Mercy Hope sits down to hear the epic story of one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan” as he shares his challenging journey of tragedy, hope and the Hand of God. Here on FaithTalks.com!

Randy Alcorn: I was a Pastor starting in 1977, and in the early 1980’s I got on the board of the first Crisis Pregnancy Center in the Pacific Northwest. After a while one of the things that they did was “host homes” where they would take girls who had crisis pregnancies and if they couldn’t go anywhere else you would take them into your home and they would stay with you through the pregnancy. They would have options – if they wanted to adopt, if they wanted to raise the child and get them clothes, and do all of those kinds of things. So, we opened up our home to a girl who was pregnant to live with us and she had an abortion in the past. We didn’t know about that at first. She gave birth to this child and we lined her up with a Christian attorney and she placed the child with a Christian family and did all these kinds of things that Crisis Pregnancy Centers do. And this is where we really got a heart not simply for the babies but for the women.

And then in the late eighties when there was the Rescue movement with peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience on behalf of unborn children where you just simply stand in front of the doors of an abortion clinic – in front of the entrance – and essentially do what the civil rights movement of the sixties did with African Americans in terms of “I will go and sit at this lunch counter even though this lunch counter doesn’t allow blacks to be there” It’s done anyway to make a point – to draw a line in the sand and say, “Look, things have got to change here.” So, that’s what we were doing at abortion clinics. As a result of that there were lawsuits, and I had to resign as a Pastor ultimately because I was involved in about 9 of these. And, again, they were totally peaceful; there was no violence of any sort. But lawsuits started coming and they were going to garnish my wages as a Pastor. So ¼ of my wages as a Pastor every month were going to go to an abortion clinic, and I couldn’t live with that. I told the Judge, “You know anything that you tell me that I owe anybody, I will pay them. But one thing I will not do is write out a check to an abortion clinic because they will use that money to kill children and I can not do that. It would be the violation of my conscience.” So, basically I had to resign as a Pastor to prevent the abortion clinic from getting any money. So, I resigned and now it was “Ok, what can I do now.” Because everywhere else I worked that was anything more than minimum wage they will figure what is above minimum wage and take ¼ of it for the abortion clinic. So, what we decided to do was start a ministry, Eternal Perspective Ministries, and take the things that were closest to our heart – missions and Pro-life work – and expanding my calling that I felt towards writing, and speaking too, but especially writing – and that’s how we started our ministry. Basically, its exactly the way you would almost never plan to start a ministry like this – you just do it. And you do it because you are in this situation, and if we would have plotted it out we probably would have done some things differently. I mean we were a couple of years into it and someone asked, “What’s your purpose statement?” I could tell you what our purpose was, but I couldn’t quote you a purpose statement. People would ask “What’s your motto?”. Well, our motto is 2nd Corinthians 4:18 “…the things which are seen are temporary; but the things which are unseen are eternal.” So, that’s Eternal Perspective Ministries. So, it’s just a small ministry. Besides myself there’s only six other employees, and they range from 20-30 hours each. Really the only full time employee is me and I have two assistants, there’s a secretary, a bookkeeper. We are a 501(c)3 non profit ministry. We have a guy that’s in charge of our shipping because we do a lot of that. Like I said, all the royalties go to different ministries and as a result of books doing very well and being on best sellers lists, the book “Heaven” which came out two years ago has sold 320,000 copies and the royalties now that have come in are about $700,000 of royalties that we’ve given away to all kinds of ministries. There’s dozens of different worthy ministries that we support – missions and otherwise.

Mercy Hope: Would you share: What is the “Treasure Principle” and how do you effectively and practically live that out especially in our culture?

Randy Alcorn: Well, the “Treasure Principle” is a couple of things. There is the physical book, The Treasure Principle which now has sold something like 950,000 copies. The publisher keeps wanting it to go over 1 million copies so that they can say “Over 1 million copies sold.” I don’t minimize book sales. That represents getting into people’s hands, changing their lives, and also royalties that can be given.

The Treasure Principle itself within the book is based on Matthew 6 where Jesus says don’t lay up yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but lay up yourself treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal, because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So, based upon the words of Jesus there the “Treasure Principle” as I’ve stated is: You can’t take it with you but you can send it on ahead. The idea is that He’s saying, “Look, you can’t take all this stuff with you” But He says, you can lay up treasures for yourself in Heaven. Obviously, He wouldn’t tell us to do it if we couldn’t do it. So, what are those treasures? In some way or another they are eternal rewards that God in His goodness and grace gives us – we don’t deserve rewards, we deserve hell. But if we have been faithful to Him, He says “Well done my good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master.” So, we don’t earn our way to heaven. Good works don’t make us righteous. Only Christ and His death on our behalf – His good works for us make us righteous. I realize Biblically that Ephesians 2 says that these good works were made for us in advance to walk in. “So by grace have you been saved by faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. But we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works.” And so, God values those good works. So that is one of the themes of The Treasure Principle. Say “No” to good works saving us – they don’t! Say “Yes” to good works that come out of a transformed heart because they are supposed to.

Mercy Hope: If every Believer would really live this out, how do you see that affecting the Church worldwide?

Randy Alcorn: Well, I think it would have a radical affect because I think we would think differently, we would plan differently, we would live our lives differently. We would come to the understanding that material things are not going to fulfill us. It doesn’t matter how much money we make; it doesn’t matter what we do with that money and the pleasures of the world – for good or bad – you know, like homes and businesses. Those things are fine, but they are not going to make us happy. For instance, some people look at the $700,000 royalty has come in on that one book, and it’s one among 26 books. And they wonder “What could you have done with the $700,000 that’s come in?” You know in some parts of the country that would buy an amazing house. In live in one of those areas — in Oregon where I live a $700,000 dollar house would be extravagant. Do I wish I lived in a $700,000 house instead of knowing where the money is going? Not even slightly. Stuff doesn’t matter. I think of the house we have. We don’t live in a dump. It’s a nice enough house. The point is, that’s not going to bring me happiness. Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35) and if that’s not true, then let’s fold up our tents and go elsewhere and lets not go to Church and lets not do anything because if the words of Jesus aren’t true then the Christian faith is basically a hoax. But if they are true, and, of course, I’m convinced that absolutely they are, then we must believe what Jesus said. When He said “it is more blessed to give than to receive” that word “blessed” in the Greek means “happy making”. Now, it’s a God-given happiness but it is a common Greek word for happiness. “More happy made are those…”; “More happy making is it to give than to receive…”. We’ve all experienced tastes of that. We’ve traveled internationally and we go to some place where very poor people will go out of their way – they might spend a month’s salary – to make you a dinner out of honor and blessing to you and you feel so guilty. But they are doing it out of love and out of the heart; it causes blessing because of their generosity. And you see the smiles on their faces. It is more blessed to give than to receive.

One of the sad things, and I talk about this in The Treasure Principle, Money, Possessions and Eternity, and The Law of Reward – is that the really tragic thing is that the average American Christian gives 2.7% of their income to the cause of Christ – really to any cause. They give away 2.7% of their income. And you think we live by far in the most wealthy society, the most affluent society in human history – We are only giving 2.7%!! 40% of those who profess to be Evangelical Christians give virtually nothing – nothing or virtually nothing! It is so sad. You think of the poorest Israelite was required to tithe. There were actually three tithes – one was the “poor tithe” for giving to the poor. It was taken once every three years and there were two other tithes for the priests and the Levites. So cumulatively those three tithes (but one was just every third year), so cumulatively those in any given year would average 23% of your income. Now, some of that was for government so you could say that it would be more like taxation and all of that. But the tithe for the priests and Levites would be parallel to today in the New Testament economy giving to your local Church. So, let’s just think of tithing as the 10%. So, basically the average Christian is giving something like ¼ of the amount that the poorest Israelite was required to give and then beyond that they had free will offerings. And so they gave probably way more above the average of just 10%. And the sad thing to me is to think of the blessing that we are missing and the honor to Christ that is brought through not holding tightly to the things of this world, letting go and using them for His Kingdom purposes. And that applies not only to giving stuff away, but to being very quick to loan your things to other people and not care about the condition they come back in. I tell story in Treasure Principle about many years ago loaning a little portable stereo to the youth group. Well, you know when you loan anything to the youth group it comes back and it has six dents and half broken. My first reaction was… “Man, that was terrible! I loan something to the youth group and it comes back like this…” No, no – kids came to Christ at that retreat; kids grew in their faith at that retreat. It is a privilege that this little portable stereo that belongs to God in the first place – it wasn’t mine, it’s His – and it was used for His purposes.

I also tell a story in Treasure Principle about how I used to collect books. I mean when my wife and I first got married – when I was still in college and seminary – I had thousands and thousands of books! I loved books and read tons of them, but of course I obviously couldn’t read them all. But I was very happy with my library and proud of my library and all this kind of stuff. Well, then I would find that people would borrow books – which was great, I wanted people to – but I would find that either the books would not come back or they would come back tattered, with the dust jackets gone, and ripped – just beat up. This kind of would bug me, and then I realized “Wait a minute, people are using these books…that’s why they are getting beat up! They are actually reading them.” Then I ended up donating the vast majority of my books to our Church library so that others could use them. Then I would go in and pick these books off the shelf and I would look in the back – where there were the old type cards where you would sign your name when you checked the book out. And I saw name after name after name of people in our Church – sometimes kids in our church – that had checked them out and I would get tears in my eyes. Because this book which I owned and had given to the Church – because really God had owned – now I was taking joy in it. And you know what I found? The more battered the book, the more joy there was. Because they were battered because of all who had used it. There was this one and it was really shabby and I took it out – and I knew what would happen – and I flipped to the back and it was like 36 people had checked that book out – that’s why it got battered! Now I look at a book in the perfect condition and see how many people have checked it out – none! So, it’s a paradigm shift. It’s a different way of thinking.

