June 2008 - Testing

Letter from Kay

Welcome to the June issue of the HIV Caring Community! If this is your first time to visit our site, be sure to browse through the archived issues and enjoy the past articles, downloads and testimonies of people living with HIV and the testimonies of other churches who have begun an HIV ministry.

This month we’re focusing on HIV testing.  June 27 is National HIV Testing Day, and we urge your church to sponsor an awareness event, and perhaps even take a group of people to get tested.  We strongly believe that HIV testing is a valuable in the fight against HIV.  Those who are tested and find that they are negative often make a renewed commitment to STAY HIV negative.  Those who test positive for HIV have the opportunity to get into treatment sooner, thus increasing the likelihood that they can manage their health better.  Everyone should know their HIV status!

Your church can play a vital role in encouraging people to get tested. We continue to dream of the day when local churches will be the testing sites in the community!  No one can do a better job at providing spiritual and emotional counsel to a person receiving a life-altering diagnosis than the community of faith.  We can offer hope for a better life now, as well as the hope of life to come.  Let’s be the church!

Warmly,

Kay

P.S.  Check out the article on my book, Dangerous Surrender:  What happens when you say yes to God, and visit www.kaywarren.com for messages, music and downloads that will enhance your reading experience.

Kay Warren, co-founder, Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, Calif., and executive director of Saddleback Church's HIV/AIDS Initiative

Dangerous Surrender:
What happens when you say yes to God

Surrender. It is not an inviting concept, is it? Yielding. Relinquishing. Our very nature resists these concepts.

Intimacy with God. Now that is far more appealing. Don’t we all long for a deeper personal experience of God’s presence?
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Uprising:
How one church helped with testing

At 8:00 am, on a crisp winter morning, the kind that makes bare fingers sting, no one wants to be on the street.  People hurriedly pass from doorway to doorway, and many scarcely shift their focus as someone presses a note card into their hands.  It’s the smiling face that catches them off guard.

On March 18, 2008, more than 300 volunteers committed one day to serve New York City in a rather atypical way as part of an initiative called City Uprising.
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Outreach Ideas

Not often does a pastor ask people to get up and leave during his sermon. But that’s what Rev. Keith Ratliff Sr. of Maple Street Baptist Church in Des Moines, Iowa, did on a recent Sunday. As he preached on the spread of HIV/AIDS around the world, and its prevalence among blacks in his own community, he encouraged those listening to head down to the church basement where volunteer nurses were set up to conduct confidential HIV/AIDS tests.
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Facts Conquer Fears

“I was so ignorant and uninformed about HIV that I thought if I began to minister to people who had it, touching them, loving them, and ministering to them would make me sick, too. Now I know you can’t catch HIV that easily. It’s not airborne. You can’t get it by sitting next to somebody, eating after somebody, hugging, touching, or loving them. It doesn’t spread that way.
Read more >>

Pastors Lead the Way in HIV Testing