Antioch is about a year and a half old. We sent two teams to Africa within 13 months of the church’s first official gathering. We are obviously missionally minded!

However, up until now Antioch has not had a missions “department” or a real missions “strategy” that we were working from. We had things we wanted to accomplish, and ideas about how we could accomplish them, but it was not given a structure and when people asked how to get involved we were generally at a loss for words.

That is all about to change!

We are in the middle of creating a holistic and engagingmissions strategy that will seek to involve the people of Antioch (according to their gifting and passions) in meeting people’s spiritual, physical, emotional and socio-economic needs. We will have a wide variety of opportunities for involvement both here in Bend, in our own country and across international borders.

Look for more information coming in the late summer or early fall!!!

[For more information on how you can get involved in the early stages of development of this strategy, or to contribute ideas for local service opportunities, you can e-mail Courtney at courtney@antiochchurch.org ]

At our recent brainstorming session (see below), which consisted of 6 women and my wonderfully supportive husband, I was struck yet again by something that has been a source of frustration for me over the last year or so.  I have a hard time understanding why there is such an imbalance in gender of those who are actively getting involved in the fight for people’s basic human rights. I have an abundance of women who are wanting to end human suffering around the world and a handful of men who have dedicated their lives to this end (if you are part of that handful, you have my genuine appreciation.) I’m not usually one to try to convince someone of their responsibility to be involved in fighting for human rights, but in this case I absolutely feel that it is necessary. So…Welcome to my soap box!The issue behind every violation of human rights in a basic lack of respect for their worth as a person. In many cases, this lack of respect is aimed at women and children (not always, but often.) So, how are we, as women, going to convince the world of our worth as people??? We NEED men to stand up for the worth of women and children!! Men, YOU are the ones who will change the state of things. As women, we lack the power and influence in the world to change these things by ourselves due to the very lack of repect that we are fighting.Men…WE NEED YOU!!! We need you to show the world that we are worthy of respect and then actively fight for our rights and the rights of our children. We need you to teach your sons that they are to respect other people (particularly women), and be an example to your peers of how to respect the women you come in contact with. We need you to be the voice of oppressed people around the world in places where we will not be heard. We need you to fight for the people who only you can save. If you need ideas for how to do this, feel free to contact me! -Courtney Christenson�

On Monday, February 11th, we had a brainstorming session about what Antioch Church can do to impact the state of human rights around the world. It was an extremely effective time, and many great ideas came out of it. One that I am most excited about is the idea of political and cultural advocacy. “Advocacy” is when you become a voice for the voiceless to influential figures who have the power to really make a change. Examples of big, powerful advocacy programs are Amnesty International and The Save Darfur Coalition. For Antioch, this will take the form of e-mail and mail campaigns to influential figures in our city, county, state and country. Look for upcoming opportunities to become an advocate for those who are hidden and suffering!!!

There are many reasons why we at Antioch feel so strongly about the church’s responsibility to fight for human rights around the world. Here are a few of them:we believe that we are called to take care of the poor, needy and abused around the world; we believe that addressing social needs and injustices is one of the major Biblical responsibilities of Christ Followers and of the Church (See Isaiah 1:17, Isaiah 58 and Psalm 82:3-4 for a few examples); we believe that God is an abolitionist, seeking to free people from all kinds of slavery- both spiritual and physical- and therefore we must also be abolitionists; we believe that God does not NEED us in order to end suffering, but He has called us to pour every effort into doing so, and will use our obedience for the furtherment of His Kingdom and His glory; we cannot expect our people to sacrificially get involved in helping those in need if they are not aware that the need exists.

I would encourage you to educate yourself about these issues. We cannot be the hands of Jesus to the suffering if we are too busy to learn about their pain. We cannot sit idly by because we are afraid, shocked, offended or overwhelmed by the magnitude of the issues. someone. Jesus was NOT offended by the lowliest, the possessed, the lepers, the Samaritans, the woman who was bleeding, or the man who lived with pigs. We cannot soften or trivialize these issues to make them “acceptable” to our clean, middle-class American churches. These are not sanitary issues, and how dare we say that these people’s problems must first be sterilized before we can talk about them in church!!! We cannot allow our churches to be offended by being forced to look outside of their pretty little bubble and realize that the rest of the world doesn’t have one. This is one area where the American church is failing miserably in their effort to raise-up Biblical Christ followers, but a change is coming, and movement is happening.

I’m so excited to see what God will do through His church in the coming years and I am thrilled that Antioch is determined to be at the fore-front of this movement. 

Welcome to the Compassion and Advocacy website for Antioch Church in Bend, Oregon. The purpose of this site is to educate and equip you to care for needs of people who are suffering around the world. On this site you will find fact sheets about various Human Rights issues, videos that take you deeper in those issues, resources for further research, links to helpful websites, and ideas for how you can get involved and make a difference. Take a look around and if there is any way we can be of further help to you, please let us know!!!