Holistic Mission and AIDS
The challenge
of our time to world evangelization.
HIV/AIDS
is the greatest humanitarian emergency in the history of
the human family. Almost 40 million people are infected
with the virus. Almost eight thousand people died of
AIDS every day in 2003. At 2003 infection rates, 92,000
people are being infected every week. It is forecast that
about 70 million people will die by 2020. (Statistics
taken from the UNAIDS 2004 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic
and the June 2004 UNICEF/UNICEF Children on the Brink Fact
Sheet.)
Fifteen million children have lost
one or both of their parents worldwide. Teenagers
are heading households, raising their siblings. Grandmothers
are raising their grandchildren, having buried their own
children behind their simple houses because of AIDS. AIDS
is creating widows and orphans at an incredible rate.
Today, the center of gravity of the pandemic
is Africa. The pandemic has been raging for over twenty
years, while most of the world has slept. African pastors
are burying people every day of every week; they are in
the burial business. Many of those impacted by HIV/AIDS
are our sisters and brothers in the Lord.
We are at the beginning of the pandemic,
not the middle nor the end. Africa is only the first wave
of an emerging global pandemic. China, India, and Russia
- home to almost one-third of the world's population -
have growing HIV prevalence rates and poor prevention
efforts that could lead them to the situation in which
Africa now finds herself.
Many African churches have taken the
lead in responding in prevention and care. A few Asian
churches are doing the same. Churches in other parts of
the world have been slower to respond. What is missing
is global commitment on the part of all evangelicals to
provide what God has given them to the fight against this
scourge.
HIV/AIDS is a complex and multifaceted
pandemic with a wide variety of interacting causes, sustaining
factors and impacts. Therefore this pandemic demands a
holistic mission response from the churches. We must make
our contribution to fighting this disaster by drawing
on a Christian worldview that seamlessly unites the material,
psychosocial, social, cultural, political and spiritual
aspects of life, a worldview that unites evangelism, discipleship,
social action and the pursuit of justice
Read
more on AIDS issues
Fact File
In just two years, from 2001-2003, the global number
of orphans due to AIDS Increased from 11.5 million to
15 million.
At the end of 2003 there
were 143 million orphans in 93 countries of Africa, Asia,
Latin America and the Caribbean.
The World Health Organisation
estimated that HIV would probably infect 10 million children
by the year 2000.
Our call to action begins
with a repentant spirit. Our past practice of evangelism
was better at saving souls than creating Christian minds
and Christian behavior. Some of us have been slow to respond
HIV/AIDs. Acknowledging this, we encourage:
