The January 2010 earthquake that rocked the island country of Haiti disrupted many things, but it did not disrupt the ministry of Haiti Under God (HUG), a non-profit, non-denominational mission organization based in Walterboro, South Carolina. While other relief organizations began to flood the area with manpower, medical attention, supplies, food, and temporary shelter, Haiti Under God carried on ministry as usual. And when rescue teams scrambled to establish bases from which to minister, HUG was already there. “Our work has continued to be the same because the needs continued to be the same as prior to the earthquake,” says Keith Kiser, a HUG board member and co-founder.

The earthquake did, however, necessitate the relocation of Haiti Under God’s girls’ home, HUG a Child, which houses 17 girls rescued from the streets of Haiti. Many people displaced by the earthquake moved into Afca village, where the girls’ home was located. They pitched tents on every bare piece of property available, even over rubble gathered at the streets’ edges. As refugees flooded Afca village, it became an unsafe environment for the girls. One of the missionary teams searched for a better place for the girls’ home, and it was relocated to a suitable property in Port-au-Prince.

“Are you dating anyone yet?” It’s that horrible question most singles dread. Aunt Gertrude asks it at the family Christmas celebration. It’s the first question posed by an old friend you haven’t seen in a while, and, predictably, the whispered inquiry from a matchmaking friend. Always with the horrible word at the end—the inevitable “yet.” This one weighted word implies that a single’s overarching goal in life should be to find a spouse. And that they’re failing epically.

In situations like these, most singles plaster a smile on their faces and politely respond, “No, still waiting for the right one.” But, honestly, that’s not the truth. It’s simply a response they know their interrogator wants to hear.

While many guys and girls in my generation do want to get married, they’re not really waiting at all. Waiting implies sitting passively at home, twiddling their thumbs, wishing and hoping their spouses will magically appear.

Waiting passively is not what this generation of singles is doing. It’s true that fewer people are marrying shortly after high school or college. A recent Huffington Post article states the average marrying age for men is 28.7 and for women 26.5 –a year older than the 2007 average*.

Many Christians are disillusioned with church.

Perhaps they’ve been hurt, neglected, or disappointed. They see its shortcomings and failures and wonder if they’d be better off without it. After all, in this world of cyber everything, we can read devotions on an E-reader, watch a service on our televisions, and participate in online Bible study without ever leaving our homes.
Why bother then, to go to church?

Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. Christ didn’t love the Internet, parachurch organizations, or social clubs. He loved the church.
He loved the church so much that he died for it. That’s reason enough if you ask me.

God instituted the church. In the days following the ascension of Jesus Christ, God birthed the New Testament church. Through salvation, he initiated Christians into a universal church, but he also began to place Christians in local churches. The book of Acts is a glorious testimony of how he sent disciples everywhere to establish groups of believers, complete with leadership and governments.

We need the church. We need each other to encourage us toward spiritual maturity, hold us accountable, pray for us, and help us in our times of need. If you’ve ever experienced the love of a local church during a time of sickness or loss

“Where words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent” (Prov. 10:19). Scriptural warnings about the control of our tongues are many and urgent; yet sincere and devoted Christians often disregard them.

How Christians discuss politics is a perfect example. Many portray candidates of the opposing party in the worst possible light. Did you know all Democrats are left-wing liberals bent on turning the U.S. economy into a socialist state? Did you know all Republicans are extreme right-wing conservatives with no compassion for the poor or sense of social responsibility? We reach these conclusions simply by identifying a person’s party affiliation, without ever meeting or speaking with that individual about his or her views.

Our Lord teaches us that by the measure we judge, we shall be judged (Matt. 7:1-2). Such a warning should encourage us toward the most generous view of others, yet even within the church, we often adopt the patterns of the world and allow our speech toward one another to be corrupted.

We would be shocked and grieved to learn that anyone among us was contemplating murdering a fellow believer, yet we violate the sixth commandment with thoughts and words as well as actions.