Mercy Hope: Absolutely. Wess Stafford really got me thinking about the fact that a lot of people tend to look down to the poor and he says whenever he is around the poor, he always looks up. What are some of the lessons that you see we can learn from the poor?

Randy Alcorn: Well, first of all when you look at Scripture we see that the greatest examples of giving are from poor people. You know, you ask anyone who knows the Bible who first comes to your mind when you think of an example of a person who gave generously. Who comes to your mind?

Mercy Hope: The widow with the two sheckles.

Randy Alcorn: Exactly. The poor widow who gives the two sheckles, and it says she gave all she had to live on. So you have this woman who gave these two sheckles – that’s it! And there’s all kinds of religious leaders who are coming by and they are contributing large amounts making sure everybody sees them. But Jesus says she gave more than all the others – it was less but it was more. Less is more because it is proportion. When we give we must not just think in terms of how much we give, but how much we keep. So here’s this wonderful example.

The greatest example in Scripture of a group of people who are giving are the Churches of Macedonia. In 2 Corinthians 8 it says that the Churches of Macedonia have given according to their ability, then it says they have given beyond their ability which if you think about is pretty hard to do. How do you give beyond your ability? But the point is that out of their extreme poverty it welled up in rich generosity and it has the concept of joy and grace – all of this out of the joy in the midst of their poverty they do this gracious giving. And so the poor are the greatest examples of giving because when a poor person gives, the giving has more meaning to it. And then Jesus is put forward in 2nd Corinthians 8:9 – a great passage on giving – “For we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though He was rich yet for our sake He became poor that we through His poverty might become rich.” So Jesus is the most generous giver and He has given more, and we need to be come like Him in our giving. Jesus comes into the world as a poor person who relates to people – especially having the carpentry trade – He might have had an average living – which by our standards would still be very poor. In that culture maybe it was middle class to be a carpenter, we don’t know. But once He and His disciples went around they were dependent on these gifts of women that are mentioned that gave to them and all. And “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head…”, you know….just go find a rock, you know. So the point is that great givers in Scripture are poor. So what we learn from the poor is that you don’t need a lot of stuff in order to be happy.

One of the illustrations that I use in one of our books is: Go to Mexico and see 30 kids kicking around a beat up old rubber ball that is half inflated and having a blast with smiles on their faces. Now, go to a junior soccer league in the United States where every body is dressed up in these soccer outfits; where the shoes they are wearing cost (you fill in the blank)….whatever. The outfits all together are hundreds of dollars that they have put into this. Top grade soccer ball, all this kind of stuff, and sometimes – not always, because American kids can have joy playing soccer too – but it isn’t uncommon to have kids standing around whining about this and that, and “it’s raining today”, and their parents are on the sidelines yelling. And you just go, “Ok, which culture has the most stuff?…and which culture has the more smiling faces?” And there’s actually a study that was done about countries’ and peoples’ levels of happiness based on different surveys. Mexico was very high; United States was quite a ways down on it, and I don’t remember all the people in between. But it was a fascinating study because when you started comparing income and all that you say it doesn’t make sense. Now, by that I would never glorify poverty – not at all. We need to help people and do all that we can. But there are people in Sudan living in utter poverty who will sit down and they will pray before meals thanking God from the bottom of their heart for the abundance He has provided for them. And then Americans who are visiting are shaking their heads and going “You have relatives that have been taken away, stolen into slavery. You’ve had your arm cut off; you’ve been shot and you’ve lost one of your children to this. A woman has been raped by soldiers, and you are thanking God for His goodness.” And it is a rebuke to us but it also shows us how we have failed to be people with gracious hearts and grateful hearts to say “Thank you, Lord, for the very breath you give me. I don’t deserve it. It is a gift from you, thank you!” And I think we can learn from the poor to be grateful for all the ways that God provides for us that we don’t even get down to in our thinking because we have become so presumptuous. We have an entitlement mentality, and what happens is that if you think you are entitled to something, you are never thankful for it when you do get it; you are just resentful when you don’t get it.

Mercy Hope: That’s true. When did the persecuted Church begin to catch your attention and grip your heart? When did that happen?

Randy Alcorn: Actually, I got a burden for the persecuted Church when I was a young Christian. I was in highschool. I came to Christ when I was a teenager. One of the first books I read was Richard Wumbrand’s Tortured for Christ. Then I read God’s Smuggler, and I read other books that had to do with the persecuted Church. And my heart was just moved. Then, later Richard Wumbrand founded Voice of the Martyrs and we got involved with them. I just had a real burden on my heart for them. So, after I had written my first five novels, Tyndale House came to me and showed me this painting of this martyr who is being welcomed into the presence of Christ. Christ is embracing him. And they said, would you write a novel that kind of tells the story of this picture. And I said, “What is the story.” And they said, “We don’t know…that’s why we just want you to come up with a story.” I said, “Why don’t I think about and pray about it?” So they sent me this painting that I had hanging on my wall – so it was a set up. My heart was moved enough that I thought, I want to write a book about this. Where will I set it? Sudan? I finally decided I’m going to set it in China. I’m going to have an American businessman who went to Harvard with a Chinese student years ago and this Chinese student has gone back to be a Professor in a University in Bejing. They have completely lost touch with each other and this Chinese guy – his father and his grandfather were Pastors in China, but he doesn’t know the Lord – but he actually becomes a Christian while he is in America. And the American guy has gone exactly the other way. He was a professing Christian who maybe never had a real faith while he was in college and he has really wandered from it. And now he hasn’t looked to God for many years, but he is an extremely successful businessman. He travels back to China and they reunite. And now he sees his friend – reconnects with him, and finds out that his friend never became a University professor because Christians aren’t allowed to teach in the University. You can’t pray with your kids. If you do and you are caught, you’re in trouble. You can’t be a part of the whole underground church and the house churches and all of that. So, now he sees his friend undergoing persecution, but his friend, Li Shuan, has this joy that this businessman, Ben Fielding, does not have. And so here’s Ben, the successful American businessman, who should just be feeling sorry for and just pitying this guy except he’s the happy one and the guy from America is not. Again, you also don’t want to trivialize persecution “Well, everybody who is persecuted is happy.” Nonetheless, there is a joy that is found in Christ that many persecuted people experience that many un-persecuted people don’t. That’s just the reality. So that book which ended up wining the Gold Medallion Award for Best Novel of the Year, and we are very grateful for that. All the plusage from that goes to the Persecuted Church in one form or another – Voice of the Martyrs or something else. But that is what I said at first, the persecuted Church is still a real burden on my heart.

And one of the most encouraging things is the number of people that have said that as a result of reading Safely Home, God changed my life and my heart and my burden for persecuted Christians. And whenever I hear those stories, I just say “Thank you, God” because it is the work of His grace.

Mercy Hope: I saw in your newsletter that you had recently met with Joni Eareckson Tada to see the new Joni and Friends building. I was blessed to visit Joni with a mutual friend and Joni gave us a tour of the ministry building. I know Joni is a spiritual hero of yours. Can you talk about the connection with your new children’s book and the ministry of Joni Eareckson Tada?

Randy Alcorn: This is a new children’s book that came out from Tyndale. All the royalties from all the different books go to different ministries. Well, this one goes to Joni and Friends so all the royalties go to her ministry. And we were in Joni’s home; she had us for dinner and we were going to present the book to her. She didn’t know all the royalties were going to JAF. So, she actually had me read it to her. We were all sitting around the table with people from Joni and Friends, and the book was actually in galley format. So I’m sitting there holding up galley copies like this and it’s a little hard to read. So, I start reading the story, and it is about this boy and his Grandpa, and they both love baseball and all of this. Then it says, Nathan felt sad and know you see that he is in a wheelchair and his Grandpa has a walker and its hard for him to get around. As I’m turning the pages I get to this page and she is shocked as she realizes what is going on. Then it says his brother, Jared, and sister, Amber, really like to go to the front of the line with him. They say, “We don’t want to go to Disneyland without Nathan…because he gets to go to the front of every line.” He thinks it is really nice to go to the front of the line, but it would be nicer to walk.

So, we get a ways into it and Joni is crying. And then pretty soon she is sobbing. And it was so touching the way that she was responding to the story. Of course, I’m not telling you the whole story…but in the end Gramps has cancer and they are out laying under the stars together and they are talking about the Resurrection and the new earth…that one day everything will be new and they will have to wait until then. Well then Gramps is in the hospital and he gives him this baseball which is very special for reasons that become evident in the story. Eventually they have Gramps memorial service. And then when I turn to the last page there is the Scripture about the New Heavens and the New Earth “there will be no more crying or moaning in pain, the tree of life…and they will see His face, and they will reign forever and ever” (find exact scripture and reference). I open up this final page and Joni is completely broken down; she is weeping. And so Ken’s putting his arm around her and several times later that night she asked her husband, Ken, or my wife, Nancy, to go get this book and hold it up in front of her. We just had the publisher send her a framed copy of it. But I was so touched because she is, as you know, the real deal. She has such a depth. The books on her shelves are Charles Spurgeon and a lot of great theology. She is a John Piper fan and so am I…she’s all of these things…and her heart for people, it’s just wonderful. So when you said you met with her I had to tell you this story.

