Believers in Kenya having a church meeting underneath a tree using materials from Urban Ministries, Inc.
How many of us have an old Bible on a bookshelf, a stack of old curriculum stashed in a closet, or several years of commentaries stored away in a desk? Did you know that in Africa and other parts of the world, some people are willing to walk miles just to get even one of those older pieces of Biblical literature?
Love Packages, a nondenominational nonprofit, takes on the arduous task of sending more than 1,500 tons of donated curriculum each year from churches and individuals nationwide to people all over the world who desperately seek them. They’ve got two warehouses – one in Decatur, Alabama, and one in Butler, Illinois. At various collection points around each state, people bring their used Biblical literature in any way they can – in horse trailers, cars, vans, trucks, and tractor trailers. Nine major publishing houses, including Urban Ministries, Inc., also make donations. Once the materials reach the Love Packages warehouses, more than 1,000 volunteers go through it and sort it into six categories: Bibles, reference materials, Sunday School literature, books, magazines, and daily devotionals (music/tracts/miscellaneous). Then, in the host countries, the materials are delivered in ocean-shipping containers to distribution points where various ministries, such as Every Home for Christ Assemblies of God or Evangelical Fellowship, distribute it.
The organization’s website is filled with testimonials from all over the world. One from South Africa this past February reads: “We had meetings last week at New Stock Road. After the preaching at the campaign, 46 people gave their lives to Jesus and we gave them the Christian material that we got from you, and also the little booklet of John and Romans, it was a great time of joy. Love in Jesus Name.”
Steve Schmidt, the founder of Love Packages, shared an experience he had on a visit to Zambia in 1999. It started when he read an article about the first elected president Frederick Chiluba, who was explaining that he was a born again Christian and he wanted to do everything in his power to bring the principles, precepts and powers of God to bear on his country. However, he didn’t have any literature. He wrote a letter to President Chiluba explaining his organization and he was invited to visit the country to help them out. When he met with a Bishop who oversaw 700 churches, he learned that most of the pastors didn’t have a Bible and none had Sunday School materials.
“That was in ‘99. We’ve improved that some. We’ve sent about 400 tons of literature into Zambia and we’ve been shipping into Zimbabwe now too,” said Schmidt, who said in general they ship 20 to 40 tons of literature every week. The 20-ton containers they use cost between $3,500 to $9,000. “Every 20-ton container has at least a half a million pieces of literature in it.”
A distribution center overseas receives commentaries from Urban Ministries, Inc.
Schmidt started Love Packages in the summer of 1975. He had four-year-old old Bibles and initially thought he’d use it to prepare lessons. But God had other plans.
“I argued with the Lord for about three months. Told him I was going to use it to prepare lessons. He said, ‘No, you’re not,’” said Schmidt, who questioned, “Who am I going to give an old Bible to? I don’t know anybody who wants it.”
But then he thought of some men who had just graduated from a Bible college and were going home to their home countries in Ghana, Nigeria, India, and various other countries. He wrote them a letter, asking if they had any need for old Biblical literature.
“I didn’t know there was a great need,” Schmidt said. “I didn’t know anything! But the letters seemed like they were only gone a couple of days and they were back, and said, ‘Yes, we can use as much as we can get here, as soon as you can get it here.’”
Schmidt and his wife started in the basement of their home and in the first year sent 60 little boxes overseas from August to January. As he went to various small church events held in his community, from the Baptist chicken dinner to the Methodist Pancake breakfast, the donations started to pour in. By the second year, people began dropping off boxes on their front and back porches and their living room was full of boxes.
“It grew that second year to three and a half tons. And then, the next year, seven tons, and eleven tons… And our goal for 2020 is to ship 2,020 tons!” said Schmidt. “Even with COVID-19, we’re still at 660 tons of literature that we shipped this year so far. And that’s just the literature that’s being used in different places. We’ll send enough literature this year for about somewhere between 60 and 80 million people to read.”
