"Bill Wilson & Metro Ministries reach over 30,000 kids a week

Bill Wilson

"You wait here" is a typical instruction given by parents to countless children every day, but this time it was different. The 12 year old boy followed his mother's instruction and continued to sit on the side of the road in the hot Florida sun. He sat there for three days and nights remembering the last words his mother said, "I can't do this anymore. You wait here."

Bill Wilson, founder of Metro Ministries, continues, "My mom never came back. That's the beginning of my story and it's the same one we hear in the inner city of New York over and over again. It's about thousands of kids who have been abandoned by society. That's why we've been working in the city for so long. They need more. They need to be safe and well fed. They need a family. And they need something more . . . they need God."

2005 marked the 25th year that the once-abandoned boy, Bill Wilson, has been on the same corner in Brooklyn, NY reaching out to rescue the children left behind in this battleground of drugs, violence, abuse, filth and neglect. Through the Sidewalk and Saturday Sunday School programs pioneered by Bill, during a typical week, over 20,000 NY children and 11,000 in the Philippines and Africa will learn that; they are special; they have value; that God loves them. In a personal way.

Today, Bill and his staff of over 160 and army of over 420 volunteers have one thing in common; they know that one person can make a difference. But how do the over 140 weekly Sunday School sessions translate into a personal experience? With weekly visits to the children where they live.

Personal visitation in the homes is the key to the relationships shared between the families, volunteers and staff at Metro. "There's no intrusion, no pressure," Bill says. "The children just know we care for them and love them." These consistent visits build rapport with the families and in the community. When a tragedy hits, a family's first phone call is to Metro.

People from across the world have also become directly involved in the lives of individual children through the Won-by-One program. This active partnership between the sponsor and a specific child has a proven track record of changing lives. While the Metro staff and volunteers make weekly visits to the children in their homes, it is often difficult to get past the front door. This is where the sponsors really make a difference.

Armed with a letter or package from a sponsor, the staff person is often invited inside. During the time with them to help the child write a thank you note, they can see the home environment and share with the parent. This lets both the child and parent know that Metro and people outside of NY love them and are praying for them. Time and again, this simple act has been an effective tool for breaking down barriers that keep the adults away from church.

As Pastor Bill often repeats, "It is easier to build boys and girls than to repair men and women." The focus is on the children. The vision includes families. The heartbeat is Jesus.

Look for the Bill Wilson's program In the Crosshairs airing on Revelation Television and at the Issachar Institue in Brentwood February 23-25, 2006, where he will be teaching about how to organize, start and grow a successful Sunday School (Kids Club) program.

For more information on Bill Wilson, Metro Ministries or becoming a Won-By-One sponsor, visit their website."

Are you interested ? 

On a much smaller level, but still very intense and with big impact, you could join us in our local Kids´ ministry among immigrant children here in Göttingen. 

Contact us:  gic2005@web.de

Workloads, Busyness, and Time-Hoarding

From Lydia Brownback's new book, A Woman’s Wisdom: How the Book of Proverbs Speaks to Everything (Crossway, 2012), pages 170–171:

The way we use our time is always going to be shaped by how we view our time. Do we see it as a gift or as a right?

Those who view time as a gift can echo the psalmist who said, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). They realize that their time is actually a God-given asset that they are to invest for God’s glory. They are cognizant of the fact that an hour gone by can never be relived.

Conversely, those who view time as a right tend to hoard their hours for selfish pleasure and often resent having to invest energy serving others — including God.

I wept with remorse some time ago when I realized what a guilty time-hoarder I can be. I’d been living through an exceptionally busy speaking season, and on top of this a book deadline loomed. Additionally, I had growing responsibilities at my place of full-time employment. I felt utterly overwhelmed. But rather than casting myself upon Christ and resting in the strength he so willingly supplies, I began to grumble. Grumbling led me to where it always leads — straight into a brick wall.

I was paralyzed by the volume of projects on my plate and found myself unable to make headway with any of it. I came home one day and cast myself onto my bed and cried out to God, “I just can’t do this anymore, Lord!”

Over the next day or so he answered my cry with the conviction that my trouble had more to do with my attitude than with my workload. It wasn’t his enabling that I’d really wanted. It was free time. In my desire to fill up more hours with relaxation and personal comforts, I had ceased to see that the work on my plate was a gift, as all kingdom work is. In writing and speaking, I’m not doing God any favors; he is blessing me with the privilege of getting to do it.

Personal comment: I firmly believe, though, that at the same time as we should view our work as a gift, as an opportunity, and as a challange to both serve God and to draw strength from God to be able to serve Him, rest and leisure time are God´s clearly declared will for us, as a part of our weekly life: Sabbath rest and Holy Days ...
- theremustbemore - 

Mothers for Whom Jesus Died

by Jonathan Parnell | May 13, 2012

Subscribe to...  

As Mother's Day comes to an end, the tides of shame recede for millions of women.

Being a mother (or father) doesn't depend on whether your children are living. And that includes adults behind the nearly 55 million abortions reported in the United States since 1973. The second Sunday of May can be a painful reminder.

