Free e-Book: The Ministry Driven Church
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I'd like to give you my e-book The Ministry Driven Church, but first let me tell you a little about myself: In 1957 when I was 14, I committed my life to serve Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. The next summer, over 60 years ago, while taking care of lawns at an apartment complex, the Lord gave me a vision: I saw a map of the Soviet Union in the sky and a voice said: "Remember this apartment complex plan - you'll build it when you're an old man." And I remember that there was something special about the stairs, but I didn't understand what it was. Now I'm over 75, so I guess I'm old enough to start this new project!
The next year, I preached my first sermon at an inner-city mission, then I led our high school debate team to the state championship, I was elected president of our high school's YFC (Youth for Christ) club, I won the city-wide Denver YFC "preacher boy" contest and led and won the Bible quiz team contest on St. Paul's letter to the Galatians (I memorized all six chapters so I knew the answers). I won second place in a national German language contest. I also memorized lots of Shakespeare - big chunks of MacBeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet - for English class.
Right after high school I went into the Army and learned Russian - we had to memorize 4-6 pages of conversational Russian every day. Realizing I was good at memorizing, I started memorizing Scripture: by now I've memorized most of the New Testament, many selections from the Old Testament, and just recently I've finished up memorizing the Book of Psalms, rotating between four languages.
After active duty in the Army, I enrolled in university and studied more languages, history and political science of Central and Eastern Europe. In my first two semesters I took 41 credit hours and got a 4.0 GPA. But then in my second year, while serving as president of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter on campus, I became acquainted with a wonderful, amazing young lady who was the IVCF chapter secretary and as they say, "the rest is history!" I graduated in three years with a 3.4 GPA.
After working a couple years to pay off college loans, my wife Cheryl and I served as missionaries to Central and Eastern Europe for 3.5 years, preaching, translating, proofreading, editing and printing Christian literature in many languages, taking Bibles, New Testaments and other Christian literature to Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians behind the Iron Curtain. Both of our children were born abroad.
Then we returned to the U.S. to raise our family, earned more degrees (I got a 4.0 GPA in computer programming, Cheryl got a Master's degree in the Psychology of Rehabilitation), and we both got into consulting: Cheryl in vocational rehab and I as a software consultant. I managed projects ranging from about $100 million to $1 billion in annual cash flow. So we earned enough to vacation all around the U.S. and Europe, and send our children off to private colleges.
But as the Soviet Union was falling apart in 1991-93, we sold our passive solar house I had designed and where we had lived for 15 years, invested in an apartment building, and we returned to full-time mission work in Russia just before I turned 50, living on 1/10th of our previous income and starting several Evangelical churches there.
In 1996 I began work as General Editor of Agape-Biblia, a revision of the Russian Synodal Translation of the Bible. It was the first online Russian Bible for the Windows Operating System and when you search for "hypertext Russian Bible" it's still on the first page of Google. In 2006 the second printed edition of this revised Russian Bible was published.
While teaching at a university in the provinces of Russia, we met a very bright disabled young man and I finally understood that vision: the stairways should be ramps! Why not an elevator or a stair lift? In an emergency such as a fire or when the electricity goes out or the elevator breaks, they could be trapped if depending on an elevator or a stair lift. Disabled people can't use the stairs and it's awfully hard to carry them in a wheelchair down the stairs - we've learned that the hard way! With most older couples it's the man who ages first and becomes disabled: he very likely weighs more than his wife who often injures her back or knees trying to lift or carry him. Also, we've met many older people - able-bodied and disabled - who have been trapped in an elevator so now refuse to ride them.
In 2006, we reached a few important milestones: I completed my doctorate degree and published my dissertation in book form as The Ministry Driven Church. You're welcome to buy the printed version that normally sells for $10 + S&H, or the e-book version for $2.99 ...but right now I'm offering it to you for free if you'll take the brief survey below.
