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A safe place to talk about HIV/AIDS

Make your church a safe place to have conversations about HIV. As you begin to talk about HIV, remember the important question is not how someone got HIV. The fact is many have it. The important question is: How can we serve those who have HIV?

It’s critical that the senior pastor lead the way in your church's conversation about HIV ministry. Without the senior pastor's involvement, it won't go very far. So, begin a conversation about HIV at your church, in your small group, or in your community, and pray for God to open doors to share his love.

Warmly,
Kay

Kay Warren, executive director of Saddleback's HIV/AIDS Initiative

Commentary: Christians must do more to
combat AIDS, comfort victims
By Kay Warren

Joana crawled toward me on her skeletal elbows and knees, each movement a painful reminder of the fact that she was dying.

When I met her, this emaciated woman was homeless, living under a tree. She had unrelenting diarrhea, little food, no earthly possessions, and only an elderly auntie who had taken pity on her to care for her needs.

Read Kay’s complete article posted on CNN.com >>

Conference-goers learn six ways to respond to HIV/AIDS
By Manda Gibson

In responding to HIV/AIDS, churches should follow the example of Jesus, who cared for the sick, touched them, and healed, Kay Warren told an audience at the Purpose Driven Church conference.

Around 80 pastors, church staff, and lay leaders spent a day of the conference in an HIV/AIDS seminar led by Warren and others. The speakers challenged churches to respond to the AIDS pandemic in six main ways, outlined in the acronym C.H.U.R.C.H. Read more >>

My family: HIV times three
By Jerry Thacker

My wife, Sue, and I, and our third child, Sarah, have been infected with HIV since 1984. We found out two years after our infection when I gave blood at church. We contracted the virus as a result of a blood transfusion given to Sue after Sarah’s birth. Sue brought HIV home to me and passed it on to Sarah through breast-feeding. We had not participated in immoral activities or illicit drugs. We were not “gay.” Like 23,000 other Americans who got HIV-tainted blood or blood products between 1978 and 1985, we had become “victims” of the sins of our society. Read more >>

Kay Warren: Purpose-Driven Wife
By Jane Johnson Struck

It took a magazine article in 2002 to completely change the trajectory of Kay Warren's comfortable suburban life. Then 48 and the wife of Rick Warren, author of the best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life and pastor of southern California's mega-church, Saddleback, Kay was a busy "soccer mom" of three who dreamed, once their nest was empty, of sharing a platform with Rick and ministering to pastors' wives.

Then one day Kay picked up a news magazine and was arrested by an article on AIDS. When she read that 12 million children were orphaned in Africa due to AIDS, "I realized I didn't know even one orphan. I couldn't imagine millions of them anywhere," she admits. "That number haunted me. My life's never been the same."

Read full article in Today's Christian Woman >>

Also on the Caring Community

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Your Letters

I am a pastor's wife in Bellingham, Wash., who just discovered how I can use my story to minister in ways I could have never imaged. One of my brothers is gay and my family has a great relationship with my brother and his partner of 20 years. I, in fact, have always had a soft spot in my heart for gays.

In learning more about my story, my past, and discovering how I could be used in ministry in light of it, I started volunteering in our AIDS resident home here in Bellingham. Over the past year and a half, I have loved building relationships with the six male residents that live there. As I bake, cook, drive them to doctors appointments, sit with them during procedures, take them shopping, I have truly never felt so alive in ministry.

My husband and I attended Saddleback's Disturbing Voices conference in 2005, which was awesome. Upon my return to the Pacific Northwest, I've felt promptings to begin an AIDS support group at our church in the fall of 2006. In a church our size, with approximately 2,700 to 3,000 people attending each weekend, I know that there have to be people who are struggling daily with this virus. I know that God wants to wrap his arms around these people, and I am making myself available to be used by him. This is a scary step, but I've never been so excited. …

I am so looking forward to the future! Not only can we help life be a bit more bearable now for those with the virus, but we will affect all of eternity.

Pam Pries
Cornwall Church
Bellingham, Wash.

What is your church doing in HIV/AIDS ministry? The Caring Community Update wants to know. Share your story >>