I have a confession to make. Judas Iscariot and I share the same shameful sin. My sin has stained my life for more than 30 years, while Judas only carried his for three. Let me explain. You may remember Judas was one of the twelve disciples Jesus chose for His inner circle. For three years, the Lord Jesus loved, trained, and delegated authority and power to him. He even extended incredible grace by giving him the place of honor at the Lord’s right hand during the Last Supper. In contrast, Judas only used Jesus for the purpose of building his own kingdom. Judas defrauded the Lord by using Him and betraying Him. He turned Him over to the religious leaders in order to build his own little kingdom, based on his own little agenda, for his own little glory. As I look back over the last 30 years of my ministry, in some ways I am no different. I have defrauded my Lord by using Him and ultimately betraying Him to build my own little kingdom, based on my own little agenda, for my own little glory.

This horrific commitment to my own kingdom-building was exposed repeatedly. I used to explode in rage or sink into depression when others would not follow my plans.

For almost four decades Dr. Hal H. Crosswell Jr. has journeyed to Haiti to use his ophthalmological skill to serve poverty-stricken people in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Crosswell, 77, who has practiced with the Columbia Eye Clinic for 45 years, goes as part of a United Methodist Volunteers in Mission South Carolina (UMVIMSC) team. Yet his service feeds into a mighty stream of short-term medical missionary volunteers from all sorts of Christian denominations. These medical missionaries often use vacation time – and sometimes their own funds – to provide medical services such as dental care and cataract surgery to the poorest of the poor.

Crosswell, whose work has been recognized with the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, first became involved in 1968 at the request of another doctor who asked him to consider doing some work in the Caribbean. His first trip took him to Anguilla in the Leeward Islands to perform eye surgery.
“Then in 1972, at the request of the Methodist Church of Haiti, we were asked to look at a remote area of Haiti — Jeremie, about 120 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince and then report back to the S.C. United Methodist Conference,” Crosswell says.

I am the product of a mixed marriage.

My father is from the South, my mother from the North. Growing up near Newport, Rhode Island, where my father was last stationed in the navy, I cut my teeth on Italian bread from the corner bakery and advanced to eating Tony’s pizza and meatball grinders. On summer visits to Columbia, my southern relatives taught me that grits were meant to be eaten with salt and butter, and barbecue was a noun, not a verb. My first, second, and third attempts to eat a boiled peanut resulted in regurgitation, because I thought the cold slimy legumes were rotten. It was a natural conclusion for a child who had only ever eaten dry, crunchy, roasted peanuts.

The ethnic climate of my hometown was heavy with Italians and Portuguese, the two branches of my maternal family tree. My grandmother, an immigrant who entered the country through Ellis Island and made her way north to work in the textile mills of Bristol, Rhode Island, was named Mary. Because the Virgin Mary is highly venerated by Portuguese Catholics and many choose to name their daughters Mary, my grandmother shared a very common name among her countrywomen.

Tawa Saune grew up in Lima, Peru. He is Quechua – an indigenous people who descended from the ancient Incas. His father is from the mountains, his mother from the jungle. And Laura, “the girl of his dreams,” is an American from Columbia International University. As husband and wife, they are developing a HEART for the underdeveloped world.

Tawa and Laura Saune are the first CIU students in a new CIU minor, “International Community Development,” or ICD. An important aspect of ICD is an agreement with the HEART (Hunger Education and Resource Training) Institute, an educational ministry of Warner University, a Christian school in Lake Wales, Florida. HEART operates a village community on the Warner campus that simulates many aspects of underdeveloped world living. The HEART website says that “participants acquire problem solving and coping skills that will enable them to adapt more readily to the challenges they will face overseas.” Tawa and Laura spent their fall semester at HEART, a requirement of the ICD program. They lived in primitive quarters, butchered animals, and learned about sustainable agriculture.

The girl of his dreams
Although they had not met, Laura (23) and Tawa (21) both lived in Lima, Peru, where Laura’s parents served with Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Adrian Despres is a big guy. At six feet six inches tall, he towers above many of the University of South Carolina athletes with whom he works. A former defensive end for the Furman University Paladins, Despres often trains with members of the football team in the offseason, running, lifting, and working out. He attends practice several days a week and travels with the team. But unlike the coaches who help the athletes develop their physical strength, Despres’ goal is to help the athletes under his care develop a different type of power. As a volunteer Character Coach for the USC football team, he is a living testimony that a man is often strongest when he is on his knees.

“I became a Christian on the first day of college and ‘Two-a-Days,’” Despres recounts about twice-a-day football practices. “My roommate led me to Christ, and my life from that point on dramatically changed.” A biology/premed major, Despres (pronounced dePRAY), remembers reading the book Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. “The book challenged me to live every second to acknowledge Jesus.” It was during this time that God called him into the ministry. He accepted the call to wholeheartedly do whatever the Lord wanted him to do.