When members of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Pomaria gathered on the church lawn before dawn early this year, it wasn’t for a sunrise service. It was to watch their 75-year-old church building go up in flames. As firefighters fought valiantly to bring the fire of unknown origin under control, church members watched in horror as the educational building, then the sanctuary, and finally the bell tower and steeple succumbed to the ever-advancing flames. When the sun finally rose on January 10, all that remained of one of the oldest Lutheran churches in South Carolina was a charred shell.

“And on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18).
Lifelong member Jerry Richardson was there amid the smoke and flames. As he gazed at the remaining granite walls, still ringed by feebly licking flames, he saw destruction and devastation. And he saw hope. “The sanctuary walls remaining upright are symbolic,” he said, “that this church was built on a strong foundation that is Jesus Christ.”

Church member Paul Werts was also there. Werts, director for the South Carolina Aeronautics Commission, has driven past the church every day for 34 years on his way to work. This day was different.

Bait- and-switch. You know the technique. A company or salesperson promises one thing and, after you’ve signed on the dotted line, substitutes an inferior product. When I was ten years old, I fell victim to a bait-and-switch scam. I saw an ad for Sea Monkeys in the back of a children’s magazine. “Wonders of the Sea!” “Fascinating to Watch,” and “Hatch Before Your Very Eyes!” were some of the phrases I read. I had to have a family of Sea Monkeys.

When I received them, I carefully followed the instructions. The result was microscopic reconstituted shrimp eggs so small I needed a magnifying glass to see them. They bore no resemblance to the monkeys shown in the ad. I was the victim of a Bait-and-switch scheme.

The Jews of Jesus’ day felt that they were victims of a bait-and-switch scheme. Two thousand years of prophecy had promised a Messiah, and it appeared he had come at last. The initial reports sounded promising. Heals Hundreds! Raises Man from the Dead, and Feeds 5,000!

At long last, the promised deliverer had come. Thousands welcomed their soon-to-be conquering King with shouts of “Hosanna! Hosanna!”

Five days later the same voices who hailed Christ as their long-awaited deliverer were raising their voices again – this time with shouts of “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

When Jesus gave the Great Commission, instructing believers to make disciples of all people, he wasn’t just talking to pastors and missionaries. He was talking to you. And me.

Like Philip, one of Christ’s first disciples, who introduced his friend Nathanael to the Savior, God has continued to use men in the marketplace to spread the good news of salvation. If you’re a Christian in the workplace, you are in full-time Christian service, whether you realize it or not.

“Laymen are my heroes,” says Perry Bowers, founder of Focused Living ministry, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering men to “passionately live out the priorities of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.” Focused Living ministry is built on the premise that sometimes a man’s best opportunity to learn about Christ comes by observing Christ-like qualities and love in a coworker. As Bowers points out, not everyone goes to church, and men in the marketplace are often “church damaged.”

This observation led Bowers to resign as pastor of Nursery Road Presbyterian Church in Irmo and start Focused Living in 1994.

A non-profit ministry supported by donations, FL uses Leadership Forums sponsored by laymen in the workplace, “wired events,” and GRIP groups to reach, teach, and unleash men with the love of Christ.

Twenty-five percent of marriages begun in 2013 will end within eight years.* “. . . As long as we both shall live,” once a common promise in marriage ceremonies, is being replaced by “as long as we both shall love.” And love, it seems, is fickle. Instead of staying married for a lifetime, some people change their spouses as often as they change their oil.

So how do couples who are in it for the long haul keep the sparkle in their marriage? How do they build relationships that can weather the challenges of busyness, separation, children, and a multitude of life’s demands? We talked with six Midlands couples in various stages of marriage. Here are their suggestions for keeping a marriage fresh.

Michael and Keah Tandon of Northeast Columbia have been married two months and still have that newlywed glow. Though still in the honeymoon stage, they understand the importance of working on their young marriage. “People say that marriage shows you how selfish you are,” Michael says. “While that’s true, marriage has also taught us how to be servants to each other.”

Keah, a recent graduate of the University of South Carolina, agrees. “Life is busy, but we try to make time together a priority.”