Mercy Hope: Did she show you in her art studio this picture of her and Ken dancing in heaven?

Randy Alcorn: No…she didn’t!

Mercy Hope: That’s about the most excited I saw her. She said, “Mercy, hand me that picture.” And the Pastor I think it was who sketched it had clouds and wheelchairs sitting in the background and it’s just her and Ken dancing and she just loves that! It’s just incredible.

Randy Alcorn: Which reminds me…in that final picture of the children’s book, I have the wheelchair and the walker as memorials and put flowers in them – and just have it off to the side. When I asked them to do it, I said – If you want to — if you think it looks good – you could put a cross distinguishing old earth and new earth. I thought that would be a nice little touch.

Mercy Hope: As we’ve talked one of the things that struck me is how many issues your ministry covers and you talk about. If you were to single one issue out maybe that would be a real heartbeat as far as looking right where the Church is in this point in history and this culture, what do you think is one of the most fundamental things that we need to be either called to repentance on or called back to or called up to?

Randy Alcorn: I think we need to learn to see the unseen. That we just are so caught up in the superficiality of this life that we are failing to see what really matters, what really is going to outlast this life. My book Heaven where I talk about the new earth reminds us to think in terms of the Resurrection. One thing I say in that book, and I think it’s a great challenge to the Church is “Don’t ever fall for the lie that if you are a follower of Jesus Christ that I’m past my peak.” So many people have so many regrets as they get older. I was walking around with an 80 year old man today. He was at this conference – he’s a friend of mine that lives in Indy – and he’s in his 80’s now. And we had to sit down and rest and he’s apologetic about it (and he shouldn’t be), but you know, a person can look back at their life and they can say, “I’ll never be able to play ball again; I won’t be able to do this or that.” Maybe now they are in a wheelchair. And they can look back and long for what once was or even think about the opportunities they missed. ‘We always longed to go to Africa; we always wanted to see Lake Victoria; we wanted to climb this mountain and never did.” I’m thinking, now wait a minute, don’t think you are past your peak; you’ve never reached your peak. We have never experienced the wholeness of life that God intended when He created human beings. We have never experienced the earth as the earth was meant to be. We live in a fallen world. We live in an earth that is under the curse, and not just in its obvious, sinful social ways, but the massive destruction – it’s a tortured planet. There is something wrong with it. Romans 8 promises us a coming redemption. It says, “The whole creation longs in anticipation of the redemption that will come with the resurrection of our bodies.” So, I just encourage people – think for the long haul, think of what’s ahead. Make that your reference point. Then, you will live life more strategically right now in light of that eternal kingdom.

Mercy Hope: Right. It just makes me think, a lot of people make a big deal about being heavenly minded, yet what you are saying is that if we have an eternal perspective it should affect everything about the way we live.

Randy Alcorn: Exactly, our problem is that we are so earthly minded that we are not of any earthly or heavenly good and, in fact, someone show me that person who is “so heavenly minded they are of no earthly good”. Now, if you mean by that that some people are kind of spacy and weird or something, that’s not “heavenly minded”. We are commanded in Colossians 3, “Set your mind above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” 2 Corinthians 3 says that “in light of the new heavens and the new earth, what people ought you to be in terms of life and Godliness?” The more we think of the world to come, the more we will bring this world closer to that. And a great example of that is William Wilberforce who here we celebrated this month the 200 year anniversary of the abolition of slavery in England, and this man labored his whole life for that. Now why did he labor as a Parliamentarian his whole life making incredible sacrifices, being ridiculed because he would take the slaves of chains and wrap them around himself and speak to Parliament. And people would just turn away – they didn’t want to hear about it. He labored his whole life and just days before he dies, slavery is abolished in England. Why did he do it? Because he was an evangelical Christian who loved God and said “It is worth the sacrifice to do it.” He had his mind on what was beyond this world. He was so heavenly minded that what he did resulted in the abolition of slavery. Wow!

Mercy Hope: This just made me think about the fact that one of the issues you talk about is racial reconciliation. And I just keep thinking about William Wilberforce versus these issues around racial pride and things like that. From our perspective we wonder, how can there be room in your heart for that kind of prejudice? But what do you think the cause and cure of that is for the Church?

Randy Alcorn: I think racial prejudice is rooted in Spiritual issues. I think it is something that goes very deep. Ephesians 2 talks about Jew and Gentile, and it says that the barriers that separate us come down in the gospel. And so the Church historically has not led the way like the Church should in this area. As a result of that the world has gone ahead for us. This is a statement that I make to Christians; I get up and say, “Thank God for the ACLU”, and then I will pause – and I will smile while I pause and I am looking at them. Now, I have been sued by the ACLU; I am not ignorant of all the dopey things that the ACLU does. I am very aware of those things. So, I think as someone who has been sued by the ACLU I am qualified to say that there are some good aspects to the ACLU. And, historically what I am thanking God for is what they did in the 1960’s while many Churches looked the other way. Because they said, this is wrong, and it was wrong! – that black children could not go to the good schools with the white children. That was dead wrong; I think God utterly disapproved of it and yet there was still segregation in Churches, there was still people looking the other way, there were Christians defending segregation, Pastors preaching in favor of segregation, and it was wrong. It is something that is a blight on the Church, and I was so moved some years ago when the Southern Baptist Convention made their public statement of repentance for having favored slavery in their past. And a lot of people were kind of like “We are past that now; that’s not even an issue anymore, why is anyone thinking about it?” But in my novel, Dominion, I researched this issue. Writing that book changed my life because the main character in that book was an African-American and in order to speak from that African-American’s perspective I had to learn, and I had to study. I read like 80 books written by African-Americans on black history and all kinds of stuff like that. Then I had to get a bunch of black readers who would read everything I was writing – friends and some of them new friends – and just say, “Go over this and tell me what’s right and what’s wrong.” I don’t want this book to sound like it was written by a white guy. One of the funnest things has been for people read Dominion, has been all the letters I have received from African-Americans saying “Thanks so much for writing this book because we have to help our white brothers and sisters understand.” In other words it becomes very clear to me that they think I’m black. And this is my one book where I said, do not put my picture on that book on the back cover. I don’t want anyone to see that I’m a white guy, and not because I’m ashamed that I’m white; I’m not – it’s the way God made me. But the point is that I don’t want to send a mixed message. One of the great emails that I got is from a black guy who said, “Nine members of my family have read your book. Eight of us are certain you are black; one of us thinks you might be white and I took a bet on it. I bet that you are black.” And so he says, “would you settle this for us?” So, I had been gone and I come back and I see this email and I open it and I laugh, and I’m going to go back and answer it. But then I see that about ten emails down it is the same guy and it is this letter back from him that says, “Never mind, I went to your web page. You cost me 50 bucks.” But the point with that is to deal with racial reconciliation in that novel was truly life changing for me, and I have many times since then been able to help people with this issue. And I hope there have been some real paradigm shifts in that area. To be real honest with you, it wouldn’t have happened with me if I hadn’t written that book. That’s one of the things I love about writing – because I love research – and sometimes I choose projects which force me to research issues that I ought to know more about and I want to know more about, but I never would otherwise. You know how many books do we have on a shelf that we never read – we kind of would like to, but we never do.

Mercy Hope: Right. Amen! And thank you for taking so much time to share with us today!

Randy Alcorn: You are very welcome!

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Michael Landon, Jr: I grew up in a great home with a loving father and a loving mother and sometimes loving sisters and brothers (laughs), but we were living a moral life without God. And you know, that’s only going to take you so far. So at the age of fifteen, my world was turned upside down. My father had an affair and left my mom. Up to that point my father was my god because he provided all my needs, he loved me, he took care of me, I mean, he was the perfect dad. So I became a rebellious teenager. A confused and rebellious teenager, nothing out of the ordinary, my story is told tens of thousands of times over.
Anyways, during that time, my mother was with her manicurist. Prior to the turmoil in my family, my mother used to pretend to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to talk to her manicurist (laughs), but after all this stuff came up she started asking questions to Lois and Lois started answering these questions and then she started applying these principles and these ideas that Lois was giving her. And then my mom wanted to know the source of her wisdom and it was Christ. She brought my mother to church and thereafter my mom gave her life to the Lord. Then, of course she wants to share the good news with her son who has absolutely no interest whatsoever. So just to get my mom off my back and to appease her, I went to church and I couldn’t tell you what the pastor said that day, I don’t remember, but he did speak to my heart. And then it became just a series of resistance and then going and then resisting and then going back to church until finally I surrendered and gave my life to Christ.

FaithTalks: Now when did you meet your wife? Was that prior to when you became a believer?

Michael Landon, Jr: No, I met my wife after I became a believer. I was 20 years old and I was an assistant cameraman on Highway To Heaven. I was working for my father at the time and my wife’s sister was a child actress, a very talented one, and she had a guest-starring role. We were filming at a church and she came to visit the set and one of us was reading the little handbill for the church and we started talking about church and she told me where she went to church and I told her where I went to church and I invited her to church and that’s our first date.

FaithTalks: Now does your family currently live in the Hollywood area?

Michael Landon, Jr: No. Well, I’ve got family all over the place. A lot in the L.A. area.

FaithTalks: I was just wondering, how does your family stay strong in the faith in that environment? Especially with you working in the Hollywood environment.

Michael Landon, Jr: Well, one is not to live in that environment (laughs). So, yeah, we don’t live in L.A. anymore. It’s a tough environment for kids and once we had kids we knew we wanted to move out of L.A.

