Summit snapshot: A look at the numbers
By Tammy Rosson

Obama on the numbers “AIDS is a story that often is told by numbers and statistics. ...” Sen. Barack Obama, Dec. 1, 2006, Global Summit on AIDS and the Church | Listen >>

When we read stats about HIV/AIDS – 40 million individuals infected with HIV, 16 million AIDS orphans in Africa alone, nearly 8,000 AIDS-related deaths every day – it’s almost paralyzing. That’s why the recent Global Summit on AIDS and the Church was so encouraging. More than 2,000 individuals refused to be paralyzed by AIDS stats.

Church and ministry leaders, government representatives, and health care providers met for two days to discuss how the Church, the Body of Christ – which by the way numbers around 2 billion – can meet the AIDS crisis head-on by partnering together.

We thought the Caring Community might be interested and encouraged by knowing some stats about our recent Summit. For example, 12 Saddleback Church volunteers were in Saddleback’s prayer room during the Summit interceding for the speakers, those in attendance, and the millions of individuals infected with or by HIV. Here are more:

Summit participants: 2,081
Ministries/organizations represented: 165
Churches in attendance: 178
States from the United States represented: 39
Countries: 18
Presenters: 65+
Individuals who received a free HIV test: 165
Saddleback volunteers at Summit: 164
Saddleback volunteers who delivered food on World AIDS Day: 70

We hope these numbers encourage you. We also hope you are challenged by them. We need more individuals, more churches, more ministries involved in bringing the hope of Christ into history’s greatest humanitarian crisis. Nearly 30,000 individuals attended the recent International AIDS Conference in Toronto. Wouldn’t it be great if we had at least that many attending a summit on how the Church can respond to the AIDS crisis?

One of the goals of the HIV/AIDS Caring Community site is to make the impersonal numbers surrounding HIV/AIDS become personal to each of you. We then hope to provide practical tools you and your church can use to help stop the rising number of those infected with HIV and those dying from AIDS. Thank you for the opportunity to partner together to share the immeasurable love of Christ with millions around the world.

By the way, we now have more than 2,000 subscribers to our HIV/AIDS Caring Community newsletter. Thank you! If you haven’t yet signed up for your free subscription, you can do so now. Subscribe >>

Tammy Rosson is Saddleback Church's managing editor, HIV/AIDS.