I've pretty much completed my editing of Agape-Biblia (an editor's work is never done - there are always typos to fix and other corrections to make). We average over 1,000 visits per day to four www.Agape-Biblia.org websites that now include seven interlinked Bibles in various languages, Daily Prayers, Journals and Scripture Memory Systems in English, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish, German and French, our "Social Ministry of the Church" courses, an e-newsletter and blog, plus lots of Free Literature.
Also in 2006, Cheryl joined me starting to receive Social Security. While in Russia, we Discovered Original Christianity - the fullness of the Christian faith. We moved back to the U.S. in October 2007 for health reasons, after serving almost 17 years in Russia, and joined the Orthodox Church in 2008: see Our Homecoming.
But as we tell people: we're not retiring (and we're not shy, either)! You know what Jesus Christ said in Revelation 2:10b about retirement? "Be faithful unto retirement, and I will give you a nice fat pension with 100% health insurance benefits." NOT! That Bible text says - "Be faithful unto death" - it doesn't say anything about retirement plans! So we're "semi-retired - we put on a new set of semi-tires and we'll keep on trucking" until we reach our heavenly destination -- we might have to make more frequent stops for rest and maintenance along the way, though. We exercise when we get up every morning, and we work out at the health club three times a week - Cheryl on the exercise machines and I in the pool where I try to swim a mile or more each time. Most weeks I make it!
After we returned to the U.S., partly because of Cheryl's surgeries - she isn't be able to lift patients any more - we began to devote much more of our time to teaching Cheryl's one-year, six-course program "Social Ministry of the Church" online in Russian and English. We've also done job counseling at FOCUS+Pittsburgh, an inner-city Orthodox mission. Also, we're available to speak at churches and elsewhere - wherever we're invited - to explain our vision of Agape Restoration Communities. We'd like to tell you a bit about this concept now, and give you some more information that you can read at your leisure.
We envision Agape Restoration Communities as Christian co-operatives that provide the physical facilities for a Ministry Driven Church. See the first four sketches for a 28- to 42-living unit building, and if that's too big for your imagination to handle, see our five sketches for an 8-to-10-living-unit building including a community room/chapel and restrooms: most units are wheelchair-accessible from ground level. When a family sells its old house or condo, the money from the sale of their old home will be used to pay for their shares in the ARC housing co-operative: thus, the ARC becomes self-financing.
Why co-ops? Several well-known businesses are actually co-ops, including REI, Ace Hardware, Land'o'Lakes, Ocean Spray, Blue Diamond and every credit union. They are distributed ownership organizations that create economies of scale, and are especially empowering for economically disadvantaged groups such as women, minorities, and people with disabilities: by creating ownership -- owning instead of renting -- it changes lives!
Because shareholder-residents of the co-op community purchase shares for their living unit and jointly own the common areas, land and parking facilities, this also greatly reduces The Ministry Driven Church's cost of operation and it gives the church a wonderful opportunity to minister to "the poor, the lame, the maimed and the blind, to widows and orphans." Rick Warren, who wrote a nice recommendation for my book, wrote on pages 78-79 of his best-selling book The Purpose Driven Church -
Winston Churchill once said, "We shape our buildings, and then they shape us." Too often a congregation is so anxious to have a nice building that the members spend more than they can afford. Paying for and maintaining the building becomes the biggest budget item. Funds needed to operate ministries must be diverted to pay the mortgage, and the actual ministry of the church suffers. The tail ends up wagging the dog.
Our son Rob, when he was studying for his master's degree in architecture, wrote a paper on this topic. While reading it, I was deeply struck by the degree that human society and culture are enormously influenced by its architecture. The shape and design of our buildings greatly influences how people live and function in them - as Churchill said, "We shape our buildings, and then they shape us."
But you may ask, "Isn't this just a bit far-fetched?" This concept is do-able: the idea of co-op housing communities has already been embodied by Realife, Inc. in 25 such non-profit housing cooperatives in the U.S. Midwest. (I have no affiliation with Realife, we've just heard about them and then visited one of their cooperatives in Eau Claire, WI. Also, we lived in a shared community in Austria in our early mission work.) We have signed a proposal for professional architectural drawings and have funds for this and other preliminary legal work required so we can begin finding potential residents who promise to purchase shares in this unique living cooperative / worship center.
