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| When a church in Newberry, South Carolina, took Christ’s message of redeeming love to the “highways and byways” of its city streets, the church’s assistant pastor helped the ministry expand by venturing onto the Internet. With a boost from the American Bible Society’s ForMinistry.com, the Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ now has a Web site that fields e-mailed prayer requests from the area, across the country(California and Florida) as well as from Nigeria.
Sonya Hammond, the assistant pastor since October 2003 and a member for 19 years, e-mailed us about the church’s work and tremendous blessing she herself has experienced in reaching out to hurting people. Triumph, a Holiness church located in one of the poorer communities in Newberry, resides in a neighborhood where many of the residents are very old or suffering from drug and alcohol addiction. They want to come to church, she explained, but because of their age or addictions, cannot make the effort. To reach the community, Senior Pastor James Moore began sharing God’s Word with people on the streets, passing out Scripture pamphlets inscribed with the church’s name to those he found. He would collect names and addresses of people requesting additional prayer, then return with a “prayer band,” a group of people from Triumph to pray and encourage individuals. “Still,” Ms. Hammond wrote, “we had a desire to reach more souls. I thought about the Internet — the millions of people out there who were as hungry for the Word as some we encountered on the streets.” Knowing the church’s tiny budget could not fund the creation of a Web site, Ms. Hammond checked out other possible resources. “Then, I heard about ForMinistry!" That solved one problem — web hosting. Still, I was not literate in Java or html or anything else dealing with web design. But God said ‘If you take the first step, I will carry you the rest of the way.’ So, I stepped out on faith and the promise from ForMinistry that I didn’t need to be a programmer to build a great site.” Ms. Hammond studied tutorials and visited instructional Web sites, then downloaded free graphics for the church site. Shortly after the site was completed, they received an urgent e-mail. “Mandy was requesting prayer for a friend who was deeply into drugs and the occult. She told us that her friend had a husband and child who were suffering greatly; Mandy felt as though her friend was destined to die. “I printed the e-mail and read it to the congregation. We took the e-mail to the altar and there we prayed for Mandy and her friend. Mandy e-mailed me about a month later to say that she knew we must have prayed because her friend was doing better.” Ms. Hammond and Mandy have kept up their e-mail correspondence and the church continues to pray for this family. The church has also received prayer requests from a congregation in Nigeria whose pastor wants to affiliate his church with Triumph, as well as a woman who left her abusive husband, and asked for courage for herself and for a son in prison. Ms. Hammond wrote that she continues to upgrade the site “and make it more pleasing to the eye as I learn and grow — but oh, what a blessing it has been to my soul!” And to ForMinistry she added, “We truly thank God for you.” Chris Thyberg is executive director of ForMinistry.com.
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