Jesus hates abortion. But there's something about him we must understand: he didn't come to this world mainly to stop abortion. He came to die. John Piper explains,

God is not only a God of terrible holiness and wrath; he is also a God rich in mercy. And so he sent his Son into the world, not condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him from God’s own wrath (John 3:17). He came not to be served but to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). To lay down his life for the sheep (John 10:15). To bear our sins in his body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). To provide us with a righteousness that comes, not from our law-keeping, but through faith (Philippians 3:9). And to reconcile us to God (2 Corinthians 5:18; 1 Peter 3:18).

All the children of wrath may become children of the Father through Jesus Christ. An aging abortionist, a few blocks from our church, after 3,000 abortions, can become a child of God. She could hear Jesus say, on her death bed, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The same is true for the mother of five aborted children. And for the selfish, responsibility-shirking boyfriend. And for the secretive, shame-fearing, overbearing parent. And for the desperate 14-year-old girl.

Jesus did not mainly come to stop abortions in this world. He came mainly to die for abortion-committing sinners. “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32).

There is one way to know God as your Father. And it’s the same for the people at Planned Parenthood, and the people at Pro-life Action, and the people at Bethlehem Baptist Church — Come to Jesus.

Excerpted from Abortion and the Narrow Way That Leads to Life (2011).

Your day of shameful pain could become the day of mercy's triumph. Come to Jesus.

Four Filters for Praying in Jesus' Name

by Tony Reinke | May 9, 2012

Subscribe to...  

Praying "in Jesus' name" is more than attaching the phrase to the end of each prayer. So what types of prayers are prayed "in Jesus' name"? In this three-minute clip from his latest sermon, Pastor John says it has more to do with our prayer’s content than in its closing. He provides us with four prayer-filters.

Motherhood Is a Calling (And Where Your Children Rank)

Subscribe to...  

A few years ago, when I just had four children and when the oldest was still three, I loaded them all up to go on a walk. After the final sippy cup had found a place and we were ready to go, my two-year-old turned to me and said, “Wow! You have your hands full!”

She could have just as well said, “Don’t you know what causes that?” or “Are they all yours?!”

Everywhere you go, people want to talk about your children. Why you shouldn’t have had them, how you could have prevented them, and why they would never do what you have done. They want to make sure you know that you won’t be smiling anymore when they are teenagers. All this at the grocery store, in line, while your children listen.

A Rock-Bottom Job?

The truth is that years ago, before this generation of mothers was even born, our society decided where children rank in the list of important things. When abortion was legalized, we wrote it into law.

Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get. In fact, children rate below your desire to sit around and pick your toes, if that is what you want to do. Below everything. Children are the last thing you should ever spend your time doing.

If you grew up in this culture, it is very hard to get a biblical perspective on motherhood, to think like a free Christian woman about your life, your children. How much have we listened to partial truths and half lies? Do we believe that we want children because there is some biological urge, or the phantom “baby itch”? Are we really in this because of cute little clothes and photo opportunities? Is motherhood a rock-bottom job for those who can’t do more, or those who are satisfied with drudgery? If so, what were we thinking?

It's Not a Hobby

Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for.

Christian mothers carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another—and laying down your life for another represents the gospel.

Our culture is simply afraid of death. Laying down your own life, in any way, is terrifying. Strangely, it is that fear that drives the abortion industry: fear that your dreams will die, that your future will die, that your freedom will die—and trying to escape that death by running into the arms of death.

Run to the Cross

But a Christian should have a different paradigm. We should run to to the cross. To death. So lay down your hopes. Lay down your future. Lay down your petty annoyances. Lay down your desire to be recognized. Lay down your fussiness at your children. Lay down your perfectly clean house. Lay down your grievances about the life you are living. Lay down the imaginary life you could have had by yourself. Let it go.

Death to yourself is not the end of the story. We, of all people, ought to know what follows death. The Christian life is resurrection life, life that cannot be contained by death, the kind of life that is only possible when you have been to the cross and back.

The Bible is clear about the value of children. Jesus loved them, and we are commanded to love them, to bring them up in the nurture of the Lord. We are to imitate God and take pleasure in our children.

The Question Is How

The question here is not whether you are representing the gospel, it is how you are representing it. Have you given your life to your children resentfully? Do you tally every thing you do for them like a loan shark tallies debts? Or do you give them life the way God gave it to us—freely?

It isn’t enough to pretend. You might fool a few people. That person in line at the store might believe you when you plaster on a fake smile, but your children won’t. They know exactly where they stand with you. They know the things that you rate above them. They know everything you resent and hold against them. They know that you faked a cheerful answer to that lady, only to whisper threats or bark at them in the car.

Children know the difference between a mother who is saving face to a stranger and a mother who defends their life and their worth with her smile, her love, and her absolute loyalty.

Hands Full of Good Things

When my little girl told me, “Your hands are full!” I was so thankful that she already knew what my answer would be. It was the same one that I always gave: “Yes they are—full of good things!”

Live the gospel in the things that no one sees. Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work.

Stop clinging to yourself and cling to the cross. There is more joy and more life and more laughter on the other side of death than you can possibly carry alone.

Rachel Jankovic is a wife, homemaker, and mother. She is the author of "Loving the Little Years" and blogs at Femina. Her husband is Luke, and they have five children: Evangeline (5), Daphne (4), Chloe (2), Titus (2), and Blaire (5 months).

by Rachel Jankovic | July 14, 2011

Hand of an unborn child in 9th week after conception