Social Ministry of the Church

The new name of our "Practical Ministries" series of six online courses in English is now "Social Ministry of the Church." Why the name change? Because for several years that has been the name of these courses in Russian. It emphasizes the idea that the Church ought to be involved in society, not withdrawn into its shell, afraid to speak out and act in the name of Christ. First the Muslims, then the Marxists, and now the Secular-Humanists try to shut the Church out of having any role in society - Christians were/are allowed to "worship" only within the four walls of their building, but not to reach out and help those in the world who are suffering. To recover from this "ghetto mentality," the leadership of churches should encourage the formation of diakonia-ministry teams under the guidance of the pastor or a deacon. As we state in our Introduction: St. Paul taught that the bishops (apostles), pastors and deacons should equip the saints to do the work of diakonia-ministry "to the building up of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:11-12).

Please check out our newly-revised courses: now they work with any web browser - you can login as "guest" and browse the lessons right here: Social Ministry of the Church. The three-bar "slider" menu button gives an overview of all six courses and also lets you navigate to our "Teach All Nations" courseware, Daily Prayers, World English Bible, and our home page. Along the top of the screen you'll see a drop-down menu that shows how to enroll, lists each lesson in each course and our worksheets.

These courses focus on "the maimed, the lame, the blind, widows and orphans", but what about the poor? Our current work in Pittsburgh emphasizes this aspect of diakonia-ministry: see our FOCUS+Pittsburgh Homes and Jobs web page. We've just recently added a column called Hot Tips For Jobs that we update each week. The way to cure poverty isn't to just throw money at it, it's to help people get jobs and own their own home!

Also, check out our "Teach All Nations" course development software: it explains how to set up and lead a discussion group in your church. Our newly-revised system doesn't require you to download anything or build a website - just reply to emails from your church's discussion group and record your students' answers - we'll do the "heavy lifting" of adding your students to our login file and your online discussion group. But if you want to set up your copy of our courses or create your own courses, the Teach All Nations courseware shows you how. I've customized a login system and created ten "pop-up" windows (over 12,000 lines of code) for interactive questions, making it easier for you to write lessons and manage a course than with Moodle, the distance education system I've been using for teaching our courses in Russian over the past seven years. Take a look!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 15 Mar. 2015.)