Between the two states in Alabama and Illinois, Love Packages maintains three full-time staff members in each state and is supported entirely by donations from churches and individuals. Youth groups or men/women ministries going on short-term mission trips, and even families in Illinois at the Butler warehouse are able to come and stay in two dormitories, one with 25-30 rooms and the other 10-15 rooms. Groups can stay for up to a week.
“You can eat dinner with us. There’s probably a hundred or so stories. We have a chalkboard and there are stories about different testimonies that happened and people who got saved or healed or got a book for the first time or etc. And we tell stories during the lunchtime and try to encourage people to think eternally and pursue God with all their hearts,” said Schmidt.
Fighting through a dark season in your life where you find yourself depressed and at times filled with debilitating sadness is challenging enough for the average person. But it’s hard to imagine what that’s like for those in the public eye, living under social media scrutiny. In his latest book, I am Restored: How I Lost My Religion, but Found My Faith, Lecrae reveals a maturity in his faith after navigating through the uglier side of politics and Christianity, being a celebrity, a Black man, and a believer.
It’s part of a series of initiatives in 2020 focused on his personal restoration as well as serving as a catalyst for others in his faith, the music industry, and within popular culture. In May 2020, he released “Set me Free” featuring YK Osiris, the first track from his forthcoming ninth album, “Restoration.” A documentary about his life also will be coming out this summer.
Lecrae’s journey toward restoration began in his first book, Unashamed, where he didn’t hold back in talking about what he’s been through on his road to salvation—from drugs and abuse to rehab and even suicide.
I recently spoke to Lecrae about restoration issues of race, practical steps for dealing with depression and dark seasons, and how he’ll raise his kids in the faith.
Shari Noland: The full title of your book is I am Restored: How I Lost My Religion But Found My Faith. It’s a provocative title. Can you explain the distinction you’re making between religion and faith?
Lecrae: I would define religion as working to earn God’s love and God’s affirmation, and faith being operating out of already having God’s love and affirmation. So, for me, it was understanding the difference between my devotion to God and God’s devotion to me.
Shari Noland: You spent some time traveling to Biblical places and being rebaptized. How did your travel to those biblical places influence your perspective on your faith?
Lecrae: Yeah, it was pretty intense. I think it’s almost like when my wife was pregnant, I knew there was a child coming, but I hadn’t seen the child. So, there’s a belief—there’s even ultrasounds—which is like I’m reading the Bible. I can get an idea, but it was just different once I saw the actual child. Similarly, it was like I knew these places existed, I knew God was real, but then just being there and then you see the evidence and you see the places that are written about was really mind blowing and just reinvigorated my faith on a different level.
Shari Noland: Do you have any thoughts about Black Jesus vs. White Jesus?
Lecrae: I actually do. If I’m being completely honest, that’s what a large portion of what my book talks about. I ended up in a dark season because of a lot of issues with race in the church. I had to wrestle with how my faith and my Blackness work together. And it wasn’t until I went to Egypt and I realized that we in America have a very Western perspective on the Bible and on God, and that’s okay. I mean, we’re from the West, so we should. However, it’s not always accurate. And I think because in the West, we’ve seen so many depictions of angels as white of Jesus as white, of the disciples as white, sometimes when you see the issues with race in America, that can help create problems within your faith. So, because you’re seeing issues of race or issues with your white brothers and sisters that are frustrating to you, you now begin to wrestle with your faith because it’s like, “Well, God, is this how you are?”
The only other example I can give is that I didn’t grow up with my father in my life. Older men were very abusive, and so for me to consider God being a father was just strange to me. I just couldn’t reconcile it in my mind for a long time. And long story short, I had to understand that. Yes, Jesus came to this earth and He dwelt in a human body, but He does transcend race.
But at the end of the day, your race and your ethnicity matters. There’s beauty in our diversity, and we should embrace that and accept that. Obviously, Jesus is not a white man. He isn’t from Europe, He’s a Palestinian Jew. He’s not an African American. He’s not an African man, but he’s a Palestinian Jew. He’s a person of color. And if that makes a difference to you, awesome. But ultimately, what should make a difference is what He did for you on the cross and how He lived. And that’s what we should pledge allegiance to more than His ethnic identity.
