Jews for Jesus

Summary

Jews for Jesus exists to directly evangelize Jewish people to show that Jesus is the promised Messiah and Savior of the world. They do this while avoiding traditional Christian jargon, while stressing creativity in conveying the message.

This organization is a nonprofit. Contributions to it are fully tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Contact Information: [ Back to top ]

Organization Details [ Back to top ]

Purpose [ Back to top ]

Founded in 1973 by Moishe Rosen, Jews for Jesus ("JFJ") exists to make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to Jewish people worldwide. JFJ's message is that Jesus (in Hebrew, Y'shua) is the Messiah promised to the Jewish people and the Savior of the world; that he accomplished our salvation by dying as atonement for our sins and rising again on the third day; and that anyone, Jew or Gentile, who believes in him will be saved. JFJ’s primary initiatives are:

1. Broadsides, contemporary gospel tracts that use humor to raise the reader's interest,
2. Mobile Evangelistic Teams, like the Liberated Wailing Wall and Messiah's Shofar,
3. Annual Summer Witnessing Campaigns,
4. Issues, a free bi-monthly evangelistic publication,
5. Creative Materials, that can be found in JFJ's Purple Pomegranate Resource Catalog,
6. Secular Media Campaigns, Gospel proclamations as full-page paid ads in leading magazines and newspapers and much more.

Mission Statement [ Back to top ]

Jews for Jesus uses the following to communicate its mission:

We exist to make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide.

Program Accomplishments [ Back to top ]

Jews for Jesus' accomplishments and programs include some of the following:

Operation Behold Your God: From 2001-2006, Jews for Jesus has committed to having a significant outreach in every city of the world with 25,000 or more Jewish people.

Broadsides: JFJ has pioneered the use of broadsides, simple six-paneled contemporary gospel tracts that use humor to raise the reader's interest. JFJ staff worldwide hand-deliver more than five million of these inexpensive tracts each year.

Mobile Evangelistic Teams: JFJ sends mobile evangelistic teams such as the music group, the Liberated Wailing Wall. They tour the country eleven months of the year using music and drama in presentations as well as doing tract distribution and visitation in those areas not covered by branches and chapters. A drama team, the Jews for Jesus Players, travels during the summer months. A second music team, Messiah's Shofar, based in the Ukraine ministers in CIS (formerly Soviet Russia) and in Germany.

Summer Campaigns: The most intense and condensed of all JFJ's outreaches are our annual Summer Witnessing Campaigns. Beginning in New York City in 1974, JFJ's campaigns have since expanded to include Toronto, Paris, London, and Moscow. Tract passing is the main activity, but street music, drama, and the art of evangelistic conversation all play an important part.

Issues: JFJ produce a free bi-monthly evangelistic publication, Issues, which makes the case for Jesus as the Messiah from a Messianic Jewish perspective. The eight-page publication features an article or essay on topics ranging from Jewish atheism to Jesus in Jewish art but always from the perspective of a Jewish believer in Jesus. ISSUES also features prose and poetry of particular interest to Jewish people. Presently, more than 32,000 Jewish people receive ISSUES.

Creative Materials: JFJ also produce more in-depth tracts, booklets, tapes and books for those who want to study the case for Christianity. Many of them can be found in JFJ's Purple Pomegranate Resource Catalog.

Havurah: JFJ has a quarterly publication titled Havurah, which is specifically designed to meet the needs of Jewish believers.

Children and Youth: In addition, JFJ has a burden to see the children of Jewish believers learn what it means to be Jewish and believe in Jesus. JFJ provide such opportunities through Camp Gilgal for pre-teens and teens; Halutzim for high schoolers; and Project Joshua and Spring Break Outreach for college students. By policy, JFJ does not minister to minors without parental consent.

Secular Media Campaigns: JFJ evangelistic media campaigns involve placing gospel proclamations as full-page paid ads in leading magazines and newspapers such as Newsweek, Parade, TV Guide and The New York Times. JFJ also broadcast evangelistic radio ads and place gospel statements on prominently displayed billboards , in commuter trains and in bus transit shelters.