Maybe you're young, going to college or starting your career: you don't want to pour rent money down the drain, but buying a house is just too expensive. You could live in a faith-based community and build up equity in your co-op living unit! Perhaps you have a child or an elderly parent with a disability - how will you manage your life with them?
Or perhaps you are "empty nesters" like us, and you'd really like to take a mission trip for a month, or three or even six months, but who would take care of your house? You may have begun thinking more about the reality of old age and death: it may come swiftly... but more likely it will come slowly: 70% of elderly people spend three years on average in expensive assisted living or a nursing home before they pass away.
The average savings of retired people is about $250,000, but that includes the very wealthy people who have much more. The median (mid-point) is less than $50,000, and many people have almost zero savings. If the end of your earthly journey comes slowly, who then will minister to you? Will not most or all of your resources then be quickly used up to live in an assisted living center or nursing home at $5,000 per month or more? That's essentially like paying for a nice hotel with room service, pouring your money down the drain for rent! And when your money runs out, you go to a "third-tier" Medicaid-paid nursing home with double-occupancy rooms and two TVs, three basic meals per day, and under-staffed nursing care.
Isn't it time instead to go through this open door now, using your limited resources to build up the kingdom of God? Why give away your life savings to a secular assisted living center or nursing home? A caring Christian co-op community can greatly reduce this expense and at the same time build up the kingdom! Be honest with yourself: are you going to hand over your retirement savings to a secular nursing home, or will you use it to minister to the building up of the Body of Christ... and provide a home for yourself where you can eventually age-in-place?
In Rev. 3:8 the Lord says, "I know your works (behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one can shut), that you have a little strength, and have kept My word, and haven't denied My name." Isn't it time to be pro-active about what may happen in the future, and use the "little strength" and limited resources you have to minister for the Lord to "the poor, the lame, the maimed and the blind, to widows and orphans"?
As St. Peter said to the crippled man at the Temple gate (Acts 3:6), "Silver and gold have I none, but what I have, that I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!" My wife and I are semi-retired, so we have very limited financial resources, but we are freely sharing our skills and experience with you so you can help others gather together their limited resources, rise up and form Christian Co-operative Communities. See below about how to contact us.
Your fellow-servant,
"Dr. Bob"
Robert D. Hosken, M.Min., D.Min.
Here's a special treat for you: If you've read this far, fill out the survey below to get a free electronic copy of my book The Ministry Driven Church!
Agape Restoration Communities - Survey
Starting two days ago, I've begun changing my four websites from "https://" (open transmission of info) to "https://" (secure transmission of info) to assure you, the users, that nobody can get at your info as it travels over the internet. The tech support staff for my hosting service did their part and I began doing mass-changes of all of the links on my web-pages to "https://" - over 20,000 links so far! Most web-pages seem to be working OK now. But considering there are over 23,000 files on my websites and each can contain multiple links, there's lots of nooks and crannies to search for "stragglers" ...so if you come across any web-pages on my sites that show "Not secure" on the address bar, please let me know so I can fix them.
Did you notice the above announcement? It's easy to let your eyeballs slide over it, isn't it? Imagine: a free online course on how to minister to the handicapped and poor! Wouldn't that be a really fascinating ministry? Think of all the poor black people whose lives, we're being reminded several times a day, should really matter to us! Do they really matter, or is saying these words just empty "virtue signaling"? Let's do something about it: enroll!