Shari Noland: You’ve mentioned that your grandmother took you to church at an early age. Given what you’ve been through in your life, how will you raise your children in the faith?
Lecrae: My grandmother was very traditional—so there wasn’t quite the children’s ministry. I didn’t really participate in any kind of youth programs or anything like that. It was just sitting in there and hearing her and some of her congregation on the organ. That was my church experience.
A lot of my grandmother’s children walked away from the faith because there were just way too many rules. They weren’t allowed to wear pants or lipstick. There’s so many rules in order to earn God’s love, so to speak. And she’s since changed a lot.
But I think, for me, I want to make sure my kids understand that there’s nothing they can do to make God love them any more or any less and that you live in light of love instead of trying to earn love. I wouldn’t want them to try to earn my love. I’d want them to just understand that daddy loves you and you don’t have to earn it. But because daddy loves you, that may change some of the decisions you make and change some of the actions that you take in life. And I hope they treat God the same way.
Shari Noland: What are your conversations like with God when you’re going through the creative process?
Lecrae: A practical step that I think for me, in my time of prayer or meditation, is that I remind myself that He’s present. The Psalms say that He’s the shade at your right hand. So I’m reminded He’s as close to me as my right hand is from me. So, I can talk to Him like a father. I can talk to Him in a way that my kids would talk to me. I don’t have to come to Him with these verbose wordings. If my kids came up to me and said, “Oh, mighty father, may I please go outside?” I’d say, “Well, why are you talking to me like that?” So, I just talk with God, and I say, “Dad, I’m struggling, and I’m wrestling with some of these things. Can you help me with this or with that?” And that changes the dynamic. He becomes close and present, versus being far and unapproachable.
Shari Noland: With the book, album, and documentary, how are you hoping to impact people? What messages do you want them to take from your initiatives?
Lecrae: For me, it’s being very transparent, very vulnerable. So, I show a lot of my scars, and hopefully, by showing off my scars, other people can realize that their wounds can be healed. So, I go in depth, I talk about my marital struggles, my career struggles, personality struggles, identity, politics, race, all those things that feed into our regular lives. I think sometimes people just say, “I’ll just pray, and it’ll be okay.” And prayer’s definitely a part of it, but there’s some action steps and there’s some struggles that people just don’t want to talk about. I want folks to find freedom by seeing how I’ve struggled through those things.
Shari Noland: In Unashamed you wrote, “If you live for people’s acceptance, you’ll die from their rejection.” and you often have said that these are words by which you live. Why?
Lecrae: Because that’s something I struggle with. Sometimes we get caught in this mindset of living for the acceptance of other people, and that’ll carry you into your ideas about God, as well. You get so wrapped up in trying to be what other people want you to be instead of being who you were created to be. And for myself, I’ve done that for a large portion of my life and my career. Oftentimes, people build you up in order to tear you down. So if you’re just trying to earn everyone else’s approval, at some point in time when they don’t approve of you or when they don’t agree with you, then you’ll be devastated. I want to free people from that thought process.
Shari Noland: Yeah, it’s hard sometimes not to crave acceptance from people. And I see what you’re saying about being true to yourself. But, practically speaking, how can people keep strong and do that?
Lecrae: We live in a comparison culture, so it’s fighting the temptation to compare yourself to other people. We all have our own races to run, so run your race as best as you can. I believe that success isn’t what I do compared to other people, success is what I do compared to what I was created to do. If I’m constantly looking over my shoulder at how everyone else is running and their success or their form, their stride, then I will not pay attention to my own self and my own abilities. So, that’s what I want people to just try to do as much as possible. It’s going to be a lifelong battle. It won’t happen overnight.
Shari Noland: Can you share a few pieces of advice with us? Maybe give a little tidbit of what’s in your book?