I will never look at a magazine the same way again.

Although I have always loved the printed word, I’ve never given much thought to how it got there. As a child, I was a voracious reader. You’ve heard about kids who read the encyclopedia for fun? That was me. I read everything I could get my hands on, from the backs of cereal boxes to every book in the children’s room at Roger’s Free Library in Bristol, Rhode Island. I remember filling the basket of my bicycle with books, pedaling home, and carrying my treasure into the house like a conquering hero triumphant with the spoils. We didn’t have much in the way of material possessions, but whenever I returned from the library with an armload of books, I felt rich.

I still feel that way. Now a regular at the Thomas Cooper branch of the Richland County Library, I often joke with the librarian that my library card is the only card in my wallet my husband lets me max out. During my family’s 17 years of homeschooling, I am sure we checked out thousands of books to supplement our curriculum, research a topic, or simply read for fun. No doubt about it, I am a true bibliophile.

There are two villages two miles apart in Columbia, and between them, they’re raising about 120 children. While the children at Epworth Children’s Home and Carolina Children’s Home don’t have typical family situations, their villages provide them with just about everything else – food, shelter, clothing, education, health care, and guidance on how to live each day. At Christmas, hard-working staffers and a generous community make sure the children are remembered.

There are presents. Holiday dinners. Decorated trees and cottages. But there’s that extra something too, that intrinsic awareness that assures them they’re not alone, even if their parents can’t take care of them, even if they know they’ll never go home again. Here’s a peek into these villages at Christmas. Indeed, they are universes unto themselves.

Epworth Children’s Home
“After Thanksgiving is when the whole fun begins,” says Taylor Perry, 18. Her face brightens talking about it. At Epworth now for almost eight years, Taylor knows that in September she and the other children will compile their wish lists, and many of those wishes will come true on Christmas Day. Cottage Partners – individuals, businesses or groups who’ve adopted a cottage – will have Christmas parties for the children. Hot chocolate and cookies are served December 7-14, when community members drive through the 32-acre campus to drop off goodies and look at the decorated cottages.

“I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being” (Psalm 104:33).

A flash of red satin, a glimpse of a cape and top hat, a gleam of red-berried holly, all of it strolling at 19th-century pace down the halls of Columbiana Centre. Christmas eye candy courtesy of the Carillon Carolers, costumed in Victorian splendor and celebrating their 24th year of making holiday music for Midlands music lovers. In lush four-part harmony, Dana Fore, soprano; Chan Shealy, tenor; Hal McIntosh, bass; and I — Rosanne McDowell, alto and manager — sing the glories of the Savior’s birth to diverse audiences of every level of belief and unbelief in the gospel of Jesus Christ. No matter their faith, our listeners all seem to enjoy it.
We feel the reason we can please so many different kinds of people is simple. The holiday favorites we sing span generational and cultural divides, thereby opening possibly closed hearts to the timeless message of God’s salvation in Christ. We are “evangelists of good cheer,” as carolers sometimes are called, sowing gospel seeds encased in beautiful musical and visual wrappings.

I fell in love with words and the power of words as a fledgling writer in sixth grade English class. I will never forget the comment my teacher scrawled in red at the bottom of my essay. “I like your interesting verbs, Lori,” she wrote. “You are going to be a great writer someday.” Her words cast a lofty goal that I may never attain, but they conveyed the unwritten message, “I believe in you.” Her words were much more valuable than the A+ that followed.

I fell in love with Jesus, whom the Bible calls The Word, as a frightened teenager sandwiched between high school and college. Overwhelmed with the responsibility of making decisions that would chart the course of my life, I eagerly embraced the opportunity to yield my life to Someone much wiser than I. “If any of you lack wisdom,” my pastor quoted to me from James 1:5, “let Him ask of God who gives to all men liberally without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” I asked that day, and have continued to ask ever since. God continues to be faithful to give.

They come from all walks of life – college students, mothers with young children, business executives, and great-grandmothers. They share two things: their love for God and their love for people less fortunate than themselves. For the past four or five years, about 15 to 30 volunteers from churches all over the city meet every Wednesday night to feed the homeless at Finlay Park. Most weeks, they serve more than 100 men, women, and children. In the words of coordinator Scott Shull, “It is the body of Christ leaving the ‘sanctuary’ of our churches and coming together to be the hands and feet of Christ.”

Chicken Night, as the evening affectionately is called, begins at 7:30 p.m. when volunteers from Trinity Baptist Church in Cayce begin setting up tables. Almost immediately, homeless people start forming a quiet, patient line. One recent Wednesday, Mandy Poston and her preschool son, Kade, and Rachel Allen and her son Gabriel helped pile bananas on a table in preparation for the meal. Both boys took turns retrieving water bottles from a nearby cooler. “He loves to hand out water,” Poston said with a smile. She serves with her son every week.

