Tag Archives: ministry

Pastors are feeling burned out: An increasing trend since before COVID

Revelation 2:5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Important Takeaways:

  • 38% of U.S. Pastors Have Thought About Quitting Full-Time Ministry in the Past Year
  • With pastors’ well-being on the line, and many on the brink of burnout, 38 percent indicate they have considered quitting full-time ministry within the past year. This percentage is up 9 full points (from 29%) since Barna asked church leaders this same question at the beginning of 2021.
  • One of the more alarming findings is that 46 percent of pastors under the age of 45 say they are considering quitting full-time ministry, compared to 34 percent of pastors 45 and older. Keeping the right younger leaders encouraged and in their ministry roles will be crucial to the next decade of congregational vitality in the U.S.
  • Specifically, roughly one-third of pastors who are considering resignation have been in ministry for about 20 years but have been at their current church for seven years.
  • More recently, October 2021 data show that many pastors are not faring well in multiple categories of well-being, including spiritual, physical, emotional, vocational and financial.

Read the original article by clicking here.

LIVE! Beat the Winter Blues and shop our WAREHOUSE SALE! Weds. January 29th

By Kami Klein

It’s cold, it’s dreary and the best cure is…Shopping! It’s time for our incredible warehouse sale! On Wednesday, January 29th beginning at 10 am to noon central time, Morningside’s warehouse deals will warm you right up and put a smile on your face! These will be fantastic offers because we only have a limited quantity on these items and our warehouse needs to be prepared for new products!

The best part of this sale is we are going live on the PTL Television Network! These events are always exciting and very unpredictable so we hope you can join us for some great fun! If you can’t join us live we will be re-running the show all day to give YOU a chance on some of these awesome offers!

Not only will you receive some quality items but your love gift will go to support this ministry. Air time doesn’t pay for itself and in the television world, it is quite expensive! It is vital to keep this platform going for the prophets and teachers of God’s Word! Now you can support us and maybe find a wonderful gift for birthdays, a wedding gift, Mother or Father’s Day, maybe you could even treat yourself! There will be a little bit of everything offered!

Join us on the PTL Television Network for our LIVE Warehouse Sale on Wednesday, January 29th beginning at 10 am ct! Don’t miss it! Some of these items won’t be coming back!

Jim Bakker, 58 years of Ministry and following the call of God

Jim Bakker at his home office in the Ozark Mountains

By Kami Klein

Jim Bakker, the early years of ministry

Jim Bakker, the early years of ministry

58 Years ago God called Jim Bakker into His service and Pastor has never forgotten the mission: to preach, to teach, to spread the message of God’s word to anyone who would hear him.  His life became a story of restoration that has inspired millions of people around the world! Through God’s visions and Pastor’s obedience, the new age of Christian Television was born!  Today this valuable communication brings the love of Jesus, the forgiveness, the restoration and the Power of our Lord to homes in this nation and around the globe. Through Pastor Jim’s faith, and the Glory of God’s mercy, a platform for today’s prophets exist unlike any other.  

Here at Morningside, a place of worship and fellowship is the home of “The Jim Bakker Show,” which is seen around the world. On this show, the most anointed visionaries and prophets have a platform to speak and teach.  From the blessings of God, this valuable ministry has grown.  

Lori's House at Morningside

Lori’s House at Morningside

On the 4th of July 2015, another of Jim and Lori Bakker’s prophesied visions from God opened at Morningside. “Lori’s House”, a beautiful home built in Peaceful Valley was created to help pregnant Mothers that were in desperate need.  This amazing place not only saves babies that might be aborted but changes the life of the entire family. God works through Lori’s House to shine a light on the blessings of life and this special ministry continues to grow. Through God’s hand and the generosity of believers and partners with this ministry, this dream was fulfilled and continues to honor the Lord.  

Walk of Faith to Prayer Mountain Chapel - Morningside

Walk of Faith to Prayer Mountain Chapel – Morningside

This week Pastor’s vision of revival, prayer and worship atop tranquil Prayer Mountain will begin to unfold.  Prayer Mountain Chapel will be open as a place of worship and prayer that will fill these Ozark Mountains. The time has come for Morningside to continue the teachings from God’s word and allow His Wisdom and Grace back to the church! Prayer Mountain Chapel will offer communion, personal prophecy, anointing, and the warmth of fellowship with someone there 24 hours a day to pray with you. 

