By Roger “Sing” Oldham
Pastor Engagement Specialist, TBMB
In two short months, we have watched rising numbers of confirmed Coronavirus cases and deaths, rapidly escalating unemployment, and diminishing confidence that our economy will rebound in the near term.
Our world has gone into lockdown mode. Friends and family have lost their jobs. Children have lost the routine of school, along with the breakfast and lunch provided during each school day. Single moms are juggling care for their children while working from home — if they still have a job.
Health care providers and first responders are putting their lives on the line every day. Church leaders have scrambled to find new ways of providing spiritual care for their congregations. Protests are bubbling up in major cities across the nation. What began as “Fifteen Days to Stop the Spread” keeps spiraling forward.
These rapid changes have the potential to stretch our stress quotient to the breaking point. David Crosby reminds us in his book Your Pain Is Changing You: Discover the Power of a Godly Response that we can choose how we respond to the tremendous pressures we are facing individually and as a nation.
The book contains 30 chapters of three to six pages each. Each chapter can be read as a daily devotional, or the book can be read in a single sitting. Crosby, who was a professional journalist prior to his calling to pastoral ministry, will quickly draw you into each story and leave you with a meditative thought that will comfort you, challenge you, and call you to the kind of radical obedience that Jesus demanded during his earthly ministry.
Every two years, national Woman’s Missionary Union selects a Project HELP emphasis. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was the Project HELP emphasis for 2016-2017. Crosby, who is pastor emeritus at First Baptist Church in New Orleans and led the church to minister to the city of New Orleans following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, wrote the book as a resource for that emphasis.
WMU has worked with Iron Stream Media, which owns New Hope Publishers as an imprint, to allow state WMUs to use the book as a free, downloadable PDF. Tennessee WMU, in partnership with national WMU, is providing the book as a gift on the TBMB website. The book can be accessed here.