FaithTalks: A lot of kids tend to think of everything their parents did wrong, and every parent does things wrong, but I’d like to ask you, what is one thing your dad did right and what is one thing that your mom did right.

Michael Landon, Jr: Actually I think my father did quite a few things right. I think the main one was physical affection. He showed great physical affection towards us. We kissed, we hugged, we held hands. And it wasn’t something that stopped at a certain age. I mean, we showed genuine physical affection towards one another. I think that’s rare with fathers. So I think that’s one of the main ones for me with my dad.
My mom, well, bringing me to Christ is by far #1. But in my growing up years, I would have to say discipline (laughs).

FaithTalks: You can say that on this side.

Michael Landon, Jr: Yeah, on this side of it.

FaithTalks: So how would you advise parents, who are raising children as you are, to guide their children?

Michael Landon, Jr: Having three children of my own, this is by far the most difficult time, by far. I mean, I think about the things that my parents had to protect me from and now as a parent, it’s impossible. See, that’s the thing, it’s no longer even a possibility. I heard Ravi Zacharias, who I just love dearly, speak at a university and the question was, “What’s wrong with America?” and Ravi’s response was, “There’s nothing wrong with America. What’s wrong with it is the church.” We’re too complacent, we’re supporting the same things and doing the same things that non-believers do. We use pat answers for things that are much deeper. So when the church wakes up and sees the crisis that we’re in, then I think something can change. But until then, it’s impossible. Now you have internet access, which means that anything and everything is coming into anybody’s home. So let’s say that you as a parent protect your children from the content that’s coming in through the internet by regulating them, filtering, all these things that you can do as a parent, okay? Well, we don’t live in a vacuum, we don’t live in this isolated bubble. Our children interact with other kids and these other kids, whose parents aren’t regulating their homes, have now seen, heard, and acted out various destructible, nihilistic things that then they teach or tell your children about. So this is a tough, tough time.

FaithTalks: And you homeschooled your kids for a while?

Michael Landon, Jr: We did. We homeschooled. They’re in private school now. We homeschooled our two daughters, actually it was my wife’s father who homeschooled them. He’s a retired airline pilot, so Grandpa homeschooled them for three years.

FaithTalks: Interesting. You’re making an effort then to stay generationally connected?

Michael Landon, Jr: You mean in terms of my children and their grandparents?

FaithTalks: Yes.

Michael Landon, Jr: Absolutely.

FaithTalks: Are they believers?

Michael Landon, Jr: Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I do [make an effort then to stay generationally connected] because as parents, we don’t know anything especially when they get to the teen years. We are just the dumbest people on the planets, so for someone else who they admire and respect to affirm what it is we’re telling them is huge. It’s huge!

FaithTalks: What ways you would say Hollywood has changed since the Little House On The Prairie days?

Michael Landon, Jr: Oh, my goodness. Well, a ton. A ton. There’s no restraint regarding content, there’s no conscience behind content. And it’s a shame because entertainment affects culture. In fact, I’m under the belief that entertainment affects culture probably more than anything else. More than any other influence. There’s a quote that I like from Andrew Fletcher who said, “Let me write the songs of a nation and I won’t care who writes its laws.” That rings true to me. So unfortunately, with the studios and the gatekeepers, there’s no restraint. Their target audience is our children. So even if you look at the demographics of people who go to see movies at theaters it’s very young, it’s teens that’s the main marketplace. On television, they’re also the main target audience because the people that are buying product time are no longer interested in the actual buyers, the consumers of the product, their attention is now on future customers. So you have an industry with no restraint

FaithTalks: Would you say that there’s an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood?

Michael Landon, Jr: Well, there is a certain bias, but I don’t think it’s that. I actually think that they’re targeting our children, who by a certain inherent nature want to see these things. See, you put sexualized material in front of the teenager and it’s very difficult for them at that age to not want to look. You put graphic violence in front of them and it’s hard for them not to get involved.

FaithTalks: What advice would you give Christian young people who are wanting to move in the film industry?

Michael Landon, Jr: It’s going to be very challenging. And the reason why it’s going to be very challenging is that there aren’t a lot of jobs, especially in front of the camera, where it won’t be going against what it is that they believe. So that’s the challenge, however, I know of some young people who are committed to their faith, who are working hard at their craft and I believe God will honor them. And I will tell you that this business is starving, starving for believers, especially in front of the camera, and behind, but especially in front of the camera. Now the one problem is, first of all, the film business and especially being an actor is very enticing period, because there’s the craft itself, but then there’s all these things that come with the craft. So they see these young teenagers and, you know, they’re in the limelight, people want to know about them and they make them special and they’re making money and living this certain lifestyle, so you have to make sure that this is your gift. You have to make sure that this is your gift, okay? If it is your gift, then you have to work hard at this, you can’t be a Christian and then think that, you know, that that’s all you need and this is what God wants me to do. No, God wants you to work hard at your craft. So you have to work hard at it and then it might be a matter of literally having to support yourself by other means while you work at your craft.
And then you’ll want to have a support group of other believers around you. You will need that support because it is very unfriendly to a Christian, but it is desperately needed.

FaithTalks: In a practical sense, how would you say your faith affects your approach to filmmaking?

Michael Landon, Jr: Well, it’s my boundaries. My faith is my boundaries. It guides me as to what I will and will not do. So that’s the foundation. Everyone has, and I know you’ve heard this, everyone has a worldview, whether it be the Christian, or the atheist, or the Buddhist, and that worldview will guide what it is you will be willing to do and what you won’t.

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Sara Groves: I grew up in Church. My dad is a pastor. He was a teaching pastor for a while, he traveled and spoke. Then we moved to Springfield, Missouri where he is a Bible teacher and teaches Old and New Testament at a Christian liberal arts College. So, I grew up in a Christian home. Both my Mom and Dad are great people. Their goal is to be “mere Christians”, in the sense of C. S. Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity. Even though our family was part of a denomination, the goal was always to “know Jesus.” Like Paul says, “I want to know Him more and His death and resurrection, that I might achieve resurrection from death.”

So, I feel very fortunate. I grew up in a close family. I came to the LORD when I was four. I grew up in Church. I was very committed. I got saved every Sunday, and every opportunity to press in, or to do something for the LORD, I did it. I think that was a reflection of my heart as a little girl. I was really close to my folks during high school and college.

I had a surprising faith crisis in my late twenties, when I had my first son. You know when life starts to happen, especially in ways that are difficult, bad things happen to good people – people you love. You have children and they are very vulnerable, and you are trying to introduce them to this very scary world. You are trying to figure out how to do that. What does it mean to be in the world, but not of it? What does it mean to be a city on a hill?

I felt ill-equipped to do those things. I think that some of the constructs that I built, that were my faith, they were sub-stories to a bigger story that was being told. Now that’s not to negate all my passions growing up and all that – the Word being in my heart and all those things. So, I came to a place of realizing that I was not believing God. The behaviors – all of that was right. My offerings – they were all right in my eyes. You know, David was one of the first to recognize that the offering is not the primary thing – you are to have a heart of sacrifice. There is a circumcision of the heart to be done in the people of God. I think that my offerings were good. I was bringing the best of the lamb, and these things, but I think I was missing something about faith and what it means. To really have the fruits of the Spirit in my life. It is even hard to talk about because the language on this side of my experience is the same as it was before, but it has different meaning to me now!

Here are some real life examples. I think before this experience I did things because I was supposed to. I had to do things right. I wrote a song during this time that said: “Show me the contract. Show me the line. Give me a pen and I will sign. Just make the requirements easier than Trust and Obey.” Because Trust and Obey gave me such a vague, walking-in-the-dark feeling. To actually trust God in that sense, like Abraham. I remember reading about Abraham and thinking “What did you know?” I knew that something had happened in Abraham’s life after all those years of interaction with God. So impacting that when God told him “Sacrifice your son,” Scripture says that he got up the next morning, packed his bags, and went out. At that time I began wondering, “What does Abraham know?” “What does Job know to sit in this horrible place of pain and suffering and to say, ‘I know my Redeemer lives’?” “What do they know to be able to say, ‘I know I will see Him walk on the face of the earth’?”

So it was sort of a time of reckoning, a time of being hard-hearted. It was a dark time. I felt like I was fighting with my best friend. My music reflects all of it. The Other Side of Something and the new album, Add to the Beauty are very much my fighting and my resolution. I feel like this album (Add to the Beauty) is the most secular in language, I guess. I don’t like the terms secular and Christian, but it is the album with the least Church language that I have ever made. But it is also my clearest declaration of faith. That is the way I want my faith to be and appear. I want the Kingdom of God to intersect my life in such a real life way that my faith is my life.

When I get in my car and turn on the ignition, I don’t doubt that it is going to take me somewhere, and I want to believe in the Kingdom of God like that. I haven’t always done that. In being afraid for my kids; in being separate from the world. Those ambitions were motivated by fear and not trust in God. So that is where I have been recently, and that’s a long answer to your very simple question. I guess I tried to tackle the question:What is the meaning of life?

Mercy Hope: I know that was a loaded question.

Sara Groves: I hope you don’t mind long answers :)

Mercy Hope: No, not at all. You said that you had already released several albums by the time you came to this “crisis of faith.” Where did that fall in the order of albums?