Pastor Jim has spent many hours on Prayer mountain and from the deep communion he has had with God, he saw this beautiful Chapel and a peaceful path leading to it called “The Walk of Faith.”  For almost 6 decades, Jim Bakker, even throughout the most difficult years of his life, has maintained his faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Morningside celebrates the founder of this ministry and the millions who have come to know Jesus because he has dared to follow and learn from the path God set him upon that began so long ago. 

Jim Bakker and President Ronald Reagan

Jim Bakker and President Ronald Reagan

If you would like to honor Pastor Jim Bakker and his 58 years in ministry please follow this link to our $ 58-anniversary page to find wonderful products that are now being offered.  Your gifts go to keeping the Jim Bakker Show, Lori Bakker’s show, “Life with Lori” and the PTL Television Network on the air as well as continue the ministry of Lori’s House, Prayer Mountain and Morningside.   

You are Pastor Jim Bakker’s family in Christ that has seen God’s vision for this ministry come into reality!  Thank you for your support and for the friendship you have given to this faithful man of God!

 

PTL Shop is Back and Better than ever in March!

PTL Shop hosts John and Nate

By Kami Klein

Morningside is happy to announce that our PTL Shop LIVE broadcasts are returning each week beginning Wednesday, March 6th from 2-4pm ct!  Our hosts will also be there every weekday from 4pm to 7pm ct showcasing new products selected with you in mind.   We are so excited to visit with you and offer amazing deals with incredible prices, all from the convenience of your home! PTL Shop features items in apparel, jewelry, Christian books and media, products for your home and garden and new gizmos and gadgets you just have to see!  

PTL Shop is the only Faith-Based Home Shopping Network!  Not only are there amazing bargains on our site and during the broadcasts, but you will also enjoy your purchases knowing that you are supporting a ministry that touches millions.  You are making a difference!

To join us, mark your calendars for Wednesday, March 6th between 2pm and 4pm ct and go to ptlshop.com and simply push “Watch Live” or tune in with your Roku or Apple TV by going to the PTL Television Network channel on live stream. The best part is you can shop online at ptlshop.com ANYTIME!  

PTL Shop, THE Faith-Based Home Shopping Network!   

 

Fifteen dead in food aid stampede in Morocco: ministry

People gather at the place where 15 people were killed when a stampede broke out in the southwestern Moroccan town of Sidi Boulaalam as food aid was being distributed in a market, in Sidi Boullaalam, Morocco November 20, 2017.

By Zakia Abdennebi

RABAT (Reuters) – Fifteen people were killed and five more injured when a stampede broke out in a southwestern Moroccan town on Sunday as food aid was being distributed in a market, the Interior Ministry said.

A hospital source put the death toll at 18, adding that most victims were women who had been scrambling for food handed out by a rich man in the small coastal town of Sidi Boulaalam.

A local journalist said the donor had organised similar handouts before, but this year some 1,000 people arrived, storming an iron barrier under which several women were crushed.

King Mohammed ordered that the victims’ families be given any assistance they needed and the wounded treated at his cost, the ministry said in a statement, adding that a criminal investigation had been opened.

Last month, the king dismissed the ministers of education, planning and housing and health after an economic agency found “imbalances” in implementing a development plan to fight poverty in the northern Rif region.

The Rif saw numerous protests after a fishmonger was accidentally crushed to death in a garbage truck in October 2016 after a confrontation with police, and he became a symbol of the effects of corruption and official abuse.

In July, the king pardoned dozens of people arrested in the protests and accused local officials of stoking public anger by being too slow to implement development projects.

 

(Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Cynthia Osterman)

 

Morningside disaster team in Florida – Lives can change in only a day

One home destroyed by Hurricane Irma in Immokalee, Florida,

By Kami Klein

Imagine being a hard working family in a small agricultural town in Florida.  You don’t have much but everyday you give it the best you can. You work hard, you love your family and you support your church.  But then a storm like Hurricane Irma hits and is unlike any storm you can remember.  The town you knew, the job you went to everyday,  your home where your family and friends gathered and the simple vital items such as food and clean water are gone.

This is the fate of thousands of people in Immokalee, Florida, one of the hardest hit communities of Hurricane Irma.  With no power, lack of good drinking water and warm meals for families, the people in this community have been devastated.  At this very moment, the donations you have provided through our Disaster Relief fund  are giving hope and food to hungry people who have lost literally everything.