Day to day evangelism: However, the "meat and potatoes" of JFJ's missionary work takes place on a person-to-person basis in less spectacular ways. JFJ missionaries visit the homes of curious Jewish people who have indicated an interest and provide them with Bible instruction on an individual basis week after week. Each staff member makes regular visits each week, adding new contacts regularly.

Witnessing Helps: JFJ furnishes witnessing materials, which present the gospel in a Jewish way. JFJ also publishes the Jews for Jesus Newsletter. It contains articles on the Jewish background of Christianity not generally available elsewhere, and it gives tidbits from missionaries of how God is working among Jewish people. There are prayer prompters in each edition as well. JFJ sends its newsletter free to those Christians who take an interest in our ministry. In addition, JFJ maintains a regular speaking schedule in churches to present the ministry of Jews for Jesus and encourage Christian involvement.

Statement of Faith [ Back to top ]

Jews for Jesus uses the following to communicate its faith:

We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are divinely inspired, verbally and completely inerrant in the original writings and of supreme and final authority in all matters of faith and life.

We recognize the value of traditional Jewish literature but only where it is supported by or conformable to the Word of God. We regard it as in no way binding upon life or faith.

We believe in one sovereign God, existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, perfect in holiness, infinite in wisdom, unbounded in power, and measureless in love; that God is the source of all creation and that through the immediate exercise of His power, all things came into being.

We believe that God the Father is the author of eternal salvation, having loved the world and given His Son for its redemption.

We believe that Jesus the Messiah was eternally pre-existent and is co-equal with God the Father; that He took on Himself the nature of man through the virgin birth so that He possesses both divine and human natures.

We believe in His sinless life and perfect obedience to the Law; in His atoning death, burial, bodily resurrection, ascension into heaven, high-priestly intercession and His personal return in power and glory.

We believe that the Holy Spirit is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son; that He was active in the creation of all things and continues to be so in providence; that He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment and that He regenerates, sanctifies, baptizes, indwells, seals, illumines, guides and bestows His gifts upon all believers.

We believe that God created man in His image; that because of the disobedience of our first parents at the Garden of Eden, they lost their innocence and both they and their descendants, separated from God, suffer physical and spiritual death and that all human beings, with the exception of Jesus the Messiah, are sinners by nature and practice.

We believe that Jesus the Messiah died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice; that all who believe in Him are justified, not by any works of righteousness they have done, but by His perfect righteousness and atoning blood and that there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.

We believe that Israel exists as a covenant people through whom God continues to accomplish His purposes and that the Church is an elect people in accordance with the New Covenant, comprising both Jews and Gentiles who acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and Redeemer.

We believe that Jesus the Messiah will return personally in order to consummate the prophesied purposes concerning His Kingdom.

We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, the everlasting blessedness of the saved and the everlasting conscious punishment of the lost.

Jews for Jesus subscribes to the following Core Values:

Understanding that we at Jews for Jesus are under the authority of God and His word desire to honor Messiah Y'shua and are dependent upon the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, We commit to the following core values:

• Direct Jewish Evangelism as our priority;
• An apostolic lifestyle of availability, vulnerability and mobility;
• Striving for excellence in all that we do;
• Deploying only front-line missionaries who are Jewish or married to Jews;
• Principle-based operations and practice;
• Accountability to our mission family and the body of Messiah;
• Integrity and faithfulness;
• Creativity in our staff;
• Stepping out in courageous faith and taking risks for God.

History [ Back to top ]

This is a description of the history of Jews for Jesus as told by Moishe Rosen the Founder.

"In 1954, about a year after my Jewish wife Ceil and I became believers in Jesus, I felt God's call to minister to my Jewish people. I enrolled in Bible college, and in my senior year became a full-time missionary under what was then the world's largest Jewish mission board. For 10 years I labored in Los Angeles and saw more than 200 Jewish people commit their lives to Christ.