Sara Groves: It was between All Right Here and The Other Side of Something. All Right Here was sort of the beginning place. Less Like Scars, and a lot of the other songs were about grieving and strife in families, and just the stuff that happens. Everyone that is alive knows what I am talking about. Everybody that lives knows that the humans heart – left to our own devices, we are writing a tragedy. We are bent on ourselves. We are bent on evil without Divine help. So, I think that my albums have always had an element of question and a sense of asking, “How does this really work?” What does this really look like?” Because you said that there was a Kingdom. I keep hearing this whisper. I believe that this fairytale is true, but how does it intersect my family?

My conversations with a lot of believers were very frustrating for me because I feel right now in the American Church, a lot of people are holing up in their own homes. My mom always says, “You can’t create a world for your children. You have to introduce your children to the world that we are in.” We are given a very clear commandment to be salt and light. I had felt like a lot of the conversations I was having with my friends was a lot of finger-pointing about what was going wrong out there. I think a lot of Christians are feeling embattled right now. I was feeling embattled. But then in this time of rediscovery. I took a year off of the road and I just did devotions and tried to find my way back to a better place. I think during that time I just felt like, “Wait a minute. I just can’t believe this is what God intended for us – for His Church.” I just started getting fired up. The pilot light was lit. I started thinking, “I don’t want my kids to watch me be afraid. I want them to watch me be passionate and dangerous about the gospel of Jesus Christ the way that Paul was, the way different people – these great leaders – were. I want them to watch me believe. I want them to see me take God at His Word. I want my children to watch me find that grace in my own life, and not always see that striving.”

It has been good. I feel in a way – again, not to negate all my growing up, because it is rich. I look back and I really value my upbringing, and the fact that I was very much inundated with Church and the Word of God – but I feel, in a way that some kind of disconnect just connected for me. I feel like where I am just now reaping the benefits of my Christian faith – joy and peace and to really rest and say, “Lord, I know You are in control.”

Mercy Hope:Before you did your first album, whatever inspired you to get into music? What was the message you wanted to bring forth?

Sara Groves: I have been doing music since I was a five years old. Just venting and working out my salvation at the piano. I was a public high school teacher and I had never done a concert or anything like that. My husband is an enormous part of why I am doing this today. I would never have been able to do it. I had no confidence in my abilities to do something like this. He was – sort of like it says in the Love chapter – hoping all things for me; he was trusting in something that I didn’t even recognize. He’s got an artist that fights him. Most managers don’t have that! I am, like, dragging my feet, but he had a vision. He believed in me and was prompting me by saying, “You know these songs are not just for you and your piano room. I think that they have a larger audience.” So, I put together my very first performance, and it was a fundraiser for Fellowship of Christian Athletes at our public high school. I was one of the huddle leaders for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes group. We did a fundraiser pizza night with a concert. I put together five songs with a band. It was the first time I ever played with a band and I was 25 years old. So I did not have any vision of this success for sure. Most of the artists that you know – the new artists – are like 18 or younger. So, it wasn’t like, I’m going to be a rock star, I’m going to go out and be CCM!

At the end of that night a girl came up to me. I knew she was involved in witchcraft. She spoke very openly with me about what was going on at home. Her brother was selling drugs. She and her mom were wiccans, involved in WICCA. So, she came up to me and said, “Do you have a CD or anything I could take home? I really want my mom to hear these songs.”

I got in the car that night, just so excited. For the first time, I was really feeling myself compelled to do something with my music. I kept thinking I wish there was a way for her to know I love her. I wish that I could give her something. Sunday night we did a CD release concert for the album All Right Here. We had people from Teen Challenge which is a drug rehabilitation program. We gave Teen Challenge 100 tickets to come, and I got a letter passed to me at the end of the night. Tonelle (the girl that had inspired me earlier) has been addicted to meth for the past 8 years and just came to Christ and was there that night. So, I can’t wait to go home and tell her that she was a huge part of me getting involved in music the way I am. She wrote me a letter saying she was still having some doubts, but after the concert – all night long, I just talked about Jesus, and the realness of Jesus – so after the concert she said, “I have no more doubts about Jesus now, and I just want you to know that I am in Teen Challenge now.” So, she has come full circle. I thought that was just an incredible letter to receive. Just to know that she was really one of the major reasons why I made the first album!

Mercy Hope: How has your message evolved with time and experience?

Sara Groves: Well, I can’t do anything but write about where I am right then. So, every album has been that. Sometimes I will hear people say, “I really liked Conversations. Conversations was a more vertical album.” It is a lot of conversations with God. All Right Here was more about faith and families. I can’t think of a more Kingdom-application album than an album about marriage and family. Because to me that is where your Christianity is at its hardest and at the most flesh-and-blood reality. You know, I can worship all day long, but then if I turn and speak disrespectfully to my husband, then what have I done? Paul tries to get this through to us in the Love chapter (I Corinthians 13). He is saying, you can do all kinds of things for God, but if you are not loving your neighbor and kids and your husband, then what does that mean?

So, I am getting off on a tangent again… :)

I think even at the beginning, I have always written right from where I am. Even during the time of questioning. I always feel very compelled to do what God has me to do. I am not going to look to the left or the right. I have looked to the left or the right and when I do that I have just been frustrated and overwhelmed. God wants to define normal for my life, and He has done that. He has really given me this space where I am really looking over my eight years of music. I am really grateful that God is giving me a space that fits me, with an audience that fits me.

My purpose has changed in that Conversations was more Conversations with God. All my songs are conversations with God. I could not eliminate that from my music. That would be like cutting off my arm. I think that aspect is in every song. Even as I talk about my marriage, that is a Christian Worldview song. All the songs are Christian Worldview.

Mercy Hope: What is really neat to me is that you are able to do this ministry, and your family is right with you. How do you balance all of that? I am sure it is a lot, and yet you seem to have it down to a science. How has that process been?

Sara Groves: Well, we are not perfect by any stretch. Troy and I are constantly re-tweaking and figuring out what is best. Because we have found that what works for one season does not work for the next.

Even good, Christian advice can sometimes not fit what God is telling us. I grew up in a Church where there was a lot of “Thus saith the Lord’s”, and so I kind of got the point where I was a little leery of that, just because that had been somewhat abused at times, I had thought. So, I was a little bit gun shy of prophecy. But when I was pregnant I was at a Church in Florida, and this man came up to me and the Lord just said, “Listen. Don’t shut down.” Because, normally I would just shut down. This man said, “I don’t know who you are, but I just was so compelled to write this note while we were praying.” I had been asking the Lord, do I stop doing the music. Now that I am pregnant, do I quit? We had been doing the music for about 3 years. We are independent artists still. Troy loves doing this. I was saying, “Lord, find Troy a new career, or something.” Because he so fits this job. (Managing Sara’s schedule, and playing drums for her concerts). He works extremely hard on all the millions of details. All I do is sing. That is all I do. And I am Momma. That is it. I just would never be able to handle all the details of this.

So, this man walked up to us and had written this note – and I thought I had been hearing this in my quiet time, but I thought, ‘Maybe this is just me, my ego, and I want to keep singing.’ But I had been feeling like God was saying, “Let me define normal for you.” This man crossed the room and slipped me this piece of paper, and it said, “Your family will not look like other families. There will be times when you question normal, but let God define normal for your family.”

Troy and I just wept and wept. It was such a confirmation to us. From there we have tried to do that. We try to involve the kids in what we are doing and make them a part of our ministry. I don’t want them on the bus playing Nintendo while we are doing what we are doing. So Kirby now introduces us, and he loves that. I don’t push him – if he doesn’t want to do it, I don’t make a big deal. It is nothing like child acting or anything like that I hope. I do want them to be in the concert at times. They don’t come to every concert, but they do sit in a lot and seem to enjoy it. They love being on the road. They are goofballs. J They love their little bunks on the bus!

In some ways the road has more of a rhythm and set space than we have at home. Especially this tour because we are doing 25 minutes each night so the space is pretty wide open.

Mercy Hope: In closing, is there any message the LORD has been speaking to you that could share as an encouragement to the women reading this?

Sara Groves: Definitely the message that is on my heart is this new album, Add To The Beauty. It is very raw, and very fresh for me. I think because of our nature, we, as women, tend to be protective of our homes and of our families. We are built that way. But I think that it lends itself to fear sometimes. I know that a lot of my girlfriends and different moms that I know are feeling overwhelmed these days because the world feels like it is falling apart. It is hard to know how to respond. I think that I have been in a foxhole for a while, feeling pretty embattled and pretty shell shocked. You know because of 9/11, or having new babies, or things happen in your life. I guess lately I have felt like this album for me is me running out on the field. It is me leading a charge, just calling out to my fellow believers, saying, “This is not what we were made to do. We were not made to sit here and be afraid.” Not to ramp up our political language, or our argumentative skills – not those things. The way to defend marriage is to have a strong marriage. The way to defend family is to have these families that shine. To me families are God’s masterpiece. They are His art. When you see a good family, when you see a good marriage, it takes your breath away like a masterpiece, like some beautiful work of art. I want to have that kind of marriage. I want to have that kind of life.
Then, I want to work on behalf of the poor, the way God has asked me to. That is something that has been neglected in my own life. I think in the American Church, a lot of us have been so self-nurturing in our self-grooming. You know we have the ultimate worship experience, we have all the tools we need for a great devotional life, and all these resources. Now what? “Here am I, send me.” I want to go, and I don’t want to be afraid. I want to take all those “what ifs” women have, I want to take those to their end conclusion. Every single time you will find that God is sovereign. So I feel like I want to ignite that pilot light in other women. Get excited! This is an exciting time to be alive. It is an exciting time to be raising kids. To be, like Paul said, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”

www.saragroves.com

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Mercy Hope: How did your childhood form who you are today, and directly prepare you to become the President and CEO of Compassion International? And is that something that you talk about in your book, Too Small To Ignore?