One of the most amazing aspects of my job as the editor of Reach Out, Columbia magazine is getting to interview people who have made an impact on our world. Some are well known—musicians, preachers, and statesmen. Others, not so much—janitors, Sunday school teachers, and food pantry workers. Each one inspires and challenges me in some way.

Interviewing Dr. Gary Chapman, marriage expert and author of more than 20 books including The Five Love Languages, gave me hope for the future of marriage. At a time when biblical marriages blunder about like puppies in a minefield, it’s easy to lose perspective. Statistics say young marriages have the highest chance of dissolving within the first seven years, and seasoned marriages that have weathered career building, child rearing, and empty nests come crashing down with almost equal frequency. As I look around my circle of friends—most of whom have been married longer than they were single—it’s easy to wonder who’s next.

I look at my own 28-year marriage and realize that it’s come full circle. We were babies, barely 22 and 20, when we married in late 1984. Moving into a tiny mobile home with windows that didn’t close completely, we transitioned from our honeymoon at Disney World to the coldest temperature in Columbia’s history: 1 degree above zero.

“Is this the right place?”

I looked up from my conversation to see who was asking. Doing a double-take, I realized who had just joined the growing crowd in our living room. It was Bill.

Bill (not his real name), the lab tech who lived a few doors down, who played in a rock band that practiced in his house seemingly every night, and who had more piercings than a roomful of adolescent girls, was now in our home, arm-in-arm with “Sharon,” his live-in girlfriend. They were the people I most wanted to see this evening, and the ones I least expected. “I wonder what God is going to do,” I thought as I headed over to shake his hand.

It was December 2009, in a setting familiar to my wife Noelle and me. Bill and Sharon, like many over the years, had gathered in our home at Christmastime. During our annual Christmas Gatherings, neighbors meet neighbors, eat good food, and hear a clear explanation of how to know God personally through Jesus Christ.
Christmas is a great time to tell others about Jesus. We’ve found that even people who normally turn a disinterested ear to the gospel message are willing to talk about Christ at Christmas.

“You can’t revive a dead person,” reasons Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham and sister of Samaritan’s Purse founder Franklin Graham. Like her famous father and almost equally well-known brother, Anne Graham Lotz is committed to advancing the Kingdom of God. But she’s quick to differentiate between her ministry and theirs. Revival is her ministry.

“My father and brother hold evangelistic meetings where they help bring people to a saving faith in Christ,” Lotz explains. “But revival is taking people who have (already) placed their faith in Christ and waking them up.”

In September the slender, silver-haired Lotz woke up thousands of women and several hundred men at Augusta’s James Brown Arena. Just Give Me Jesus, her two-day equivalent of an “old-time revival meeting,” was one of two conferences she presented in 2012. Designed to “bring women into a fresh encounter with Jesus,” the event required more than 18 months of planning by Augusta’s church and community leaders and ministry personnel from Lotz’s worldwide ministry organization, AnGeL Ministries. Lotz has presented Just Give Me Jesus across the globe for now more than 13 years.
Her message builds upon those of her father and brother.

Dick Lincoln, pastor of Shandon Baptist Church, gave me a gift. And it isn’t even Christmas.
As a child, Christmas for me was very much about presents and Santa Claus. I knew Christmas was Jesus’s birthday, but the baby in the manger sat squarely next to Frosty the Snowman and Kris Kringle on our mantel. Throw the Grinch into the mix, and you have a good idea of the theology that muddled my understanding of the holiday season.

Like Dick, I came into a personal relationship with Christ as a young adult. That first Christmas after my conversion was like sunshine breaking through dense fog. When I sang “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” all of a sudden, I got it. Although previously I could repeat the words and simultaneously calculate how long it would take to heat cocoa and serve cookies after the service, now the words had deep personal meaning. “Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King; peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!’”

This epiphany of the meaning of Christmas, though joyous and wonderful, also caused a struggle within me. Should I focus only on the sacred and shun our culture’s gift-giving tradition? Wanting to honor God with my Christmas celebrations, I squirmed when I heard speakers rail against the commercialism of the season.

