Assembly of Truth Family Worship Center Vision
I encourage you to carefully peruse through the vision of this house. Your knowledge of this vision is vitally important because you are here to help us. Your presence is not arbitrary. You kept a divine appointment when you became a part of Assembly Of Truth Family Worship Center.
Our primary goal is to share the message of the cross and minister to every aspect of society using biblical principles.
How? Through mass media, witnessing, and ministries that teach Christian principles that will impact our society.
Why?
The foundation on which our society is built is crumbling because of the absence of applied biblical principles, therefore our vision is:
The Vision Defined
1. The vision is to strengthen marriages.
How?
a. Bi weekly marriage classes
b. Marriage conferences
c. Marriage Retreats
d. Instructing husbands how to express love to their wives in a way that is meaningful to them.
e. Instructing wives how to express love to their husbands in a way that is meaningful to his.
Why?
a. There is a 65-68% divorce rate.
b. Strong Christian parents will raise strong Christian children.
c. Marriage was instituted by God.
d. Marriage has profound effects on the quality of life for black kids. A data analysis report on marriage released by the Heritage Foundation highlights several benefits of marriage. For example, marriage dramatically reduces the incidence of poverty. Marriage reduces the odds that a mother and child will live in poverty by more than 70 percent. Moreover, marriage combined with part-time maternal employment increases family income by 75 percent. Sadly, over 80 percent of long-term child poverty occurs in broken or never-married families.
e. Individuals can and do rise above brokenness and poverty. Yet, the statistical big picture reveals how the devaluation of marriage and family has created a crisis in black communities.
f. During the days of slavery a black child was more likely to grow up living with both parents than he or she is today.
2. The vision is to increase the literacy of our youth and adults.
How?
a. By implementing literacy initiatives in the church during the summer and throughout the year. If our children or adults can't read, they can't read the bible.
b. By employing technology to ensure present and future literary success.
c. By starting age specific book clubs in the church.
Why?
a. The bible is a book if you cannot read; its contents remain a mystery to you.
b. Just 12% of African American 4th graders have reached proficient or advanced reading levels, while 61% have failed to reach the basic level.
3. To promote sexual purity.
How?
a. Through education, drama and personal testimonies of persons affected by sexual misconduct.
b. Through Wait training.
Why?
a. Forty-three percent of black pregnancies end in abortion.
b. Nearly 70 percent of all black children are born out-of-wedlock.
c. In 1960, when black America was considered relatively worse off, only 23 percent of black kids were born out-of-wedlock. In 1970, just 33 percent of black women aged 20-29 were unmarried. By 1992, the number of unmarried twenty-something black women catapulted to 70 percent. A gross misconception about the out-of-wedlock birth crisis in black communities is that it is a consequence of teenage pregnancy. In fact, out-of-wedlock birth rates are the highest among women between the ages of 18 and 29.
c. Seventy percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from single-parent homes. And there is a strong inverse relationship between incidence of out-of-wedlock births and education attainment.
d. According to the 2000 census, African Americans make up 12.3 percent of the US population. However, African Americans accounted for 19,206 (50%) of the estimated 38,730 new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the United States in the 35 areas with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting
e. The AIDS rate among Black women is three times as high as that among Latino women and 18 times as high as that among White women. Today Black women make up more than half of all women who have died of AIDS.
4. To aid single parents.
How?
a. By providing parenting help and education.
b. By funneling to assisting agencies.
c. By providing mentoring services.
Why?
a. Because of the large and increasing number of single parents.
b. Children from single parent homes are more likely to incur abuse, emotional, sexual, and physical
c. Children raised by single mothers face increased risks of emotional, behavioral, academic and social problems.
d. Seventy percent of those incarcerated came from single parent homes.
e. During the days of slavery a black child was more likely to grow up living with both parents than he or she is today.
f. During the 1960's 1/3 of our homes were headed by single parents that number has catapulted to 65-70%.
>This does not mean single mothers are worse parents, rather they suggest that single mothers have a tough job juggling their responsibilities at work and home and have fewer resources than traditional families.
5. To encourage paternal responsibility.
How?
a. By expressing to the father his ability to fill a void in the life of his child
b. By assisting with some degree of reconciliation with the mother of the child so as to limit hostility.
c. By stressing to the father the need of the child for his verbal affirmation, his physical affirmation and his prophetic affirmation.
d. Group discussions.
Why?
a. Most African American children are raised in a fatherless home.
b. The absence of the father is a huge contributor to the deep emotional chasm in many of our youth.
c. Seventy percent of the prison population was raised in a fatherless home.
While there are a myriad of problem that face our society, if we target our efforts in the above noted areas, we can and will make a difference.
By using the tools and talents God has provided we will take on this arduous task.
We will do a great work in God’s strength...
We will not allow the greatness of the work to intimidate us, for if we invest in the work what God has invested in us, we are more than able.
I plead with you to lock arms with me. We can and will make a difference.
To some, our size makes us the underdog. However, God is the God of the underdog.
Bishop Michael Canion