Lecrae: I think one is being vulnerable and transparent as far as your mistakes are concerned, as far as your shortcomings are concerned, with a close circle of friends. That’s been one of my steps in terms of getting past things. In terms of wrestling through issues of race or politics, I understand that I don’t have to find a tribe. The tribe that I belong to is God. So, there’s going to be moments in your life where you’re not going to fit in or you’re not going to agree, and that’s okay. It’s accepting that it’s okay and learning how to disagree with people but love them in the process and being okay with other people not agreeing with you and your decisions. So, I think those are some practical pieces of advice or proverbial wisdom that I try to give people.
Shari Noland: You’ve talked about the bouts of depression you’ve had and how God restored you from them. What advice might you give people who are going through similar struggles?
Lecrae: I think one is helping people understand that it’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to be in seasons of blue and seasons of darkness. The Bible says, “We walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” So one, you’re walking through it, you’re not living in it. And then, it’s the valley of the shadow of death. So shadows are only cast when there’s light present. So, there’s always going to be light in the midst of the shadows.
I want people to know that it’s okay, to feel lesser than or feel strange or not feel like you’ve got to perk up. Embrace that moment. Sometimes we need to grieve.
And then, also there are some mental health or brain health components that are different. Some of what I experienced was different. It wasn’t just a sadness or a grief. It was a serious bout with depression. And when it comes to that, I’m a big advocate of medication, meditation, and mediation. Those three things shouldn’t be frowned upon. If you need medication, then take it. If you need mediation, which is a counselor, then take it. And meditation—spending time clearing your mind and spending time with being present and around Godly presence.
Shari Noland: What was the turning point that made you realize that you needed help beyond what you were doing on your own?
Lecrae: I mean, the basic analogy that I think people use all the time is the guy who’s praying. He’s drowning and he’s like, “God send me some help.” And a helicopter passes, and he says, “No, I’m waiting on God.” And a boat passes, he says, “No, I’m waiting on God.” And then, someone throws him a rope, he says, “No, I’m waiting on God.” And he ends up dying and he goes to heaven and he says, “God, where were you?” And God says, “Man, I sent you a boat, a plane, and a rope, you didn’t take it.”
Similarly, I think oftentimes we think, “Oh, I’m just going to pray it away, I’m going to pray it away,” and we don’t realize, “No, no, no, no, no. God is furnishing you with these options to give you the help that you need.” And so, that is a means of God’s grace and His goodness, and that’s what I felt about Him and how other people should feel. The goal is to be healthy. That’s it. That’s the goal. And if God is giving you a means to be healthy, then take it.
Photo on UrbanFaith.com home page courtesy of Alex Harper
When I see celebrities interviewed, I often marvel at how they seem to have it so together. Their confidence radiates when they are “on.” It’s almost as if they are on another plane than us regular folk. But after watching a few episodes of the new docuseries “Behind Her Faith,” I found myself forgetting that the women sharing their intimate stories of disappointment, triumph, and faith with honesty and raw emotion are famous people.
“Behind Her Faith,” created by writer/director Paula Bryant-Ellis, features Essence Atkins(“Marlon,” “Ambitions”), Aisha Hinds (“Underground,” The Hate U Give), Niecy Nash(“Claws,” “When They See Us”) and Angelica Nwandu, founder of The Shade Room. The docuseries launched its first season with each woman in one of four installments airing on the Urban Movie Channel, a subscription streaming service dedicated to Black film and television from AMC Networks’ privately-owned subsidiary, RLJ Entertainment.
“You see the glamour, you see the red carpet, you see the television shows, and then you say, even if they have problems, oh, they’re rich. Oh, they’re successful. They can get through. No, they’re just like us. They feel pain, just like we do,” said Bryant-Ellis.
The Urban Movie Channel, which launched in 2018, is in growth mode as it works to expand its viewership. As support grows for Bryant-Ellis’ vision, she’ll expand her circle of stories in future seasons to include accomplished women of faith in entertainment, sports, music, business, politics, and ministry. Behind Her Faith is the first major foray into filmmaking for Bryant-Ellis, as she has held multiple leadership roles in banking and finance. She’s a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management, has an MBA from the University of Phoenix, and also a BA in Accounting from Concordia University. It was her son, Jay Ellis, who encouraged her to make the move. He’s the executive producer of the show and you may recognize his name from the actor’s lead roles on HBO’s “Insecure” (Lawrence) and the horror film Escape Room (Jason).
