The Almand family church planting adventure
Radical vision casting – it’s what we as parents need to do if we are serious about passing on our faith. Take the Almands for example. They are in the middle of a one month church planting trip to the Dominican Republic. They are in the back woods on the side of some mountain.Whatever game-boy attitudes their teenagers may have picked up back in Georgia are being peeled away as they live alongside simple campesinos who have little, but hold everything they’ve been given with gratitude.
Everyday Mark’s children are confronted with poverty, hunger, and people without hope-without God. They are given the charge to bring Jesus to a lost world. Their band aid answers of “God loves you,” “God is good all the time” don’t work anymore.
They have the choice to wrestle with spiritual issues together to push through to a deeper, more meaningful faith as they seek to bring REAL love, REAL comfort, REAL Jesus to the campesinos.
They have to risk looking within their own hearts for answers:
Is my faith big enough to ask God to help these people?
Is the God I pray to really there or is He more of a genie in the sky who I bring my wish list to hoping I’ll get what I want?
What if I ask God to heal this person and He doesn’t?
Where will this person go?
What if I pray that God will meet their family’s needs and he doesn’t? What will they do?
The children are at a spiritual crossroads.- A benchmarking time for their faith. It’s those times of spiritual wrestling that we all need as our faith becomes our own.
Many of you parents reading this blog have just a few years left and the window is closing. You know in your heart of hearts that your children have not really embraced your faith. Maybe your children need a good reason why they should. They need to see its reality.
It isn’t too late to do what the Almand family is doing. Yes it is radical to take that kind of time off work. And yes those plane tickets are expensive. But how much do we parents spend on education? Usually it is far less than we spend on transferring our faith.
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You have this nasty habit of stepping on toes and meddling by speaking truth. Keep up the great work of challenging us (me!) to pass on our faith to our children in a radical and real way, not just in theory.
hi! my surname is Almand too!!
My grandmother may have been related to the Georgia Almands. Her name was Madeline Gerald Almand, ex-wife of James Raymond Almand, the son of Pearl Almand.
Please let me know if we are related.
Thanks,
Carrie Almand
Carrie
I searched your name to see if I could find you. This is a voice out of the past, I used to be an Almand and I actually
took care of you. I was married to your daddy years ago.
I was thrilled to see you were serving the Lord.
Please let me know how you are doing, I have thought of you so many times.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Beverly
Thank you Mr. Barnes for inadvertently bringing the extended Almand family together through your ministry. You are greatly appreciated by a growing number of us! Through your work you have brought me back into the world of the woman who inspired me to be a Christian, my step mother Beverly, whom I have missed for more than 40 years. Praise be to you and your blog and to God and his servants, like Beverly.
Thank you.
Carrie
So excited about finding you. I live in Sulphur Springs, TX
and you can reach me at my email Beverly@baucominsurance.com. Can’t wait to hear from you…Beverly (Almand) Gottfried
Seth Barnes forwarded me this link this morning. Carrie, it must have been this blog that connected us again all those years back? It’s been so good to be back in touch. Much has happened in both our lives. See the benefits of doing God’s work — some that are completely unexpected. Hello to you other Almands, too. Reach out here if you want to connect. Mark