Yesterday our Morningside team, Mondo DeLaVega, Ricky Bakker, Tammy Sue Bakker, Daina Martin and our camera crew David Zorob, Hamilton Neumann and Adam Armstrong, began handing out the food from our food buckets.  The people stood in line for hours, waiting to fill bags, boxes and buckets up with rice, beans, pancake mix, vegetable stew, milk, banana and apple chips and so much more because of YOUR gifts to the relief effort.  At times, the line seemed never ending, and the experience of seeing so many who were waiting so patiently for help stirred the deepest emotions in the volunteers who were there.  

Another home destroyed by Hurricane Irma in Florida

Another-home-in-florida-damaged-by-Hurricane-Irma

Tammy Sue Bakker attempted to share the emotions that the volunteers were feeling. “If you have a heart, it’s just so hard to talk about it…We’ve got to keep helping people.  We have no choice!”  

Mondo and Tammy Sue agreed that the entire team has been completely changed by this humbling experience, and the needs they have seen from the disaster in Houston and now Florida are surreal.  On a Facebook live message Mondo wanted to deeply impress the great need that is going on all over the world right now.  

“We need your help.  This is not just a one day effort, this is an everyday kind of effort.  People need ministries like this one to give food and supplies.  Every little bit helps here but please, be a part of what we are doing right now.  This food we give today will only last a little while and then these families have to go out to find more.  Pray for this community, the volunteers, donate what you can and please pray for us!”  

The crew has been busy gathering stories and filming the community of Immokalee. The relief effort that is ongoing will be shared soon on The Jim Bakker Show. 

Danny Viera owns the only Christian bookstore in Fr. Myers. He has been coordinating all of the food for this effort.

Danny Viera owns the only Christian bookstore in Fr. Myers. He has been coordinating all of the food for this effort.

Your donations are making a huge impact in this disaster relief effort, but the urgency and the need is quite overwhelming!  We need you!  

So many have asked about our ministry going to help in Puerto Rico.  We are doing all we can to get there.  There are many logistics involved in getting this food to where it needs to go, so we must rely on your compassion and financial generosity to help us get these supplies to those that are starving right now in that country!  

Again, we thank you for your prayers!  Those many people who stood in line yesterday, their arms filled with food for their families when they walked home cannot thank you as they would wish but you are in their grateful prayers tonight!

With so much need around the world right now, it takes all of us to make a difference!  Please be a part of what God is asking us to do now!  

Give your gift today!! 

Former FrontPoint manager, out of jail, wants to run prison ministry

FILE PHOTO: Joseph "Chip" Skowron, who ran FrontPoint Partners' healthcare funds, exits the Manhattan Federal Courthouse in New York April 13, 2011. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – A former manager at defunct hedge fund FrontPoint Partners who served more than three years in prison for insider trading on Monday asked a U.S. judge to end his supervised release early so he can help a run a Christian ministry aimed at prisoners.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan, a lawyer for Joseph “Chip” Skowron said the request was warranted in light of his client’s “exemplary” behavior since his April 2011 arrest.

While serving time at Schuylkill Federal Prison Camp in Pennsylvania, Skowron, 48, worked as a tutor, started a Sunday Bible study and led Monday morning religious meetings, according to his lawyer Joshua Epstein.

After serving the last several months of his sentence in home confinement and following his release last November, Skowron co-founded a chapter of the New Canaan Society, a Connecticut-based Christian group, Epstein wrote. The chapter, NCS Inside, is devoted to ministering to federal and state prison inmates.

The NCS website describes itself as a men’s-only group who “gather together to encourage each other in friendship and faith.”

Epstein said prisons have refused to let Skowron enter to meet with prisoners because he is on supervised release.

“This is limiting Mr. Skowron’s efforts on behalf of NCS Inside, as well as NCS Inside’s effectiveness and reach,” Epstein wrote.

Federal prosecutors are not objecting to Skowron’s request, according to Dawn Dearden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.

Skowron pleaded guilty in August 2011 to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and obstruct justice, admitting that he traded in the securities of Human Genome Sciences Inc in 2008 based on non-public information.

In a separate civil case, Skowron was ordered to pay back $31 million of his compensation to Morgan Stanley, which owned FrontPoint between 2006 and 2011, minus a $6 million penalty he was already ordered to pay in his criminal case.

Investors began pulling out of FrontPoint in the wake of the insider trading charges, ultimately forcing the firm, which once managed as much as $11 billion, to shut down.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Dr. Gary Smalley, Champion to Marriage and Family Passes on to Heaven

“Life is relationships; the rest is just details.”   Gary Smalley

The PTL Television Network, Jim Bakker Show, the Bakker family and all of us here at Morningside are praying today for the friends and family of a wonderful man, Dr. Gary Smalley who passed into heaven over the weekend in Colorado Springs, Colorado.    