“He [Jay] was the one that said, ‘Mom, I think you should get into entertainment.’ After I left corporate America, he said, ‘I think you should start checking into producing so that we can do projects together.’ And so that’s pretty much what I did. And then, from there, I went back to school and took classes, and the creativity started to kind of bubble up, and I had a chance to create this show,” said Bryant-Ellis, who studied filmmaking and producing at the New York Film Academy in New York and Los Angeles.
It was her love and passion for Christ that inspired Bryant-Ellis to do the series. She had been praying for guidance on what to do next and feeling a strong desire to create positive content that inspires, especially since she believes that women of color are not typically represented well on television.
“God had my heart at the time. He put this show in my spirit to do. I wanted to use women that we knew their faces, but we didn’t know their backstory. We get sound bites a lot of times through interviews, but there wasn’t a form where they could just sit and tell you about what their journey looked like and the challenges that they faced and how they have endured and then the importance of a relationship with God in their life. All the women were women that I prayed about. God made it possible for each one of them to bring their stories,” said Bryant-Ellis.
She has a strong relationship with God now, but Bryant-Ellis says it took a while for her to mature in her faith. She grew up in a Baptist church and accepted God into her life as a teen, desperate for a lifeline from the pain she experienced when her parents divorced.
“I was just in this broken place. My parents had divorced, and I was trying to figure this thing out. I was 13 at the time. By the time I’m 16, I’m still sitting in all this pain, and I don’t know what to do with it. Back then, they called it, ‘join the church.’ You had to join the church, well technically, that meant you were giving your life to Christ.'” shared Bryant-Ellis.
And she did. But the experience left her heartbroken because she thought her life would immediately be better, and it wasn’t. For her, life got worse before it got better.
“In that moment that we accept Christ, our life does change. But nobody tells you about walking out that journey and the importance of a relationship. It was a long time before I picked up the Bible. I was very angry, very broken. It was a long time before I prayed. And in my twenties, I got on my knees, and I told God, I said, ‘You know what? If I’m going to be saved, you’re going to have to do better, because I can’t do church. I want a relationship,'” explained Bryant-Ellis, who said from that moment on, she was on an “amazing” journey to find that intimacy with God. “If I call you father, I want to have the same conversations with you that I would with my father. I want to laugh with you. I want to cry with you. I want to come to you for advice,” she continued.
Over the years, she has gone back to attending church off and on and credits one former pastor for giving her a love of studying the Bible.
“I go to church to get my Word, and then I’m out of there. I go to church to get fed. But then I know the responsibility of growing in the Word — that onus is on me. I have to be active and learning the Word and sitting with God, spending that quiet time with him in my praise, in my worship. That’s my responsibility,” said Bryant-Ellis.
And that intimacy is at the core of her message to viewers. When you listen to each woman in the episodes, openly claiming her faith and stories, it’s clear that they all have an authentic relationship with God, and it’s a genuine part of how they live their lives.
“I feel so honored that God trusted me with these stories and honored that these women trusted me with their voice. I feel like a shepherd of their stories right now,” said Bryant-Ellis.
COVID-19, no matter where you live, is taking over all aspects of our lives even if we don’t have the respiratory virus – it affects where and how we work, what we watch on TV, and even how we walk down the street. While some people are rapidly losing their health, others are losing their jobs in record numbers. How can people of faith keep positive among such sadness and be forward-thinking about what we can learn from this pandemic? We know from 1 Peter 5:10: “After your season of suffering, God in all His grace will restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” Keeping that in mind, Dr. Cindy Trimm, author of more than thirty books with her three bestselling books, Commanding Your Morning, TheRules of Engagement for Spiritual Warfare, and her latest release, Goodbye Yesterday, having sold over one million copies, offers six practical and engaging ways to empower the faith community so we can pro-actively manage the challenging days before us.
