Upside Down, Week 1 Recap

This month, we are doing a series called, "Upside Down." This series is based on the reason for the season...celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Everything about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ was Upside Down from what the world is like. The world lives with a "me first" mindset, but Christ lived with an others first mindset. So during this month, we are going to celebrate this amazing holiday by living like Christ and putting others first. Each week, we will be talking about a different mission.

Week 1: Serving the World
Week 2: Serving the Community
Week 3: Serving our friends/family

Jesus did all of these things perfectly when he was on earth and so we are going to emulate Christ in that each week, we will have a different tangible way to serve others.

THIS WEEK: Serving the World
Last night, we talked about how Christ died for the world. He didn't just die for some people, for Americans, for those who love him, but he died for the world. (John 3:16, Mark 16:15)

The problem
There are 16,348 people groups in the world.
6,647 have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ (that's 40% and 2.7 billion people).

The Solution
The Solution is found in a relationship with Jesus Christ. So if we know Christ, we are the solution. Christ commanded us to go and tell the world.

Our Mission
India is in the top 10 nations with the most unreached people groups (87% of their country is unreached).
Our church partners with the India Gospel League (IGL) whose mission is to share the gospel with India. They have missionaries there, share the gospel, train pastors (some HCC pastors have trained their pastors), and send them out to spread the good news.
One of the ways they ask people to help is by giving money so that a pastor can be supported and sent out to an unreached village to share the gospel.
It's $1200 to send a pastor to a village to live for a year to share the gospel with the village and start up a church. It's also just $700 to build a small structure for the church to start meeting in that village. That's $1,900.

We are asking that each student make a small sacrifice to make an eternal impact on the country of India. If 100 students give up 1 Christmas gift worth $20, and instead have their parents give them the $20 to support this pastor, we would have all we need to impact a whole village for Christ. What an amazing cause!

Please encourage your students in this! It needs to be their sacrifice, otherwise, we are not really putting others first.