Touch Lives
By Hank Salmans

For years I worked from a police car. As a law enforcement officer, a cop, I worked from the streets to administration and about every place in-between. From this perspective I really got to know a community. You see a cop’s job is dealing with man’s (and woman’s) inhumanity to each other, some pretty heartbreaking stuff. What I learned is the importance of hope, faith and love for all of us. People, no matter who they are or their station in life, crave relationships. There is a lot of hurting out there.

When I read or hear that the needs are great and the resources few it causes me to scream and weep inside and out. We are the richest nation in the world. We waste more stuff every day. Look at our landfills. We do not even know our own neighbors; people stay away from “church” saying that the church is not relevant. We rally by the thousands to celebrate “alternative life styles” yet children go to bed hungry every night IN THE USA, over 6 million of them. We continue to kill babies, and then save whales and trees. We continue to put people in jail over and over and over. We have more and more homeless yet we spend thousands and thousands on fireworks to make us feel better. Churches split because we can’t agree on music, time of services or what color the carpet should be. We invest more time and money in preventive maintenance for our cars and computers than we do our most valuable resource …PEOPLE.

Oh I could do two hours, without notes, on the statistics of crime, broken relationships, drugs, road rage, and violence in every institution in our country including churches. Christians beating up on each other ad nauseam. Just watch some television news or their “entertainment” programs, they all reflect our society. What I want to talk about are solutions. How you and I can help change things.

All in all I am convinced that the only way things can change is when we invite Jesus Christ into our communities. I do not mean in a words only way, I mean in a beliefs applied sort of way. Knowing and loving our neighbors, in the way we drive down the highway in peace not rage, in the way we respond to each other in business and social situation, in the way we pray and treat our families. In a real way, not just a talk about it one. Not just a Sunday morning way but an all week way. We must all come together, be united in a common cause of sharing a living Christ with our actions. As one body with many parts working in concert we can with God’s help change the country and world. We can be a super power with Jesus Christ. There is evil out there but he has been defeated. We just need to claim the victory by the way we live. Touch a life today!

We must join together and help. In the Denver area where I live there are over 1200 churches, 3000 plus para churches and who knows how many other individuals who have hearts for helping people. Why then do we hear more about the problems and needs than we do solutions? In many cases these organizations don’t talk to each other, in fact, they look at each other as competitors. In many cases people are so busy trying to put out fires they don’t look up to join forces with each other. In some cases folks just cannot let themselves give up “their” organizations and give the real recognition and credit to Jesus Christ.

The vision for WINN Ministries was to “help churches help people”. To be a “church to churches.” It was our hope that the churches would then feed the spiritual hunger that exists. We saw ourselves as group who would help build bridges between neighbors, churches, para churches and persons or organizations that wanted to put into practice the real love that passes all understanding. We wanted to serve the churches helping find provisions, build bridges between other organizations and coach where we could help mobilize folks to help. All this so churches could focus on helping take the gospel to the world starting with their neighbors.

The Vision for WINN REMAINS THE SAME! If anything I/we are more determined.

This book is dedicated to the men and women who work to bring communities together. It is my sincere hope that the systematic teaching of being “Obedient to the Heavenly Vision” sermon series and the action plan “Faith in Motion” will help us take back our communities from the indifference and subsequent problems that now plagued us.

HR Salmans