Equip parishioners and congregants to think of themselves as industry-specific problem solvers, not just members of a church. A lot of our parishioners are professional. Encourage people to think of themselves as industry-specific leaders and problem solvers, themselves. And then create inter-organizational, intra-organizational response teams. By helping people to be response ready, work with healthcare and frontline professionals and deploy, pray for, and support government social agencies and those that are on the front line. As a faith-based community, we do have a powerful voice socially, politically as well as spiritually. And we can speak with wisdom into the institutions and systems. We can empower our people to understand that they’re not just looking for solutions. We are the solution. And if there’s ever a time where we can respond with wisdom, compassion, and counsel, we the people of God can do it. In my dreams, I see a world filled with visionaries, innovators, and dreamers who push humanity forward.
Lobby government to create biosecurity and bio-safety measures, especially if you’re dealing with things like aquaponics, bio-engineering, and other kinds of technological activities. That means if we’re lobbying with the government, we should be able to create pressure groups to create regulatory statutes and laws so that the government can draft new public policies. We need to rethink health care and increase funding for public health. Currently, there is no vaccine or medication for the coronavirus, but if increased funding had been available beforehand to the public health sector, which addresses a range of matters including chronic disease prevention and bio-terror rhythm and emergency preparedness, headway could have already been made towards coronavirus vaccine development. Instead, scientists are scrambling to create a vaccine amid the pandemic. This scenario illustrates how chronic underfunding of public health has consequently caused health practitioners to function in a reactionary manner versus taking a proactive approach to disease prevention and medicine.
Reinvent yourself. We are moving into an era of AI, algorithms, robotics, and all kinds of technological advancement. A lot of people are running scared, but we can upgrade our skills because there are going to be new skills that are going to be needed. And here’s the caveat, we are going to lose a lot of jobs to technology, but for every one job that we lose, 2.5 jobs are going to be created. We have to think about going back to school. We have to be able to gain a new skill set. We should be brushing up on new technology and really anticipating the changes that will happen within our profession and continue to build capacity by using the internet for education and not just for entertainment.
Don’t Listen to Conspiracy Theories. There are so many conspiracy theories. And I also often say that critical thinking is one of the skills of the 21st century. Toffler, and I quote him, said, “The skill of the 21st century is the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn.” You’ve got to be careful with this force of your information that you’re not knee-jerking. For instance, people are blaming the coronavirus on 5G. But if people are exposed to radiation, they’re not going to get a cold. They’re not going to get a virus. With the symptoms of radiation, people waste away and they lose their hair. They’re not going to get a viral infection from any radiation disease. Make sure that those you are listening to and those who are sending you these conspiracy theories are individuals who know what they’re talking about.
Take Care of Yourself. Find ways to distress in your home. You can exercise. If you don’t have exercise equipment, put on your happy music and dance. It’s also a great time to read – I’ve been telling everyone to read, read, read! Also, clean and declutter. We have nothing but time. Decontaminate the surfaces, disinfect—declutter your home, and your living spaces.
Pray. Faith and prayers are spiritual technology with long term social, spiritual, economic, political, and cultural implications. Prayer is not only a spiritual practice, but it’s also a practical principle, and so we need to pray for the frontline. Pray for healthy immune systems. Pray for caregivers and health professionals. I was looking at an article about a truck driver. We don’t usually think of truck drivers that are delivering food, but anyone that’s on the front line, pray for them. Pray for the government and government agencies. Pray for wisdom, pray for medical and scientific breakthroughs. Pray for healing miracles.
Fighting through a dark season in your life where you find yourself depressed and at times filled with debilitating sadness is challenging enough for the average person. But it’s hard to imagine what that’s like for those in the public eye, living under social media scrutiny. In his latest book, I am Restored: How I Lost My Religion, but Found My Faith, Lecrae reveals a maturity in his faith after navigating through the uglier side of politics and Christianity, being a celebrity, a Black man, and a believer.
