I know much has been said about this already, but I feel that it is important for me to briefly point our attention to this story especially in light of where we have been as a church and where many of you have been as individual followers of Christ.

Every two years, our church hosts a Missions Conference. This is a unique opportunity for us to invite missionaries to share the incredible work God is doing around the world. As a church, we invest nearly a quarter of our overall budget to the global advance of the gospel. In terms of total dollars, we gave over $689,000 dollars to missions last year. We partner with eight organizations and thirty-five missionaries in every part of the world. In other words, global missions is a big deal to our church.

But here’s the real question: Is global missions a big deal to you?

On Sunday morning when I woke up and realized that it wasn’t just someone misspeaking on the news that there had actually been another mass shooting in less than 24 hours here in America, I was stunned. Sickened might be the right word. Both atrocities were carried out by a person with superiority issues. One a white nationalist the other a known hate filled misogynist.