For people of faith living with disability, an equal place in church doesn’t mean just wheelchair ramps. They struggle with their fellow believers’ inability to understand them, and with their own trouble understanding why God made them the way they are. But instead of asking, “Why me?” many say, “Why not me?”

Laura Lee Wright, Team Leader for Access Ministry at Northland Church, talks to Interfaith Voices, the nation’s leading religion news magazine on public radio.

Click here to listen (right click to download).

By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES, June 22, 2009

Two million people look for God each day — not in church, but in a search.

“The number is staggering,” said Mark Weimer, a self-described techie evangelist whose ministry has tapped the Internet to capture those looking for spiritual answers.

Weimer is CEO of Global Media Outreach, the technology arm of Campus Crusade for Christ International (CCCI), which hosts 91 Web sites in 11 languages to spread the “good news.”

Weimer, who previously ran his own Silicon Valley start-up, insists this is not virtual proselytizing.

“We are always up front about the fact that we are presenting the Christian message,” he told ABCNews.com. “We don’t want to deceive anyone. That would be offensive.”

Global Outreach estimates that 1 in 1,000 Internet searchers is looking for information about God. Just last year, their sites had 3 million visitors.

On an average day, sites like Jesus2020 get 150,000 visitors, and about 25,000 of them click a button to say they want to learn more. Of those about 5,000 a day fill in a form so an online missionary can contact them via e-mail.

Their questions are often surprising, according to Weimer: “Now that I have accepted Christ, what do I do next? Do I need to be perfect now? How do I pray?” Read the rest of this entry »

By Jeff Kunerth, Sentinel Staff Writer, June 19, 2009

An estimated 2 million people a day look for God on Google.

Seeking spiritual guidance through search engines is so popular these days that a legion of online missionaries is being assembled in Orlando to answer the cyber-prayers.

Global Media Outreach — a ministry of Orlando-based Campus Crusade for Christ International — has formed a partnership with Northland, A Church Distributed, in Longwood to recruit and train 5,000 online missionaries by 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

WELCOME HOME: Volunteers prepare Jessica's House for this Saturday's open house, from 3 to 7 p.m.

In Central Florida, highly motived women looking to make a successful transition out of the prison system back into society now have a place to call home. Jessica’s House, a transitional living facility for women, will officially open its doors with an open house this Saturday, June 20.

A partnership between Northland, A Church Distributed and the True North Foundation, Inc., Jessica’s House will provide housing for eight women who voluntarily commit to a nine-month program designed to help them learn valuable life skills and begin building a new life of faith and service to the community.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), two-thirds of all parolees are re-arrested within three years-most within the first six months after release. “Without adequate preparation and support for life after prison, the chances are great that inmates will return to their former lifestyles,” the CDC reports. “This may lead to drug use, possible infection with HIV, re-arrest and return to prison.”

Gretchen Kerr, Northland’s director of life crossroads, who also leads the church’s Prison and Jail Ministry, explains that many inmates leave prison or jail with no savings, no stable housing, no health or unemployment benefits, and very limited job possibilities. Read the rest of this entry »

Online missionaries to begin training this week in Central Florida.
Millions of people around the world are searching for God. In response, Global Media Outreach (GMO), a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International, is sending faithful churchgoers … to their computers, training them to become online missionaries out of their homes. Read the rest of this entry »

Organized by Homeless Services Network of Central Florida and hosted by Northland Church at Longwood, Project Homeless Connect helped hundreds of individuals in need on Friday, March 20, 2009. The Homeless Services Network of Central Florida sponsors PHC events throughout Central Florida. Dozens of nonprofit agencies, faith-based groups, government agencies and businesses participate in these events. At Northland, each participant was paired with a “shepherd” so that everyone felt welcome and received assistance. Available services included medical care, haircuts, employment opportunities, substance abuse and mental health counseling, assistance with benefits, ID cards and legal issues, housing information, vision screening, hygiene kits, meals, and spiritual care. Want to participate in Local Serving events such as this? Click here to learn more.

In preparing Northland’s 2008 Annual Report, we asked various ministry departments to clue us in on some of the statistics related to God’s work last year.  What follows are some of the highlights:

• Northland’s website had 2.25 million visits from 202 countries.

• More than 20,000 people participated in Christmas Eve worship on-site and online.

• 2,500 people participated in local serving projects. Total hours spent serving the community: 8,786.

• This September, Pastor Joel invited us to “jump,” taking a leap of faith and fully committing our lives to Jesus. Thousands poured out of their seats and crowded the altar in response to that call.

• Volunteers baked 16,000 cookies for our troops across the globe. Read the rest of this entry »

The Internet can be a great outreach tool—when it’s used as part of a larger ministry strategy. Read the article in Church Solutions magazine by Dr. Dan Lacich, pastor for distributed sites at Northland Church. Click here to read the article.

January 10-11, 2009, Northland joined with other churches in the Orlando area for one great day of recycling. Congregants were asked to bring items with them to church, where they were donated to charity or properly recycled. Their purpose: To honor the Creator by preserving the gift of His creation. Click here to view Central Florida News 13’s report.

Find this story at: http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2009/1/11/church_collects_old_electronics_for_charity.html?refresh=1

Florida Department of Environmental Protection: Find out where to recycle your Household Hazardous Waste.

Also, find over 100,000 recycling locations across the country at Earth911.com.