For most football players, a run-in with a nurse happens in a doctor’s office or hospital. For the opponents of James Bostick and Lequawn James, however, it happens on the field. Last year, James and Lequawn had the double distinction of being captains of the Newberry College Wolves football team and graduates of the college’s nursing program. This rare combination of academic and athletic achievement attracted considerable media attention, including local television coverage, but both student athletes remain humble, crediting God for their success.

At 5’8”, the soft-spoken James plays bigger than his size and has become a registered nurse as well as an NFL prospect as a defensive back. Lequawn, with his wide-rimmed black glasses and well-spoken demeanor, appears the more studious of the two. But at 6 feet and 300 pounds, the giant with the gentle nature is also an all-conference offensive lineman.

For James, who grew up in Estill, becoming a nurse fulfilled a lifelong dream. Under the influence of his aunt, a nurse at the Augusta Burn Center, and his grandfather, a doctor who served in the Korean War, James found his calling early.

“Your walk with Jesus is where it all starts.” The words are profound when spoken by Mark Hall, the lead singer and principal songwriter for the Contemporary Christian music band Casting Crowns. And while his success in the music industry is noteworthy, Hall would prefer to be recognized as the pastor of students at Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough, Georgia, where he shepherds 400 teens and their families.
Despite eight years of burgeoning success in the music industry, the seven band members remain active in student ministries in the Atlanta area, scheduling their tours around local church commitments. Although the group members met at Eagle’s Landing where the band began, three members have gone on to ministries in other Atlanta churches. “All of us are still involved in youth ministry through the local church,” Hall says of his six band mates, Megan Garrett, Melodee DeVevo, Hector Cervantes, Chris Huffman, Juan DeVevo, and Brian Scoggin.

Casting Crowns has risen to the top of the Christian music industry, with 14 Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, three Grammy Awards, and two American Music Awards since its launch in 2003. The mega group has sold more than 8.2 million albums and has been named Billboard magazine’s top selling Christian act for the past five years.

Despite commercialism’s temptation to leapfrog from Halloween to Christmas, we continue to equate November with Thanksgiving. And though 39-cents-a-pound turkey sales dominate the newspapers, and shoppers prepare for Black Friday, there is still an undercurrent, a sense that the final Thursday in November is the hidden jewel among the costume jewelry of the season.

So we plow past cranberry sauce and cornbread-stuffed turkey, past pies studded with pecans costing more than steak, and we sit, and we pause, and we pray. Perhaps we finger the dried corn kernels at each place setting and remember the rations of the early settlers. We toss them into a woven straw basket, speaking aloud some of the precious gifts of the year, and we nod, affirming God’s goodness.

Eyes bright with unshed tears, we acknowledge the empty chairs around the table and choose to honor them with joy. We speak thanks for the years we had, rather than mourning the years we lost. “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you.”

Ann Voskamp, in her New York Times bestseller One Thousand Gifts, proclaims, “This is the crux of Christianity: to remember and give thanks.”

Pastor/Teacher Craig Barnes says it this way: “Being thankful is not telling God you appreciate the fact that your life is not in shambles.

Slowly, the Haitian driver maneuvers over bumpy, rocky roads—and then accelerates at bursts of breakneck speed down the few paved roads. Our conspicuously white faces witness bizarre sights from the van’s windows: men urinating , severely malnourished dogs mating, children hanging upside down against a crumbling wall, a boy rolling a tire down a dried-up riverbed with a Sprite bottle attached to a stick, children pointing and smiling, and roadside tables of mangoes, feminine protection, sunglasses. Ankle-deep, smoldering garbage. Rubble spilled into the alleyways from earthquake-compromised buildings. Deafening honking, screeching brakes, and no traffic laws. Women walking erect with loads as large as a basket of live chickens balanced carefully on their heads. An irrigation system capturing water from high atop a mountain and rushing it past bony horses and a naked, bathing woman. Voodoo chants and drumbeats leading dancers winding through street vendors.

Haiti is a country of contradictions. Vibrant bougainvillea drape over razor-wire walls. Landscapes of garbage sit against a backdrop of picturesque mountains. People enamored with Jesus while working to appease Voodoo deities. Men and women emerging neatly dressed from densely packed tent cities. Children in uniforms attending schools in dilapidated buildings.

