Gospel.com Blog

Today is World AIDS Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness of AIDS and HIV.

Events like this are a little tricky to discuss in the evangelical Christian world. While I can’t imagine that anyone would object to being made more aware of the extent of the AIDS pandemic, many Christians struggle to separate the general subject of AIDS from the social and moral issues that live in its shadow.

I’m curious: how does AIDS affect—or not affect—your church community?

Does your church talk about AIDS? If so, does it focus its discussion on the pandemic itself, or on the sexual behaviors associated with it? Does anyone in your church have HIV/AIDS, and if so, how has that affected your church’s approach to the issue?

Mission Network News reports on the AIDS pandemic:

Approximately 2 million people died from AIDS in 2007, down from about 2.2 million deaths in 2005, UNAIDS reported on Tuesday.

However, Gary Schneider, President and CEO of Every Orphan’s Hope, warned that the battle is far from over. The report also showed that some 2.7 million people worldwide were newly infected in 2007, bringing the total number of people infected with AIDS to 33 million.

“We have seen tremendous progress being made on the fight against HIV/AIDS, but I think even to applaud those numbers might be a little bit premature,” Schneider said. “We see that there’s still 2 million people a year who are dying from HIV/AIDS, and the total number of people receiving new infections each year is still continuing to rise.”

Every Orphan’s Hope ministers to orphans impacted by the AIDS crisis in Zambia, the home of about a million orphans. It comes alongside the Zambian church to care for about 400 children on a monthly basis and to reach a total of several thousand children every year through its Camp Hope Bible camps.

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Read more over at Mission Network News.