Dr. Wess Stafford: In Too Small to Ignore, I talk about the culmination of, not only my boyhood, but also what I am doing now in ministry. I wrote the book Too Small to Ignore and I named it Too Small to Ignore because in this world, which is very different from the Kingdom that we belong to, it is only big things that matter. Its only powerful things that matter. It is all about “how much do you have?” But there are things in this world that I maintain that are just too small to ignore, and that’s the little part of the Kingdom. Our Kingdom is completely upside down. I don’t know why we even pretend that we belong to this world, but for us the first are last, and the last are first. The weak are strong, and the strong are weak. The rich are often the poor, and the poor are in many ways rich. And in this case, the little are, in fact, big.
So, I wrote the book Too Small to Ignore: Why Children are the Next Big Thing, and the point is that they make up half of our world today. They are the poor half of our world – the poorest half of our world – and yet they hold in their hands the whole future of the world. And they are easy to ignore. They don’t vote, so they get passed up by most of our political processes. They don’t tithe – or if they do, it is just pennies – and they get passed up even by our missions and our Churches. They rarely get on the agenda. Proverbs 31 says speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. So this book essentially is a book that speaks up on behalf of the little ones. And the argument is that they are too small to ignore.

Much of the book is auto-biographical. When I was too small to ignore, I recognize that even at that time I was sort of Compassion’s “President-in-training.” I see children through a whole different filter than most people I know. Any time I see a little four or five-year-old go by, the question that crosses my mind is, “So, what is God up to there?” “What is that little one on their way to becoming?” When I was that small, God was training me to be President of Compassion. He allowed me to be raised as the son of missionary parents in a little, tiny, remote African village in the Ivory Coast. So my sister and I were the only white children for a day’s drive in any direction. I was literally raised by this village. They had a saying, “It takes the whole village to raise a child.” So, all of us children belonged to all of the grown-ups. My only problem was the skin was the wrong color. But I never fell down without an African woman swooping in and picking me up and drying my eyes.

I didn’t get away with much because for one thing, my skin stood out. They used to say, “Well, it was a whole group of the village boys that stampeded the goats, and in the dust we don’t know who all they were. But we know the white guy was one of them.” I used to pray every night, I would get in my little cot and say, “Lord, please, if you love me when I wake up in the morning, let me be black like all my friends.” And every morning, the first thing I would do is throw the cover off and say, “Ahh! Still white.”

But, it was shaping my heart. I tell people, most of my values – what really makes me up – come right out of a poverty-stricken village. Everything I need to know to lead Compassion’s world-wide ministry, I learned from the poor. Things that really matter. Things that you all would know about. Things like love. We did not have much else to give one another in that poverty-stricken village, but we always had love. Nobody went without love. Nobody died alone. They died in someone’s arms. They taught me about joy. That joy is a decision. It is not dictated by circumstances. It is a very courageous decision to be joyful in the midst of whatever circumstances. And hope. Hope. We tend to be hopeful here when things are going our way. Things are never going the way of the poor. Yet they have this amazing hope, and trust in one another and in God. They taught me about how to give, and how to receive. They taught me that if God made you strong it is not about you, it is for those who are weak. If God made you brave, it is not for you to escape danger, it is for you to be there for those who are weak and intimidated and frightened.

So, I was nestled in this village, my heart being shaped to be compassionate. Coming to understand poverty like very few people I know who lead organizations. So many Presidents of poverty relief and development organizations can spout the statistics of how many children die every day of preventable things. And I listen to them and say, “How can you say that without tears in your eyes?” For me they are not statistics. They are friends. I know their names. I not only know how many children die, I know who tends to die. And who tends to die are the best among us. I had little friends who died who gave their food away. I had friends who died giving their Malaria medicine to someone that they thought needed it more than they did. I had friends die in my arms when I was six years old, because they were bitten by a poisonous snake and our nearest hospital was a day’s drive away. This kind of bite could kill you in thirty minutes. All we could do was love one another to death. And, when you have held a little buddy and had them die in your arms, you don’t go on being the same kind of person.

So, ultimately, God was shaping my heart to care about the poor. When I think about the poor, I don’t even subtly think downward toward the poor. I actually think upward toward the poor. I tell our staff around the world, “You need to earn the right to even be around these people. God gave you two ears and one mouth – probably so you would use them in about that proportion. Twice as much listening as talking.” So I can look back at my path and see that God was orchestrating who I was to become, and what I was to be.

This book goes into some of what it was to grow up in a little, African village. Some of it was very funny; some of it was very sad. By the time I was 15 and came to America, I had lost about half of my friends. Every night the drums would play a funeral service for the children. They would die, and we would bury them within twenty four hours. I used to lie in my little bunk at night and listen to the drums playing again the story of one of my friends. That is how we communicated. The story of one of my friends; what they had wanted to be, kind things they had done. And this little white guy would lay in my cot and cry myself to sleep, night after night after night.

Finally, I am 15 and I came to America. This book actually begins with my first day in America. The first thing I saw in America was Manhattan. You talk about complete culture shock! And the first American I met was a New York cabbie who basically took all of the values that the village had taught me and destroyed them in about 15 minutes. Time was everything was time to him, and I had learned that time should be your servant, not your master. Time was everything. Whether he had to stop for this traffic light or not was everything to him. I had never even seen a traffic light. I discovered that there were a million things to make you angry. I discovered that he wasn’t waving happily to the people out the window. Later on, I learned that there are ways to wave that are not nice.

One of my first days in America, I took a walk around the block. We were staying at the center established for returning missionaries. I walked into a grocery store, and I saw all this food – rows and rows and rows of food. And I thought to myself, “There is enough food. My friends did not need to die from lack of food.” I went a couple doors down, and here was a Pharmacy filled with medicine, and I thought “There is enough medicine too. They didn’t need to die.” I went into a heartbroken rage that lasted through most of my high school years. If you had and did not care, you were by definition my enemy. It wasn’t until I was in college – I was at Moody Bible Institute – and I was working inner city, little Cabrena Green with little African American children – tutoring programs and all – that I began to watch Americans. I suddenly began to realize, “It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they don’t know.” Then I realized, that is why God put me through what He put me through. I know AND I care. I am somehow now a bridge between these two worlds. As soon as I realized that my calling was to bridge these two worlds, I stumble on to a place called Compassion International. And that is all it does, is bridge these two worlds on behalf of 700,000 children today. So yes, I can look at my life and I can see that God was orchestrating who I was and what I was to be, all the way back to that little village.

Mercy Hope: Share with us how Compassion International accomplishes this mission of being a bridge between these two worlds.

Dr. Wess Stafford: Essentially what we do is we help children in poverty and their families through their local church on behalf of people in the Western World – Americans and Europeans and such – who have a heart to care. To understand what I now lead, you have to understand Luke chapter 10, the Story of the Good Samaritan. Now, of all the stories Jesus could have told to describe how we are supposed to live in this hurting world, He chose to tell that one. And essentially after everybody else had passed this hurting person by the Good Samaritan would not pass him by. He took him to a safe place. The Samaritan took him to the innkeeper who had the facilities and the expertise and said to him, essentially, “You take care of him for me, but I’ll pick up the tab.” Now, every day of my life, 700,000 people say that to Compassion. “Take care of this little child in Peru; this little girl in the Phillippines, and I’ll be there. I’ll pick up the tab.”

Mercy Hope: Is To Small To Ignore a book about the work of Compassion?

Dr. Wess Stafford: The reason for this book is the realization that even if this organization that I lead were to be ten times its current size (if we served 10 million children) we would still be nothing in this hurting world. And God laid it on my heart that it is not enough to grow the ministry that you are leading as big as you can make it, or even make it as good as it can make it. There will always be children that you will never touch. There will always be children in countries you will never be able to get to, or who have needs in ways that your organization is not equipped to meet. So you need to somehow share your passion for children to the broader world. So, I wrote this book not to promote Compassion, because it doesn’t. There are a couple little illustrations in there. But the bottom line is I am trying to give a voice to those who have no voice, and just really champion the cause of children.

Some of it is the story of my growing up. Some of it unpacks the Scriptures. You want to understand the heart of God? Just watch what Jesus did. He was an absolute child champion! In fact, I can only find two times when He really was mad. We know about the whip in the temple. But the other one was when His disciples were keeping children away from Him. In fact, the Message Bible translates it quite well and says that He was irate. I don’t know about you, but I have never seen the piece of artwork where Jesus is with the little children and He is angry, I mean really angry. No, He has this sweet, tender, gentle look. But, He really wasn’t. He was extremely angry that day. The things that made Jesus angry is when important principles of His Kingdom were being eroded. In the temple it was when worship and prayer was replaced by business and corruption. Here, it was when children were told, “You are too small. You are not important.” Somebody finally said, “Would you kids please go away?” And I think that is when Jesus Christ, Lord of Glory, snapped, and He said, “Don’t you dare send those children away!” It is one of the most powerful moments in His teaching.