Recently I shared with our children some of the translating and publicizing work I did decades ago for Christians suffering for their faith behind the Iron Curtain. The person I did it for was awarded the Templeton Prize for advancing freedom of religion. This prize, although less well-known than the Nobel Prizes, is a larger sum of money. Because of the nature of the work, I've kept it anonymous until now: ask me for more details. But another Christian has just received this prize: "Francis Collins awarded Templeton Prize for reconciling faith and reason." He's the man "who led the Human Genome Project to its successful completion in 2003." This PDF article tells how he changed from holding a strictly materialist worldview to becoming a Christian with a supernatural understanding of the created cosmos. The article concludes - "I held off the Hound of Heaven as long as I could, but ultimately resistance was impossible. But could I be both a scientist and a believer? Wouldn’t my head explode? Well, no. It didn’t then. And it hasn’t since." That was 43 years ago. Read the whole thing! Better yet, download and share the PDF file!
#BoomerRemover: Today's Easy Fix
The article in BioEdge "World Elder Abuse Awareness Day on Monday" tells about a "World War II veteran named Chester Peake, [who] was diagnosed with coronavirus in a Twin Cities long-term care facility. He was asymptomatic, but spent two-and-a-half weeks in isolation. He died on June 2, just short of his 100th birthday. His death certificate listed the cause of his death as 'social isolation, failure to thrive, related to COVID-19 restrictions' -- loneliness, in other words."
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
This story is a stark reminder of the elder abuse taking place today. "Hate" is a popular word these days, tagged on anyone who doesn't toe the line on the latest politically-correct dogmas. We think of "hate" as doing something really mean and nasty to someone. But the Russian verb for "hate" is "nenavidet" that consists of two prefixes" "ne" for "not" and "na" for "at" plus the main verb "videt" for "see" or "look" - so the meaning for "hate" in Russian is to "not look at" someone. Hate or abuse can be simply ignoring, turning away from, not looking at, not caring about, or neglecting someone.
Monday, 15 June, was World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. Neglecting the elderly is a form of abuse. The above article quotes from the "Stanford Social Innovation Review" - "The hashtag #BoomerRemover emerged and started trending in mid-March as a way to mark and make light of ageist comments about the pandemic. And Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, had to repeatedly address public opinion that COVID-19 was not a serious concern because of initial public beliefs that it affected only older people." The horrible, hateful hashtag #BoomerRemover is a rather crass way to express "Get out of the way, old man! I wish you'd just drop dead - it's your time to go!" Or they are put in a nursing home, the one place where the highest number of COVID-19 deaths have occurred. It's the easy fix, the easy way to get rid of those cranky old people.
Older people, however, aren't the only ones who become very sick and often die from COVID-19. This disease strikes mainly people who have "comorbidities" such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, COPD, asthma or other breathing problems, etc. As people grow older, their bodies start to wear out, their immune systems weaken, thus they more frequently have the above conditions. But younger people can also have such conditions and succumb to COVID-19. This brings to mind the overall problem of suffering: Rabbi Harold Kushner's book When Bad Things Happen to Good People attempts to answer that age-old question of "Why, God?"
The Old Testament book of Job deals with the problem of unjust suffering: why does God allow it and how can He be a just God if people unfairly suffer? This is the problem of "Theodicy" - attempting to justify God. In ch. 8:1-3 we read - "Then Bildad the Shuhite answered, 'How long will you speak these things? Shall the words of your mouth be a mighty wind? Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert righteousness?'" In other words, can Almighty God possibly be unjust? Bildad implies that it is impossible for God to be unjust, so the problem must be in Job or in his children, as Bildad says in verses 4-6 - "If your children have sinned against Him, He has delivered them into the hand of their disobedience; if you want to seek God diligently, make your supplication to the Almighty. If you were pure and upright, surely now He would awaken for you, and make the habitation of your righteousness prosperous." Imagine saying that to a person suffering terrible pain from sores all over his body, just after all his children have been killed in a windstorm!