He was expecting the phone call. He’d taken hundreds of them from other writers wanting to tap into the mind of one of America’s most acclaimed and beloved Christian writers. With more than 80 million book copies in print and still more coming, he found time one afternoon to sit on his front porch in San Antonio, with his dog nearby, and answer questions for ROC readers.

Perhaps some of those books are on your own shelves: No Wonder They Call Him the Savior, He Still Moves Stones, When God Whispers Your Name, In the Grip of Grace, Next Door Savior, Cure for the Common Life, and his latest, Max on Life. In all, Max Lucado has penned over 53 books. And still, he serves as pastor of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio.

His candid humor and humility intact, he settled into each of the following questions as if enjoying the reflection:

What was the beginning of your faith?

“When I was ten, I made a genuine decision I wanted to be a Christian,” Max says. Two weeks later, he was baptized. “The deal is, I wasn’t discipled. I didn’t grow in my faith. During my teenage years, I don’t think you could have differentiated between me and a hard secular.”

When God clearly calls you to do a job, you don’t ask why or for how long. When He calls you out of that job and into another, you still don’t question Him. Instead, you pack up all your Reach Out, Columbia files and turn them over to the new editor. Which I’ve done.It wasn’t easy. But neither was working double shifts as a magazine editor and novelist. In my farewell email to our ROC writers, I told them I’d never had to choose one child over another. I didn’t think I could do it. So I asked God to choose. Magazine or books?

A few weeks later, my book publisher surprised me with a two-book contract. That, I believed, was God’s answer.

So now, ROC welcomes its new editor─Lori Hatcher. You’ve been reading her work for years in these pages. A seasoned journalist who’s also steeped in God’s Word, Lori is already cultivating the January/February issue, her first as the new editorial head of the magazine.

Lori is married to Rev. David Hatcher, the youth minister at Kilbourne Park Baptist Church. They have two adult daughters: Mary Leigh, a freshman at Liberty University, and Kristen, a USC graduate.

Recently, my son Josh and I were surfing the Internet for a particular charity he was interested in. With the click of the mouse, we made a contribution, and he was off to his next activity. But something troubled me about this. It had been too easy to click and run.
My husband and I had been fairly successful in instilling empathy in Josh for those less fortunate. He understands their plight. But I wondered, does he feel it? Do children today grasp the hardships facing those who are barely getting by? How can they, if their own lives are not impacted by this suffering?
Helping others is simple when you write a check and drop it in the mail, or better yet, go online and donate with a click of the mouse. But our children are easily misled by the instantaneous process of helping someone without physically being involved. That kind of giving makes it hard for a child to develop a true servant’s heart and show Christ’s love to a fallen world.
With so many demands upon working parents, though, it’s difficult to carve out time to physically minister to others. But when we don’t, we lose opportunities for teaching empathy to our children.

Miyoung Paik knows how it feels to be labeled “different.” The youngest of seven children, she grew up in Seoul, Korea. During early childhood, she developed a degenerative bone condition that required an operation and a six-month stay in a full-body cast. The treatment enabled her to walk again but left her diminutive and slightly deformed.
“I hated elementary school,” Miyoung says. “Children can be very harsh. They called me names. But I loved going to church. That saved me. I had lots of friends there.” Almost a half century later, Paik, 53, is still surrounded by church friends, although not in her native Korea but in Lexington, S.C. The shy little girl has blossomed into a self-assured woman, the Reverend Doctor Miyoung Paik (pronounced me-young pak). When addressing the congregation of the Lexington United Methodist Church, where she has served as associate pastor for 13 years, the petite Paik uses a step stool to see over the pulpit. But what she lacks in size, she makes up for in her enthusiasm to introduce her flock to different approaches to worship, often with an artist’s eye. Paik is not only an ordained Methodist minister but a trained artist who began developing her talent early in life.

A seven-hour drive down I-95 alone makes the mind cavort in strange little ways, unleashed in that suspended state between the leaving and the arriving.
On a trip home to Orlando — no CDs playing, no cell phone to my ear — I indulged in a panoramic replay of my youth. It was as if an old newsreel of my early years flicked images against a transparent screen attached to the hood of my car, and all I had to do was watch.
As I approached Jacksonville, where I attended first through seventh grades, and Orlando, where I finished high school, the images came more quickly, more vividly. But only some, I discovered, had made a difference.
Like stars in a constellation, there are touch points in our lives that, when connected, create a picture of who we are. They’re the little moments that suddenly align the planets for us. The chance remark that ignites a career. The everyday routine that carves the mind of a child and sends it on its way. That day on I-95, it was the touch points I saw clearest.
I saw my grandmother sitting on the side of her bed each night, praying. I always asked what she said and if God answered. What she told me shaped the foundation of my faith.