Barbara Porter is known around town as “The Lady with the Hands.”

She has earned this endearing moniker by serving the Midlands deaf community for more than half a century. A glowing testimony to British Revivalist Henry Varley’s charge, “The world has yet to see what God will do with a (wo)man fully consecrated to him,” Barbara’s ministry is rooted in humble beginnings. And despite no formal training, she has faithfully and successfully served the deaf since 1952.

Perhaps best known for her 38-plus years of service as full-time Minister of Special Ministries at First Baptist Church of Columbia, Barbara oversees seven interpreters for the deaf and coordinates with other church ministries to provide deaf classes for all ages. She interprets worship services and has taught community-wide sign language classes for so long that she has taught some students’ children and grandchildren. Her hands, though bent with age now, are rarely still.

She conducts the Silent Sounds Choir, a deaf choir that sings with their hands, and works closely with the area’s only annual Special Education Vacation Bible School. “On a recent Special Ed. Sunday, the deaf rang hand bells,” Barbara says, “and we hosted 160 special education church members and their guests for lunch afterward. It’s very rewarding work.”

I had the privilege of interviewing Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of Billy Graham, for an upcoming
Reach Out, Columbia feature. At the end of our time, after I had asked all the “official” questions, I asked one more: “How is your dad?”

“He’s actually doing very well,” she replied. “At almost 94 years old, he doesn’t have much stamina, and he has a hard time hearing, a hard time seeing, a hard time walking, but he does have such a sense of purpose. He believes God has left him here for a reason. . . . My daddy realizes he still has a ministry.”

Her words caused me to ponder the challenge of finishing well.

I’ve attended funeral services where grieving loved ones’ cars overflowed the parking lot, and mourners watched the service from side rooms on closed-caption TVs, because the sanctuary was standing room only.
And I’ve attended funeral services where random bits and pieces of a tattered family stood awkwardly around a casket checking their watches to see how long until the perfunctory rituals were completed.

I’ve been part of services that were more like weddings, because they were celebrating a life that was transitioning from one reality to another, and I’ve been part of services that were bitterly painful and devoid of hope.

She speaks to me in Spanish now, and there is no gracious way out of this predicament. I cannot respond to words I don’t understand, and she can no longer find her English. She is blissfully unaware, and I pray Lord, give me a word, just one word I recognize that I might reply appropriately.

Is this what she does? Pray for a recognizable something to respond appropriately to, while she slips back into the pool of natal knowledge that was before the worldly connections were made in her brain? This world has become her womb in which to gestate until her birth into the next. All she knows from this world is liquefying into murky amniotic fluid that will carry her away from us. We her children cup our hands to collect it and gather it back to her in vain. It is slipping through our fingers. And even floodgates of love cannot keep her from leaking and seeping away. She is leaving us: Noemi, my mother-in-law.

I want to be Ruth, but she has been so much more graceful in this than we her children. We panic, prompt her, quiz her, frantic for her to remember, as if we can will a thing into being so.

When Jenny Martin clipped her first coupon, she never dreamed where that action would lead. A stay-at-home mom with twin three-year-old daughters, a new baby, and a leaky roof, her immediate goal was to reduce her grocery bill enough to be able to pay for a new roof on her Irmo home. Four years later she is the president and CEO of Southern Savers, an online website that employs between 10 and 12 part- and full-time employees and has 500,000 page views and 1.5 million visitors a month. She’s taught thousands of men and women how to lower their grocery bills, live frugally, and give abundantly. And she’s still clipping coupons.

Although her fascination with coupons began, as Jenny describes it, “as a stay-at-home mom outlet,” she acknowledges it was her family’s serious financial struggles that motivated her to learn everything she could about couponing. Employed as a registered nurse before their twin girls were born, she and her husband, James, took “a leap of faith” and made the decision for Jenny to quit her job and stay home. “We decided early on that we would always have somebody at home with the girls . . . that they wouldn’t be in daycare; that we would be with them.”