So, I unpack Jesus and the children. I unpack through Scripture that God not only loves children, but He respects them, and He uses them very powerfully. They are not the Church someday, of tomorrow, of the future, they are the Church of today. I go all through the Scriptures. Almost anytime a child is featured in the Scriptures, God is doing something that a grown up could never do. So, I talk about the great Israeli army that lacked enough faith to kill a giant, but a little boy did. All he had was a sling and faith. God needed great faith, and He chose a child. He goes to his High Priest Eli who had become so evil that God could not even talk to him anymore. He hadn’t talked to Israel for almost 400 years. He chose a pure, clear channel. He needed a clear channel, and He chose a little boy, Samuel. It was a little girl who told Captain Naaman to jump in the river to be healed of his leprosy. None of his troops had the courage to do that. Little eight-year-old boy, King Josiah was one of the best kings. You go into the New Testament, and Jesus taught in the temple at age 12. Jesus didn’t feed 5,000 people until a little boy came forward with everything he had. Us grownups would have said, “Excuse me, but I was smart enough to bring my own lunch, so I’m sorry for the rest of you.” Or we would have said, doing the math, “…this is not going to feed everybody anyways, so you can have one fish and two loaves.” Only a child would say, “take everything.”

I maintain that when Peter had gotten out of the boat to walk on the water, if that had been a boat full of children instead, there would not have been tentative walking on the water. They would have had a party out there, because that is the kind of faith that kids have. You go all through Scripture. I mean, do you wonder if God cares about children, even before they are born? You know, John the Baptist fulfilled the first step in his calling when he was still an embryo. Mary walks into the room, Elizabeth is standing there. Two pregnant women and John the Baptist, in the presence of his Messiah, jumps for joy. That was his calling. He was to prepare the way, and he did it even before he was born. So, don’t tell me that they don’t matter in the womb.

So, it goes through that. It also goes on to some chapters that I call “just imagine.” Imagine the world differently – if children weren’t too small to ignore. If we really had our hearts toward them; if we fought on their behalf, how could the world be different? I talk about what it would look like internationally, nationally, and in our cities. How would our churches be different? And even how would our homes ultimately be different? And that is the thing that I realized when I realized who you guys are and that your parent ministry works with homeschool families. I have enormous, enormous respect for men and women who have enough concern for the children to homeschool them. There’s probably not a higher calling. This book, ultimately, will say to homeschoolers, “You’ve got it right! Nobody else seems to understand that. I know you feel like a little minority. You feel like you are on a side rail to the normal flow of society, but the King of Kings and Lord of Lords shares your priorities. You are doing a remarkable thing, more precious than you know.”

Mercy Hope: What are four freedoms that every child deserves?

Dr. Wess Stafford: There are four chapters in the book that unpack things that I think really matter based on where I grew up. One of them is that I think every child deserves the right to have the pressure lifted off and to be a child. I am back and forth between these worlds all the time and it breaks my heart to watch American children being forced to grow up so fast – being forced to achieve – being compared to one another. And I think, you know, back off. Let them be children. Take the time to engage with them as children. Never miss a moment with them. Nothing kills me like minivans that have video screens in the back seat. You are missing something. You are all trapped in one little place and here’s your chance to breathe into the lives of your children! But for the sake of a few moment’s peace, we say, you know, “press play.” So one of the rights is that children have the right to be children, and we need to give them the chance to do that.

A second one is that they need to be freed from materialism: being owned by stuff. So many Americans I watch are so busy that they figure the way I can show my child that I love them is to give them stuff. Frankly, enough is eventually enough. Children’s rooms are piled high with stuff they never touch. Of all things, right after Christmas, it doesn’t take two weeks for that thing to get in the corner and never touched. We just keep accumulating and amassing. We eventually have to buy a storage unit for our stuff that we don’t dare throw away. I make the case in the last 10 to 20 years our houses have tripled and quadrupled in size. When my girls where little we would visit the homes of their friends, and they are like hotels! And I am thinking, when do we understand that enough is enough?

I maintain that the opposite of poor is not rich. The opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poor is somewhere along that spectrum called enough. Adequacy. Beyond that, there is a poverty all of its own that brings a misery all of its own. What Compassion does is to take children in abject poverty and bring them up to the opposite of that, which is enough in Jesus Christ. But beyond enough is a trap all of its own. Some of the most miserable people I have ever met are people who have too much. So, that is a freedom that I think we need to give our kids. If you ask a child anywhere, do you want this latest toy or an hour of your daddy’s time? They will always say “my daddy’s time!” I have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of children as I have led Compassion, but God entrusted two of them to me, two little girls. And I have worked harder as Papa than as President, and now they are both in college and they are wonderful, Godly girls. They are both my best friends, and so I argue that enough is enough.

I go on another freedom that I argue for. And this breaks my heart as I travel across the country; that is freedom from corrosive competition. In my little village in Africa, we did not even have a word for competition. The idea that I should win and that means that you have to loose was an idea that was totally unacceptable to us. But, as I go to little league games, soccer games in the park and recreation parts of our country, I’m just watching this going “we are just killing our kids.” We are teaching them, not to love the game, not to play the game well. But to really be concerned about who wins and who looses and all that it is about. So, I argue that there is a place for competition in the Kingdom of God – I understand that. But it’s only legitimate goal is to motivate us towards excellence. It should be a motivator that says – I’m going to take on this sport, or run this race as Paul says – to the best of my ability. I mean, Paul talks about sports, talks about running a race, but he never mentions anyone else in the race. It’s not about beating someone else; it’s about running MY race, keeping my eyes on the author and finisher of my faith. So, I argue that we need to lighten up and let children play.

You know, on the entrance to Wimbledon – the archway just before you walk on to the court – is the words “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, yours is the world and everything in it and what is more, you will be a man, my son.” Kipling wrote those words, it’s from a poem called “If.” But you don’t think that they walked under those words when you watch how those guys play out there.

In Too Small To Ignore, there is a very funny story. I coached a children’s soccer team, totally without competition. I told the parents at the beginning, “If how big the trophy is at the end of the season matters to you, if what the win-loss ratio matters to you, then you’ve got the wrong coach. Because I love this sport. I played it since I was a little boy. I play it quite well. But that is not what I’m here to do. I won’t even know if I’m successful with your children until this time next year – if they sign up to play it again next year. So, you can get another coach real fast if you want to.” Nobody did, and I went through the entire season refusing to celebrate the score – winning or loosing. But every week I taught a new skill, and every time they did perfectly that skill, no matter what the score was, I just cheered. “Way to go! Nobody ever took it back. We threw it in perfectly every time!” We finally got to the end of the season; we were up against a team who had never lost. The skill was finally “take the shot!” I had taught them stay your position, and pass the ball. I finally taught them this final skill “take the shot if you’ve got it. Don’t pass it one more time. Take the shot.” So that is what I focused on. Again, that one we won. We beat the team who had never lost. So they come out, “We won! We won!” And I was so tempted to say “Yea! We did it!” But I said no, “You did it! You took ever shot that you had!” When all was said and done what they did was they learned to love the game. One of them went on to college on a scholarship. His father ran a hamburger stand in our local mall for 10 years. I never bought a hamburger, but every time I would walk by he would say “Hey, everyone, this is the best coach my son ever had!” So, I argue that we’ve got to stop with the competition in school. We kill each other over that. Some of the ugliest places in the world are the bleachers in little league games, if you just listen in.

Then one final freedom, and this comes out of a very hard chapter in this book – one that I rarely talk about. That is children deserve the right to be safe. They deserve safe havens and people that they can trust. Part of this comes out of a part of my story. It wasn’t all about the village.

During part of my childhood, we were sent off to a very bad, painful, destructive boarding school eight hundred miles from home. It was a case where it was the mission policy for all of the missionaries in West Africa. You don’t homeschool your kids; you are called to bring Africans into the Kingdom of God, so do not be wasting your time with kids. I know from experience when kids are considered unimportant, some terrible, terrible things can happen. So, here we were, 80 of us kids all packed up every March and we would stay until December. We were in a place where the people responsible for us were not called to minister to children, were not trained to minister to children, did not want to minister to children. So me and this group of kids I grew up with were abused in every way that a child can be abused. I’m talking spiritual abuse. I’m talking emotional abuse. I’m talking physical abuse. I was beaten as a nine-year-old child 17 times per week with a big belt or a hug truck tire tread slipper. And we were sexually abused. There was no one to run to. The people that should have been our protectors were also our abusers. Most of the friends that I grew up with in that place are not walking with the Lord. Their lives really got destroyed. I am absolutely the product of God’s grace. The fact that I am of any use at all in the Kingdom of God is only God’s mercy.

