http://ping.fm/4tsQL

Jeff Palmer of Baptist Global Response is posting some intriguing thoughts on the topic of “Six models of Kingdom community in the Bible” at kingdomcommunities.blogspot.com.

He is working his way up the list toward #1 and has three installments posted: #6 – the New Heaven and New Earth; #5 – the Body of Christ; #4 – the Community of Israel.

They have profound implications for how we do both church and missions.

I’m totally stoked about a new blog called “Kingdom Communities” at http://kingdomcommunities.blogspot.com. The blog seeks to answer the question, What would God’s kingdom on earth look like? It’s written by Jeff Palmer, executive director of Baptist Global Response, the Southern Baptist relief and development organization, to promote and discuss the issues of community development from a Kingdom perspective.

If you care about poverty elimination, safe drinking water, fighting world hunger, or any of a host of “justice” issues, you ought to follow — and join — the discussion on this blog. You’ve never seen anything like what’s going to develop there.

You also can follow Jeff at http://twitter.com/jjeffreypalmer.

WENCHUAN, China — When the earthquake struck, Lim Yew* was walking across campus at the boarding school where he taught kindergarten. The ground buckled and the powerful tremor knocked him off his feet. He watched in horror as the buildings around him began to crumble.

At mid-afternoon, the classrooms were full of children. At least 150 kindergartners were in Lim’s building.

Read more here

In a war-ravaged city in Central Asia, 40 impoverished women are receiving training that will help them provide for their families and move out of the refugee camps they live in.

Read more here

Teen’s vision brings clean water to Darfur village

Click to view high-res image and caption

Joshua Guthrie was a troubled teen. Like many others of his generation, the 16-year-old high school sophomore was troubled by the needless suffering of so many people in so many places. Hunger and poverty. War-time atrocities and sex trafficking. AIDS orphans and genocides.

Then Joshua read Do Hard Things, a best-selling book by twin brothers Alex and Brett Harris, at 20 years old only barely out of their teens themselves. The book challenges young people to rebel against “the myth of adolescence” – the notion that teens are by nature irresponsible, immature, and rebellious. “By breaking the mold of what society thinks we are capable of, teens can achieve so much more than what’s expected,” the brothers say. “We’ve seen ‘average’ teenagers transformed from channel changers to world changers who are accomplishing incredible things.”

The book rocked Joshua’s world.

Read the rest here!

Southern Baptists stepped up to provide food and roofing tin to villages in the Horn of Africa after wild fire destroyed dozens of homes. A news article and photos are posted  here.

News has just been posted about a project in India that is preventing starvation in villages where floods wiped out crops and food supplies. Through their World Hunger Fund, Southern Baptists are providing a month’s food for 104 families and assisting 24 farmers with crop planting.

For more information, click here.

Southern Baptists are helping a group of 600 families in Central Asia who have returned home after many years in refugee camps in neighboring countries. They have come back to nothing and are having to start rebuilding their lives in the midst of winter.

Field partners are using Southern Baptist relief and hunger funds to meet critical needs for food, shelter, and heating during January. Food parcels containing flour, peas, rice, cooking oil, beans, and sugar are being distributed. Coal, blankets, and a tent have been given to each family.

A prayer request from the field partner: “Ask God to bless these families who are ‘going home’ after such a long time. Pray that these material things will help them realize how much God loves them and cares about their lives.”

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Contributions to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund make projects like this possible. For information about the World Hunger Fund, please visit the Baptist Global Response website.

“A natural disaster is turning into a humanitarian catastrophe of genuinely epic proportions in significant part because of the malign neglect of the regime. I would be amazed if there hadn’t been about 100,000 who had died already … what’s more, hundreds of thousands more are at risk.” – British Foreign Secretary David Miliband

Click to read more.

Click to help people in need.