Then Job replies - "Though I am righteous, my own mouth shall condemn me. Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse. I am blameless. I don't regard myself. I despise my life. It is all the same. Therefore I say, 'He destroys the blameless and the wicked. If the scourge kills suddenly, He will mock at the trial of the innocent'" (ch. 9:20-23). Does God willy-nilly destroy the blameless along with the wicked? Does He mock and laugh at the suffering of the innocent? How can such a God even exist? These are some of the questions that nihilistic philosophers such as Voltaire, Nietzsche, and Sartre expressed. Even Rousseau's romanticist subjectivism influenced aspects of the nihilistic French Revolution. Thus we've come to the point of many people denying the existence of God, or atheism. how did that ever happen?
Jude, the "brother" of the Lord Jesus, wrote - "Beloved, while I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I was constrained to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all transmitted to the saints. For there are certain people who crept in secretly, even those who were long ago written about for this condemnation: ungodly men, perverting the grace of our God into unbridled lust, and denying our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I desire to remind you, though you already know this, that the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who didn't believe" (ch. 1:3-5). Certain people and ideas have crept into our Christian faith that have perverted the grace of God into lust, teaching that once you are saved you can never lose your salvation.
The idea of God's sovereign grace and man's bondage of the will - our inability to do anything good at all - in the final analysis, means that a man is passive, not morally responsible for his actions, everything is predestined and predetermined. If God predestines everyone, there is no morality, thus no sin: you can do whatever comes naturally. This idea of predestination or fate is fundamentally pagan: see the sections on St. Augustine and John Cassian on my literature page. At the end of his life, Augustine finally repudiated his earlier ideas, but very few people choose to recognize this (wouldn't you rather believe that you're one of the elect and can never lose your salvation?), so we can call him a saint, but his early ideas live on.
What ought to be our answer to this problem of suffering that has led mankind to the brink of nihilism and atheism? Take a good look at Romans 14:1 & 19 - "Now receive one who is weak in faith, but not for disputes over opinions. ...So then, let us follow after things which make for peace, and things by which we may build one another up." In other words, build up your weaker brother, receive him and encourage him. Don't argue over buzzwords, instead seek the things that make for peace: build him up instead of tearing him down. Use words and take actions that strengthen and edify rather than criticize and destroy. This is the law of agape-love.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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(17 Jun.) A prominent Russian Orthodox priest who was barred from preaching for his anti-coronavirus views has laid siege to a women’s monastery, the 66.ru news website reported Tuesday. Religious authorities barred Father Sergei, the ultraconservative spiritual leader of the Sredneuralsk women’s monastery in central Russia, from public ministry in April for disobeying orders to follow health guidelines. Monasteries across Russia have been beset by Covid-19 cases amid Russia’s outbreak.
(16 Jun.) A Pskov court handed a six and a half year jail term to 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness Gennady Shpakovsky. This is the second-longest jail term yet on "extremism"-related charges for meeting with others to pray and study beliefs. Prosecutors claimed two jars of small donations Shpakovsky had were to finance building a "world theocratic state."
On 9 June, a court in Pskov in northern European Russia handed 61-year-old Gennady Shpakovsky the longest jail sentence given to a Jehovah's Witness after the 2017 Supreme Court ban on Jehovah's Witness activity - six and a half years' imprisonment in a general-regime labour camp ("correctional colony"). This is the second-longest jail term yet handed down on "extremism"-related charges for meeting with others to pray and study beliefs.
(1 Jun.) An outbreak of coronavirus was recorded in the Holy Ascension St Florus convent of the UOC-MP in Kyiv. This was announced at a briefing on June 1 by the mayor of Kyiv, Vitaly Klitschko.
(10 Jun.) In a move that advocates say has national implications, federal officials are clarifying that hospital no-visitor policies must have exceptions for needed support people for those with disabilities.
(31 May) Pentecost is a Christian feast, 50 days after Easter. The feast marks the event when the disciples received the Holy Spirit 10 days after Jesus ascended to Heaven and promised to send the "Comforter." In the early church, this was the awakening of the Christian communities' establishment. Therefore, Pentecost is also the feast of the Christian Church's inception. Both Christian and pagan elements are vivid in folk traditions.
(17 Jun.) The Patriarchal Commission for Family official says it is early to change the church position on the in-vitro fertilization.