First place
“Babushkas”
Irina Ponomarev

Irina took this photo inside a Protestant church in the Ukrainian village of Gorodische. Through the Ministry of Outreach to Slavic Tribes, Irina and her husband, Alex, make frequent trips to Russia and Ukraine assisting in nursing homes, orphanages, Bible camps, and village churches. Irina says the women photographed are “incredible prayer warriors and when they sing, I reach for Kleenex . . . Many of these ladies have survived persecution for their faith, loss of their loved ones during war, and the crush of the economy in the 1990s.”
With no formal training, Irina chronicles the development of their ministry’s overseas projects through photographs. She uses a Canon PowerShot SX 110 camera.

Second place
“A Lovely Startle”
Kari Pait

A Wal-Mart parking lot full of seagulls and one adventurous little girl composed just the right shot for Newberry College student Kari Pait. That’s her three-year-old niece, Lily, trying to join the flock. Kari says she’s never without her camera, a Canon PowerShot SX130. “I am always looking around, and in my head, when my eyes pass by something that is camera worthy, it is like the scene just freezes in time.” She uses a Canon PowerShot SX 110 camera.

There’s something about a church with nearly 57,000 members that looks and acts differently from others. Yet the pastor who led the phenomenal growth of Houston’s Second Baptist Church says all Christian churches receive the same calling ─ to extend the love and gospel message of Jesus Christ. There are just different ways to do that, says Dr. Ed Young, former pastor of Columbia’s First Baptist Church. He left Columbia 32 years ago to grow a congregation of 300 into a spiritual metropolis of five campuses spread over the nation’s fourth-largest city.
When asked how that happened, Young says church growth comes down to two things: kids and community outreach.
“I think if churches really want to touch a town, they’ve got to get back into the kid business,” he insists. “Churches across America are dying because they aren’t reaching the kids for Christ. They’re not even reaching those kids brought up in the church.
“We love kids. We do a multiplicity of activities for kids.” Young says almost 20,000 kids 18 and under flocked to this year’s beach retreats, camps, vacation Bible school, missions projects, and ministries the church held in over three states.

There’s nothing like a photograph to extract us from the sometimes metronomic pace of our day and send us shooting off into another realm. You can almost get whiplash from some images that present themselves unexpectedly. Maybe you’re rummaging through a file of business papers and lodged between a couple of old receipts is a photo from your senior prom. Whiplash, indeed.
Maybe you’re pondering what to write in your next editor’s letter. You stop to straighten up a nearby bookcase and a photograph wedged between two books drops to the floor. It’s a picture of you and some friends, one of whom journeyed on to Heaven just weeks after the photo was taken. You lightly run your finger over her image and remember how vibrant she was that night. And that she still is.
Not far from my desk is the contagious smile of a granddaughter. Her image might be frozen in time, but her spirit fairly leaps from the frame and takes me with it every time I look that way.
Sometimes, image is everything. That’s why we perennially paw over pictures neatly framed and album-ed or tossed into shoeboxes we keep under the bed. For the winners of our amateur photo contest, photography is a way of life.

Tall and slender, Leré Robinson is earnest and passionate when she talks about the bodies God gave us and our responsibility to care for them. With her South African accent and model-like looks, she exudes authority and compassion as she educates the Midlands about the importance of good nutrition.

“Everything I do lines up with God’s Word,” says Robinson, a nutritional coach who moved to Columbia more than three years ago with her husband, Eddie, and their three daughters. It was Eddie’s full-time ministry that brought them to the United States. But it’s healthy nutrition that Leré Robinson claims to be her personal ministry, which she now conducts through her Irmo-based company, Alive Again! She speaks, consults, coaches, and provides e-mail education. Clients register for newsletters that include recipes and healthy-living tips. Robinson works with individuals to organize and manage their grocery shopping, pantries, and recipes. Her reputation for combining Christian beliefs and a healthy lifestyle has spread quickly.

Robinson insists that it’s impossible to lose weight and allow our bodies to heal without seriously addressing lifestyle and diet. “I love talking to folks about food,” she says enthusiastically. “Of course, first and foremost, I love Jesus Christ.

“Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1-2 ESV).

Desire to imitate your heavenly Father has been growing in your mind and heart since you believed on Christ for salvation, and your passion is for your children to follow. You feel keenly the weight of your God-given opportunity as a father. At times, you shudder to think of the great power you possess in each child’s life – either building up or tearing down – depending on how well you imitate your heavenly Father.

Reading the Bible, you see a profoundly basic truth: God is a Father who desires to be known by His children. It is the underpinning of the entire written Word of God: who He is and what He has done. We need only believe on Him to receive eternal life (John 17:3). Yet God shows us so much more of Himself than the bare facts needed for salvation. As Christian fathers desire to be known by their children, they foster an intimate father-child relationship here on earth and the beginnings of intimacy with God in the soul of a child.