The changing landscape

If you ever exit I-70 off of the Lewis and Clark viaduct into Kansas City Kansas, you will see an archway with symbols representing the different ethnic groups of their city. The welcome sign to KCK is an introduction to the face of the metro. It amazes me how much the neighborhoods have changed that in the short time I have been away from KCK. I used to frequent the entire metropolitan area when I worked for Fagan just seven years ago, and I never saw the diversity that I now see across Kansas City, Kansas and the entire metropolitan area.

Tuesday evening I entered a friend's home in KCK and said, "It smells like Nepal". He had quite a laugh over my comment, but it really did! The smell of food cooking was distinctly Asian and reminded me of our trip last October to Nepal. If you would have told me this time last year that God would have connected HBF with a ministry to the Bhutanese refugee's in our own metro, I would have not believed it, but God is so good!

I often tell our congregation that we must be ready to reach the world because the world is coming to us. It is such an exciting time to preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ! While we do travel abroad to reach the people of the world, some of the greatest contacts are right here withing our own Jerusalem. Tomorrow night a team from HBF will be serving the Bethel Community Center in KCK. It will be a great cross cultural exchange. Saturday a group will be serving at Worlds of Fun to help raise money for our sister church “Igreja Batista da Vida Nova” (New Life Baptist Church) in Nova Santa Rita, Brazil.

The sad thing is that so many people miss the work that God is doing right where they live. No matter how dramatic our cultural and ethnic landscape changes there are only two types of people on this planet and within our sphere of influence; the lost and the saved. The love of Christ is universal! It is not limited and neither are we!