Over the years I have had the privilege of raising literally millions of dollars through our nonprofit partner, Christian Life Missions, founded in 1955 by my late mentor Robert Walker. Through the generosity of our readers, donations for CLM increased 54 percent in the last year—most of it went for a project to build an orphanage for girls in India sponsored by Lee Grady’s Mordecai Project.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Christian Life magazine shared the stories of worthwhile ministries and made it possible for readers to make mostly small donations under the premise of doing more together than we can do separately. In a way, CLM was “crowd funding” through the pages of Christian Life magazine and later Charisma, long before there was an Internet!
To our surprise this past year—because of the Internet—we received the biggest single donation in CLM history by a man who went to the Christian Life Missions website and read about the various ministries we support—all of which we’ve written about at some time. He then designated donations as he felt led. Christian Life Missions passed along 100 percent of the donations to the designated ministries, taking nothing for administration. Donors know they can give with confidence knowing the ministries had been vetted by our editors. Also many are very small ministries that struggle to survive and the donations from our readers often made a huge difference.
As the year comes to an end, some people make a last-minute donation and then are able to claim the donation on their income tax return. If you are one of those people, I urge you to include Christian Life Missions. You can see all of our ministries at christianlifemissions.org .
Our main project in 2015 has been the girls orphanage in India. Our main project now is to raise money to give away copies of the new Modern English Version Bibles. These “economy editions” retail for $2.99 so the Word of God is affordable to anyone. But CLM can buy them for only $1 (printing cost) and donate one Bible for every dollar you donate. Earlier we had said you could donate a Bible for $3 but the decision has been made to give away more—so for those who gave $3 for one Bible, we will actually give away three instead.
There are other ministries that raise money for Bibles. If you support them, please continue to do so. We need many ministries giving away Bibles to as many people as possible. It’s just that, with our new translation, this is a way we can give an easy-to-read, modern translation to those who need a Bible, and we are focusing our resources and our faith to pull off the biggest project we have ever undertaken.
We need your help, and that is why we are reaching out the last week of the year. We pray God touches the heart of those He wants to help us just as He touched a donor in another part of the world to help ministries he found on our CLM website.
When we contacted him to say thank you, he responded with a beautiful email, part of which I am sharing here. He quoted 2 Corinthians 9:10-11 in the Modern English Version:
“Now He who supplies seed to the sower and supplies bread for your food will also multiply your seed sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness. So you will be enriched in everything to all bountifulness, which makes us give thanks to God.”
Then he added: “I have already received my rewards, so perhaps you can just let the various ministries know that our Lord Jesus heard their prayer, and answered from halfway round the world, so all thanks should only be to God, not to any man.
This is a great example of Christian humility. I hope you are as inspired as I am. I also hope you are led to support the ministries of Christian Life Missions.