Dr. Smalley devoted his professional life to guiding others in repairing marriages that were all but broken.  He and his beautiful wife Norma began an organization devoted to families and to the intimate and heartfelt ministry of developing good and solid marriages in 1979.  Their organization eventually evolved into retreat centers in 10 different cities.

Gary’s heart was to educate and inspire couples to love better and last a life-time!  But, even with the thousands of couples that he has helped through his retreat centers, counseling, speaking engagements and books, he spoke proudest of his two wonderful sons, Greg and Mike, his beautiful daughter Kari, and the amazing families they are raising. Every single day, there was never a doubt that he was completely aware of the love and blessings he had with the light of his life, his wife Norma.

Gary Smalley became one of the country’s best-known authors and speakers on family relationships. He is the author and co-author of 60 books along with several popular films and videos. He has spent over 35 years learning, teaching, and counseling. In a heartfelt post on facebook a friend wrote these words,  

“For the zillions profoundly impacted by Gary & Norma Smalley’s ministry and all those who have resurrected & salvaged dead-end relationships…and for those who just want to know how to do relationships right….this will be a loss heard around the world for decades to come.”

According to a post by his daughter on her facebook page, Dr. Smalley’s last days were spent surrounded by his loving family. The last words spoken over him were “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;”  Numbers 6:24-25

According to an article in Christian News Today, a celebration of life will take place Saturday, March 19 at 3:00 p.m. at College of the Ozarks Chapel in Point Lookout, Missouri. It will be open to the public for all who wish to honor Smalley’s life and legacy.

Our hearts and prayers are with Dr. Smalley’s family and friends but we also feel the joy of knowing that he is where love begins and ends, held within God’s loving arms.  

 

MMA Fighter’s Ministry Helps Combat Vets With PTSD

An MMA fighter says he feels called by God to help the men and women of our armed forces who suffer from PTSD.

Chad Robichaux said that when he retired from the Marines after eight tours of duty in Afghanistan, he almost lost his family because of PTSD.  He then discovered “God’s blueprint” for life after his wife in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage contacted a pastor that Chad knew to speak with him.

The pastor showed Chad that God had a plan for his life that included overcoming PTSD.  Working together, they reconnected Chad with his family and saved his marriage.

In 2011, Chad felt led to take that healing he experienced and use it to help other veterans who were in the same situation he faced coming home.  WoodsEdge Community Church joined with him to form the Mighty Oaks Warrior Program.

“Through the mentoring I found that all the programs I have been through, all the pills, all the counseling, nothing had worked liked it did when I let Christ in my life and aligned my life with the life he intended me to live,” Robichaux told The Christian Post. “When something like this happens to you, you can’t help but share it. Here we are four years later and 710 guys later who experienced the same story.”

The program has now branched out into churches across the country with reports of huge success.

“Bring Jesus into the equation and watch them get set free,” said John Mizerak of Life Church in Virginia.  He noted that not a single suicide or divorce has taken place among the men participating in the program.

“Communities of faith need to really listen to the needs of veterans and offer a helping hand to veteran families, especially ones that are transitioning from a time of military service,” Ruth Frey, director of programs at the Washington National Cathedral in the District of Columbia said.

“It is also important for people of faith to advocate for veterans needs with their state and national legislators. As Christians, we are called to care for our neighbors and these are some of the ways we can live that out.”

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Head Diagnosed With Cancer

The head of the influential youth organization InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is having to step down from his position after being diagnosed with cancer.

Alec Hill, who has headed the group since 2001, announced that he has been diagnosed with myelodysplasia, a form of bone marrow cancer.  The disease usually progresses into acute myelogenous leukemia with five year survival rates from 15-70% depending on treatment.

Hill will begin his treatment June 10th after a Board of Trustees meeting to appoint an interim president.

“Alec has played a key role in encouraging and shepherding us,” InterVarsity Board Chair Ron Williams said in a statement.  “And we pray that he will experience God’s shepherding and grace as he faces the unexpected journey ahead.”

During the time Hill headed the organization, the group had a 10 percent increase in membership and a 23 percent increase in overall involvement in the organization.  He also started a donor gift program that has raised over $70 million for the group’s worldwide ministry.

InterVarsity began in 1877 in Britain when a group of students gathered for Bible study and prayer at Cambridge University.