Tag Archives: Education

Love Packages

Do you have an old Bible laying around or some old Christian magazines? Read this before you throw them away.

The founder of this ministry was in the same situation. He had some old Bibles and magazines that had been sitting around for too long. He was about to throw them away and decided to make some calls first. What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. Here’s his story:

What You Can Send

You might be thinking that no one would ever want your old Bible, but the opposite is true. There are thousands of people who are still longing even for a piece of your Bible. Here are the things that they are looking for:

  • New or used Bibles in any translation
  • Reference materials like dictionaries and commentaries
  • Christian Books – non-fiction for both adults and children
  • Devotionals and magazines from Christian publishers
  • Sunday School Materials
  • CDs, DVDs and BlueRays
  • Tracts
  • Puppets, nativity sets and gospel oriented items

A Surprising Way to Give

There are many ways to give when you don’t have money and this is one of the most surprising ones. It appears that here in the United States, we are absolutely saturated with what other nations desperately need. If you can find a good strong box and have enough money to ship your old Bible, there’s someone wishing they could have it right now. If you are ready now, there are a couple of places you can ship it to:

Love Packages
220 Union St
Butler, IL 62015

-or-

Love Packages
60-D South Mountain Dr
Decatur, AL 35603

The website recommends that you send your packages weighing under 35 pounds in a tightly packed box as USPS Media Mail.

English is Surprisingly Well Known

You might be wondering how an English Bible would be in such demand in a country like Africa. As it turns out, there are African countries that teach English in school. In fact, there are huge numbers of people in India that were required to learn English to go to school. These people were given English, but they still lack knowledge about the Gospel. This is an amazing and simple way to help.

A Unique Mission Trip Idea

How about taking your youth group to a mission trip to the Love Packages warehouse? All of those Bibles and all that literature has to be handled and prepared to be shipped out all over the world. What an opportunity to use your time and your strength to give! Learn more at this page at their website.

Of course, if you don’t have a group that can go with you, you can arrange a time to volunteer as an individual as well.

Monetary Donations Still Needed

As you might guess, money is definitely needed to do all of the handling and shipping required to get these books into the right hands. If it is your desire to simply give money, it would be a big blessing and helps to make these shipments possible. It takes about $1 to move 10 Bibles. That’s quite a good deal wouldn’t you say? You can learn more at the donations page of the Love Packages website.

The Main Point

The reason that Love Packages does all of this is to spread the Gospel. If that’s something you want to be a part of giving to Love Packages is a great option.

Visit the Love Packages Website

Ethnos360

Ethnos360 LogoThis organization is probably better known as New Tribes Mission. Since 1942 that’s the name they used.  This missionary organization is special in that they intend to do everything they can to reach tribes of people that are isolated and haven’t heard the Gospel.

This organization teaches in the language and culture of the people.  By better understanding the culture and by learning the language, they are more careful to avoid worldview traps.  They can use some cultural ideas to help share the Gospel, but they must also avoid others.

Ethnos360 has discovered the power of sharing the Gospel to these cultures by starting at Genesis.  Telling the whole biblical story ensures that those who hear the Gospel don’t mix ideas with their old ways.  It’s important for missionaries to avoid helping to create new false religions and by teaching the whole Bible, this is avoided.

According to the Ethnos360 website, 2,500 of the 6,500 people groups on earth still need access to the Gospel.  This organization intends to do everything they can to reach them.

Like many good missionary organizations, Ethnos360 works to establish strong churches.  They don’t merely save people by encouraging them to make a decision.  That’s the example that we see in the book of Acts.

This organization has had good results and have done a very good job of communicating those results over the years using film and video.  Here’s a video about one tribe that was deeply deceived by their culture.  It was keeping them from living in a healthy way.  God’s word saved them.

Ethnos360 also provides a great opportunity to those who wish to help in this effort.  As you might imagine, learning a new culture and language in order to share the Gospel is no small task, yet, God has used this organization to do just that.

As a result of work that we do like this, people know the truth.  Here’s the truth from one of the ones that was taught by Ethnos360 missionaries:

To help Ethnos360 in their efforts, please visit:

Ethnos360

 

Blue Letter Bible

Blue Letter Bible LogoBlue Letter Bible is a ministry that provides powerful Bible study software online for free.  What used to cost pastors a fortune is now accessible to the common man by simply visiting this site.  If you are interested in supporting pastors and teachers in a powerful way across the world, you might want to look into supporting Blue Letter Bible.  It’s a tool that’s easy enough for all of us to use.

The Blue Letter Bible website provides a tool to search the entire Bible for a word, phrase or reference.  You can use this tool to simply read the text, but where it really shines is when you decide to study it.

Once you find the text you are looking for, you can easily switch between Bible versions.  There are 14 English versions to choose from, but for the serious student, it also provides access to the original Greek and Hebrew versions.

If you decide to do word studies, a single click exposes all of the Strong’s numbers right there on the screen.  Should you dare to click on one of those numbers, you automatically look up the word in the lexicon.  It doesn’t stop there.  Unlike a book, you can view the vines dictionary entry for the word, the Strong’s definition and the Thayer’s Greek Lexicon entry.   To top it all off, you can actually listen to the word’s pronunciation!

The site currently provides access to 10 Bible dictionaries and provides a searching tool for those as well.

When you are looking at a specific verse of the Bible, the Blue Letter Bible, provides a “Tools” button to the left of each verse.  When you click on that button it immediately shows you the original language,  translated right in front of your eyes, in the interlinear tab.  The “Bibles” tab shows you all 10 versions of that verse one after another.  The “cross-refs” tab give you a single click method of looking that verse up automatically in the “Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.”  The “Commentaries” tab, indexes that verse to where it was mentioned in the commentaries.

One of my favorite tools is on the commentaries tab.  On this tab you will find the audio commentaries in both English and Spanish!  If you click these links, you can stream or download the audio immediately.

There are currently 43 written commentaries available!  This includes classics like:

  • John Calvin
  • Jonathan Edwards
  • Matthew Henry
  • Martin Luther
  • Charles Haddon Spurgeon

More modern commentaries are also provided, such as:

  • David Hocking
  • Thomas Ice
  • J Vernon McGee
  • Chuck Smith

Blue Letter Bible doesn’t just give you a tool and leave you to yourself.  They also provide video training right there on the website.  There are 36 short videos that show you how to use the features.

The site also provides maps, devotionals, bible reading programs and even an online theological school called the BLB Institute.  I hope to write about that in a separate article.

One of the most exciting things about Blue Letter Bible is their reach.  This tool is supporting people in over 200 countries.  You can look at who is using Blue Letter Bible right now on this map.  It is likely that many of these people would not be able to afford these resources if they weren’t being made available by donations.

If you want to have an impact in the lives of pastors, teachers and anyone else who wishes to study the Bible.  I highly recommend investing in this ministry.  Visit:

Blue Letter Bible