By Frank and Mary Hoffman
During our many years of church ministry, we saw a tremendous gap in the
ministry of the church when it came to providing comfort and support to people
who care about animals, and who live a compassionate vegetarian (vegan)
lifestyle.
We put animals on our prayer list along with the humans of our churches, never
excluded animals from our services, and gave whatever comfort and support we
could to people who care about animals.
Even though this ministry was very successful, we ran into a great deal of
resistance from the denomination hierarchy. In our opinion, this totally
unChristian attitude is very similar to what Jesus saw among the Temple
leadership when He called them hypocrites.
So, by the mid 1990's we made the decision to leave the formal church ministry
and begin our ministry on the internet as a way of reaching out to people in
need all around the world. We learned everything we could about the internet and
how we could best utilize it. In 1997, we formed The Mary T. and Frank L.
Hoffman Family Foundation (a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization), and began our
internet ministry in January 1998.
Within ten years, we were receiving more than ten million visitors a year, and
we estimated that we ministered to more than one million people around the world
who cared about animals and who were not receiving the support and comfort from
their churches that they needed. Sadly, many of these people had left their
church because of the hardness of heart they had encountered from their
congregation and pastor. And hardly a day goes by when we don't hear from
someone new who is facing this problem and/or has already left their church.
In 2008, our Board made the decision to expand our ministry to assist pastors
and lay ministers to provide this much-needed support and comfort to people who
care about animals, by listing compassionate churches and pastors, and by
setting up grass-roots ministries.
If you are interested in becoming a part of this compassionate ministry, please
let us know.
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