Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS (don't write about the song) (05/14/15)
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TITLE: "M.A.S.H. Unit" Ministry | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lynn Kowal
05/21/15 -
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My husband and I were astonished to hear these words of encouragement from an official of our church denomination; a man who had travelled the world, and after experiencing our ministry, had suggested to us that Jubilee Church was anything but ordinary.
“I’ve always felt that Jubilee is like an Army M.A.S.H. Unit” I told him.
“As far as I’m concerned”, he continued, smiling as he turned his face back to us after agreeing to give an inebriated couple a ride home, “your church stands on the very lip of hell, ready to offer last-minute assistance to anyone.”
A Mobile Army Surgical Hospital or M.A.S.H. unit is a “portable series of tents that can be set up and taken down at a moment’s notice”.*
Jubilee’s worship space doubles as a floor-hockey area, a place that has to be continuously taken down and set up again, so that family-saving activities like sport and worship can co-exist.
In a matter of days a M.A.S.H. unit can go from “only a few soldiers with ankle sprains, to 300 patients with 371 x-rays and 49 surgeries. It is really busy and it is really tiring.” *
In a matter of minutes, Jubilee can go from a few people praying in quiet reflection, to lunch lines of 150, waiting to receive their daily bread. The phone rings incessantly, the van drives constantly, and it is really busy and it is really tiring.
“The operating room and lab of a M.A.S.H. unit come in container-like modules that can be isolated and sterilized – the only dust-free zone for miles.”*
Jubilee is located in the centre of drugs, robbery, prostitution, alcohol and violence, filthy talk and dress, and can be isolated and sterilized for purity by the Holy Spirit. It is the only pain-free zone for miles.
It had never been our intention to be an “ordinary” ministry. Neither my husband nor I came to salvation in Jesus Christ through an ordinary church setting, so we felt that we could not approach faith in Him ordinarily, and we made Jesus our life, way before we made Him our religion.
With a single act in 1999 – that of my husband assisting a crippled woman who was sitting by the side of the road – the type of ministry that would later define our church, was set in motion. My husband stopped to help her, and our ministry began.
Since then we have grown from a small house church with seven people to a large downtown street-front ministry with hundreds of people.
And because Jubilee means to set the captives free, we walk onward as Christian soldiers - an army of God that is on the war path for her Savior, and through us, God sets people free.
*Army’s Last MASH unit, Steve Liewer, Stars and Stripes, April 2003
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