On Saturday morning of Annual Conference, a pastor who serves in a small community found me at the Liberia Display and handed me a personal check made out to IGRC for the Liberia Pastor Salary Support Advance 15124A for the amount of $1,000. This IGRC pastor, who wishes to remain anonymous, said to me, "If only 5 more pastors will match this amount, we will be able to support 25 pastors in Liberia for this year at $20 per month. Will you help me promote this challenge?" I did the math and the pastor is exactly correct. Six pastors or churches giving $1,000 each will indeed support 25 pastors. 

 

The gauntlet has been laid down and the challenge is before pastors of IGRC. Surely there are other pastors who were touched by the presentation of Carol Russell during the Liberia Report regarding the need of salary support for pastors in Liberia. I believe there are at least five more pastors ready to take on this challenge. 

 

I will always remember our first time in Liberia and as we were leaving the country we stopped at the Bishop Judith Craig Children's Village to make a visit. Before we left a choir of the children living there sang to us the song, Little Is Much When God Is In It. I sat there knowing the living conditions of those children and thought of all of the atrocities they had witnessed and yet their joy as they sang. My friends, $20 a month to help support a pastor in Liberia is truly "little" in our own personal budgets and the budget of our churches, but it is "much" for pastors struggling to buy food for their families.

 

I look forward to 2014 Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference session and believe we will celebrate the difference we will make in the lives of Liberian pastors this coming year.