I could do not to throw up. I started sobbing, there in the street.

From there, we were able to travel out from the city to a place they call the Village of Hope. When they are able to rescue girls from the brothels in the cities, they take them to this wonderful place—the first real home many of them have ever had. And they feed them, clothe them, give them an education, and teach them about God.

It was amazing to see these little girls, these pre-teen and teenage girls who had experienced the most unimaginable tragedies and abuses in their young lives, safe and happy. Completely restored. Living, breathing pictures of the peace of God…

The week before we left for India, I ruptured my left vocal chord and was told I couldn't speak a word for 30 days. At first, I didn't think I would be able to make the trip. But in my heart, I knew God still wanted me to go. I had no idea my doctor-imposed silence would be a blessing in disguise. So often I speak before I think and verbalize without fully processing everything. Now I wasn't able to speak a word, and as a result I think I felt deeper and was able to truly listen and understand those I met in a much deeper way.

At the Village of Hope, I met these two little girls, both 5 years of age. One had already been used as a prostitute for a year and the other had AIDS. Both were now safe and happy, living with newfound hope. Those sweet girls wanted to pray for me, for my sore throat. And did they ever. I had never been prayed for like that before in my life. In their heartfelt prayers, I felt a faith and spiritual wisdom that was far beyond their age. It was a moment that will stay with me forever.

I had grown up in church all my life, and I always felt I had a pretty good grasp of the power of redemption in our lives, but I had never understood it more clearly than I did that day. In the middle of those smiling girls, their eyes full of life and bright hope, I found a treasure I knew I had to share.

When Bernie and I returned home, I reflected on what I'd seen and experienced in India. I knew I couldn't go back to the status quo. I had never felt more alive, more determined to do something that mattered.

I'd always believed that God had given me a voice to sing and that he had created the opportunities I'd been given to make a career and a living doing what I love. But God used India and those little girls to show me that my work as an artist should be so much bigger than it is. I'm not just here to sing. I'm here to give my life away, to share the knowledge I've been given, to tell others about my experience in India, and to do what I can to support the mission efforts there. I want my music to be more than pleasant songs.

I want to inspire people to be instruments of God's peace and justice in the world. Because when we are open and willing to be used in the lives of others, God can light up even the darkest of places.

By the time of his 22nd arrest—following a dramatic chase through Miami [that involved] many police cars and much shooting—John Sala had reached the end of the line. Guilty of the attempted murder of a policeman, aggravated assault, and grand theft, he was headed to jail for a long time.

But jail, of all places, turned out to be his saving grace…

Sent to a prison in Avon Park, Florida, John eventually met Chaplain Warren B. Wall, who shared the good news of the gospel. John dove right in, accepted Christ, and immersed himself in every opportunity for Christian growth.

Assigned to the tape ministry of the chapel, he listened to Bible teachers while organizing and labeling tapes. The chaplain found someone willing to underwrite a seminary correspondence course for John, who became a passionate, disciplined student of the Bible.

"God was birthing something new in me," he says today. "Before, I wanted to take. Now I wanted to give, love, encourage, and nurture."

John also found his musical voice in prison and performed with the prison choir in local churches, singing solos and giving his testimony.

After serving his time, John walked out of prison in 1983 a freer man than ever before.

"I'm not coming back!" he declared, not knowing that, in time, he would indeed be back … but not as an inmate.

After his release, John went on to form All Things New, a ministry to prison inmates and their families. Years later, after he'd married his wife, Eileen, the ministry developed beyond his wildest imaginings…

John and Eileen changed their ministry title to Little Lambs, Inc., with the mission of loving inmates into the ministry's family and, ultimately, into the family of God…

Through in-depth Bible correspondence courses, visitation, counseling, services, concerts, and classes, the Salas began with approximately 100 students in 1998. Today they have 2,750 students and graduate about 250 per year.

"Little Lambs offers inmates a family connection that helps satisfy the need for belonging and being cared for as a lamb that has gone astray," the Salas say.

John's book, I'm Not Coming Back!, is now in the hands of thousands of prisoners who identify with him. John knows their mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual pain. And, though he may not have seen himself as a shepherd to this unlikely flock, it was God's plan nonetheless. His book has since been translated into Spanish (No Volvere!), as have all the Bible correspondence courses, by an inmate (and professional translator) who came to faith in Christ while in prison. The book has also been translated into Russian…

There's no question that John and Eileen Sala have certainly introduced many men and women—all Little Lambs in training—face-to-face with a Shepherd who loved them all along.

In his book High Society, Joseph Califano, the chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, talks about the relationship between addicts and the church:

Chemistry is chasing Christianity as the nation's largest religion. Indeed, millions of Americans who in times of personal crisis and emotional and mental anguish once turned to priests, ministers, and rabbis for keys to the heavenly kingdom now go to physicians and psychiatrists, who hold the keys to the kingdom of pharmaceutical relief, or to drug dealers and liquor stores, as chemicals and alcohol replace the confessional as a source of solace and forgiveness.

In Portland, Oregon, the homeless gather under the Burnside Bridge. For more than three years, carloads of Christians from Bridgetown Ministries have shown up on Friday nights and ministered to these needy men and women. In addition to providing hot meals, shaves, and haircuts, some of the volunteers wash the homeless people's feet. Tom Krattenmaker, a writer for USA Today, was stunned by the display, calling it "one of the most audacious acts of compassion and humility I have ever witnessed."

This group of society's outcasts had their bare feet immersed in warm water, scrubbed, dried, powdered, and placed in clean socks. One man reported with a smile, "I can't find the words to describe how good that felt."

Krattenmaker commented on the significance of this foot washing: "Washing someone's feet is an act best performed while kneeling. Given the washer's position, and the unpleasant appearance and odor of a homeless person's feet, it's hard to imagine an act more humbling."

In preparation for their outreach, the leader of Bridgetown Ministries offered these words: "When you go out there tonight, I want you to look for Jesus. You might see him in the eyes of a drunk person, a homeless person…we're just out there to love on people."