I could climb up a bell tower and snipe people from the bell tower with a rifle and a good attorney would get me off. He would say “Well, of course that is what he does. Look at what he went through.” You know for 35 years, up until writing this book, I really never talked about that. It was a chapter of my life that was closed. If you wanted to talk to me about my childhood, it was the village. Never mind that 9 months of each year it wasn’t that. It was almost like I couldn’t explain it. Why would God let that happen to little Wesley? I prayed for mercy. I pleaded for mercy. I tried to be as good as I could to make things not hurt, and it never happened. We actually never told our parents, believe it or not. We wrote every week, but we didn’t dare tell our parents. Because they used this diabolical trap on us. They said if you tell your parents they are going to be unhappy, you will ruin their ministry and there are will be Africans in hell because of you. And can you believe 80 of us children never talked? We wrote letters every week but it was all bubbly. We went on a bike ride. We never told them what was going on. Even the 3 months home we never told them. They warned us, “we can’t control you for these next 3 months, but nothing changes. If you tell, you will destroy your parent’s ministry.” And us kids – out of love for God, love for our parents, and love for Africans were the silent lambs – we took it. You know, for Isaac, there was a lamb hiding in the bushes. He didn’t actually have to be sacrificed. For us, there was no ram, and many of my boyhood friends were sacrificed. It wasn’t until age 17, two years after I came to america, that I eventually was able to forgive those people. And frankly, it was a pretty shallow forgiveness. I just chose to leave them behind. I knew they would never ask forgiveness, and they never have. They’ve now been held in trial and all found guilty. None of them have so much as apologized. So, I understand poverty, and I understand abuse. And I never really talked about the abuse…

As I wrote this book, I turned the tangles of tapestry over. Up until that point I looked at that and all I had seen was tangled threads and disaster. As I began to write this book, I began to realize that it all does come together. I am sure my guardian angel went to the Father and said, do you hear his prayers? Can you not protect him? And, I am pretty sure that God said, “I do hear his prayers, and I’m wiping his tears too. But he needs this. I am preparing him to be a champion for children. He needs to go through this.” I understand that now, and I turn the tapestry over and it’s a beautiful picture. But that ultimately is why I wrote the book. I understand poverty. I understand abuse. God in His great sense of humor, in His great mercy has positioned me as the President of one of the largest child-focused ministries in the world. I can understand why now. To whom much is given, much is required. I’m passionate and deliberate about what God has entrusted to me. This book is literally a product of realizing that I have to be faithful with what I was entrusted.

Mercy Hope: For you personally, once you started working with Compassion, did a deeper healing begin in you personally because you were able to minister out of your scars?

Dr. Wess Stafford: Yes, I think without a doubt that was probably part of the qualifications to even be a part of a place called Compassion, much less lead it. And, yeah, without a doubt, my broken heart over the loss of boyhood friends due to poverty – things they didn’t need to die from – drives me passionately. One of the chapters in book is about one of my very, very best friends in that village – my hero – the guy that I walked around in HIS footsteps. I wanted to be just like him. I lost contact with him when I came to America when I was 15 and didn’t see him for 21 years. This was the guy that was going to go on to become a Pastor … to become everything. And all of us – all we wanted to do was finish translating Scripture so that he would have the tools to do what God called him to do. I was like way below him. But I go back after 21 years and I discover that our place is poorer than ever. The Sahara desert has encroached; there are no animals to hunt anymore; the fish are gone because the swamp is dried up; the fields are empty. And I run onto my boyhood friend who was now a peasant. All he does is chop grass on the mission compound with a machete. And he doesn’t dare talk to me for long, because he doesn’t dare loose this job. This is all he’s got. As I listened to his story, I realize that everything that dashed his dreams, that didn’t allow him to go on in school, that didn’t keep him healthy, that waylaid him in his life, I know lead a ministry that keeps that from happening. As I looked at him as he left me to go chop grass in the sun, I was angry, I was brokenhearted, and I literally heard God speak. I heard Him say, “Wess, don’t you see what I’ve done?” I looked around like, “Who said that?” Then I said, “Lord, if that’s You – No! All I see is waste; all I see is destruction; all I see is loss.” And He said, “Wess, I’ve give you 100,000 of these people.” And I thought, what does that mean? And as I pondered back, I realized that was the size of Compassion at that time. Now it is 700,000. But I now fight on behalf of the children in my village. I now hold myself accountable. Because for some reason I’m alive. For some reason, I’m “Doctor” Stafford. What’s that about? People better than me aren’t even alive, or are chopping grass. So, I fight on behalf of every child in the program so that doesn’t happen to a single other child.

My friend died shortly after I saw him. Nobody bothered to tell me. I didn’t know. Who is going to bother to tell the President of Compassion that a yard boy in Africa has died? But he was a better person than myself in every way. But the harshness of poverty kept him from reaching his full, God-given potential. I just refuse to let that happen to another child. So, I’m one of the most passionate people I know in this calling. But I can look back and I can see the hurts in my heart, in my life – both in the village, and ultimately at school that prepared me to be what I am. So, I see it.

Mercy Hope: Is there anything else that you would want to share?

Dr. Wess Stafford: There is one last thing. When I say that children are too small to ignore, and that they can’t vote so they can’t get into the political arena, you ask yourself, “So how can it be that such a huge part of the world’s population can hurt so severely and nobody comes to their rescue?” How can we loose 30,000 of them every day to things that we can prevent? I mean, that is the equivalent of 9/11 happening ten times that day. But it also happened on 9/10. 30,000 got lost on 9/12 and every single day since, which is well over 1,000 days. So, how can that go on? Do we not love children? Do we not care about children? I argue that they are too small to ignore and if we understood this we would recognize that the reason they are not important to our governments and even to us as the Church and missions is because satan clearly has blinded our eyes.

I maintain there is a Spiritual battle, one that we don’t even see, raging over our heads between the gates of hell and the hosts of Heaven. I actually believe that satan only one agenda, and that is to break the heart of God. And I believe that he watched creation with an eye for “what can I do to mess this up?” And he saw the sun come out, he saw the land form, he saw the plants and the animals. He didn’t see anything that was really all that “attackable” until day six. Then he watched carefully as God made man in His own image. Satan must have been looking from the bushes and said, “There is the chink in His armor. He loves mankind. If I want to break the heart of God, that’s who I must attack.” The fact that he’s not stupid, he must have said “When’s the best time to attack? When can I make permanent damage to them?” And he got so he was attacking children. I believe every child is born out of the womb, made in the image of God, with a flicker of dignity, with God’s image in them, and satan immediately attacks. He’ll use whatever it takes to attack. In about two-thirds of the world he uses poverty. It can overwhelm and drive people from God. In the other about one-third of the world, he uses comfort equally well. It separates us from God.

I argue that if we could understand that there is a battle raging over every soul, every child, we would all behave very, very differently. Satan delights when a child gives up, and all of Heaven rejoices when a child walks in. We have in front of us, the capacity to fight that battle on one side or another. What I argue in this book is that every child that God brings into your life, even if it is only for 30 seconds, is a Divine appointment. When the cement of their souls is wet, when they are small, it takes no effort to leave an imprint. And that imprint will last a lifetime for good or bad. I maintain that you can launch a life with a single act of kindness. A single word of encouragement can launch a life.

You know, anyone who is a contributing member in society, you can ask them, “Who do you owe that to? Who made a difference in your life? Who believed in you before you believed in yourself?” They can usually point to that person, and the impact is usually nothing more than a phrase or an act of kindness. On the other hand, you can destroy a life just as easily. When I talk about that with people, I watch tears fill their eyes, because most people can remember who exactly almost destroyed them. They remember what they said, they can even remember what the room smelled like, what was going on around them, when that death blow was dealt to them. I maintain that all of us who love our Lord have got to recognize that we can’t ignore these children. If you’ve got 30 seconds with them, you can lift them up.

I look for churches who will organize themselves around children. I think that every child needs a champion in their church. Somebody needs there remembering that it is their birthday. They need to hear that “you are the best Joseph I ever saw in the Christmas story. I thought you were really him for a moment there.” You know, little moments like that. Every time a child performs somebody in the audience has to have the guts to stand up and give a standing ovation. So what is the props fell, or the voices don’t match. Every time a child does something for you, you celebrate it. So, I really, really argue that children really, really matter.

Almost 85% of people who give their lives to Christ do it before they are 14 years old. They are at their prime time to be brought to Christ, wouldn’t you think that our missionary efforts would just be fraught with child strategies to evangelize and bring children into the Kingdom and to disciple them? No, most mission organizations spend 10% of their budget on children. I maintain that if we understood the Kingdom of God the way I have come to understand it, everything would be backwards. People would be lined up with resumes in hand for the privilege of working in the Church nursery – for an hour to hold these little ones – when you have this chance to shape their lives. But no, everyone wants to teach adult education. Frankly, if you wait until they are adults the cement is dry. As teenagers, you know, you can not just put a finger mark in any more. Now it is a hammer and chisel. And if you wait until they are grown up, it takes dynamite to change how they think. In fact, if a person does not come to Christ by age 21, the probability that they will EVER come to Christ is only about 1 in 4. Yet that is where all our missionary efforts – the bulk of our seminaries, the bulk of our Bible schools – all honed in on all that very unproductive part of the harvest field.

So, I know that I’m a lone voice in the wilderness. Not many people think like this, but when I study my path and where I came from, it makes perfect sense that I would think like this. And if you look at what God has entrusted to me, it makes good sense that I should finally step forward as a voice on behalf of children. So, I do. I lead one of the most remarkable ministries, and now I’ve written the book that I think the whole family of God need to read. Those who already care for children, those who care like homeschoolers, who are putting this much effort into it. This book will absolutely endorse the wisdom and strategic importance of their decision.

My prayer is that it will get into the hands of people who never gave children a thought. I had one last week in my office a pastor from a mega-church in Ohio who read the book last Thanksgiving. He said, I went through Bible school, I went through seminary. I never gave children a thought. But I found myself when I got done reading it sobbing in my office. I dropped to my knees and I repented. I said, “Lord, I missed a huge, strategic part of Your Kingdom.” And he went and talked to his board of elders they said “Get on the plane and go talk to Wess.” So he sat in my office and said, “I don’t even know what to talk to you about, I just have to talk to you, because God just used that book.” And he went out and bought 500 copies of the book, to absolutely put it across the congregation and the members there. So, I’m overwhelmed at the path ultimately that led me to this. And I’m overwhelmed that God is using this book to transform how the Kingdom views children. The bottom line is, they are just TOO SMALL TO IGNORE!

www.compassion.com
www.toosmalltoignore.com

Photos appearing in this interview are courtesy of Compassion International

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