In 1967, the same mission moved me to New York to serve in an executive capacity. There I discovered certain factors that I felt were hindering Jewish evangelism agencies from being truly effective. With only minimal results, we all had allowed ourselves to think we were successful. I saw that we needed to face the reality of our failure and rectify the situation.

In 1970, God moved me to the San Francisco Bay Area under the same mission board, not as an executive but once again as a field missionary. I wanted to try some new ways of communicating. I rented a small office in suburban Corte Madera and set out to work with only a secretary and a handful of newly-saved Jewish "hippie" volunteers. Those Jesus People had no preconceived ideas about Jewish evangelism. They only knew that they loved the Lord and wanted to tell everyone about Him. It was God's time for us to pioneer some new evangelistic strategies based on the recent insights I had gained in New York.

We had to stop trying to avoid conflict. Most of the workers in Jewish evangelism were well-meaning Gentile Christians who, above all, sought the goodwill of the Jewish community and tried to avoid friction at all costs. Yet as soon as the missionaries' efforts began to be effective, the Jewish leaders reacted with a show of displeasure and accused them of insensitive or offensive methods. Usually the real problem was the offense of the cross, not insensitive methods. Fearing the potential effectiveness of the missionary work, the Jewish community leaders chose to find it offensive. As a result, the missionaries often aborted promising projects for fear of further antagonizing the Jewish community.

There was no way--however tactful, loving and sensitive--to tell Jewish people that they needed Jesus without risking the displeasure of the Jewish community leaders. Having committed myself to the idea that disapproval and rejection were a normal part of Jewish evangelism, I taught my helpers that we all must bear the cross and risk rejection. Once we oriented ourselves to handle rejection, we began to win many Jews to the Lord.

We had to find more effective materials and literature. Jewish people are generally quite literate. Therefore we needed quality literature for our evangelism, but most of the evangelistic material at that time was poorly written. Though scripturally accurate, it failed to communicate. It was stodgy, uninteresting and never used in large enough quantities. (The largest number of any tract ever printed by a missionary society was 10,000--a meager amount in terms of mass distribution. Without substantial distribution over a short time, it is impossible to gauge a tract's effectiveness.) We devised a new form of gospel tract. Based on contemporary issues, ours were humorous, easy to read, good-natured and not at all "preachy." They were also inexpensive to produce. We called them "broadsides."

Using a mimeograph machine, we printed, hand-folded and gave out 50,000 broadsides a month. We distributed them wherever we found crowds--at shopping areas, on campuses and in theater districts. With our address and telephone number on the back, the broadsides were our initial contact material. They invited inquiries, and recipients responded by the hundreds.

In 1973 we became an independent entity. God had given a vision of what could be done, and it was working. To be most effective, however, it was necessary for us to form a new and separate missionary organization. Within three years we became the largest mission to the Jews in modern times.

We have preserved and fostered the courageous evangelistic distinctions that first made us an effective missionary organization. Having recently embarked on our 25th year of ministry, we are pleased that many other Jewish mission groups have begun to incorporate some of our innovative approaches in their own outreach efforts."

Today, Jews for Jesus is an international ministry with a staff of 214 spread out over eleven countries and twenty cities. Since we started, over 800 people have faithfully served on our staff and have helped to make the messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to millions of individuals.

Ministry Needs [ Back to top ]

Needs for Operation Behold Your God:

• Prayer partners in every BYG city
• Short-term workers willing to be trained to serve with the Jews for Jesus staff in these cities
• Local congregations and ministries to partner with in BYG cities
• Quality evangelistic and follow-up materials in over 14 languages
• Financial provision through God's people for this multi-faceted campaign
• Networkers/guides to help make various connections with people and organizations Jews for Jesus will need in each BYG city

Research Analysis

Transparency Grade [ Back to top ]

MinistryWatch.com 5 Star Financial Efficiency Ratings [ Back to top ]

This ministry has not been rated

Shining Light [ Back to top ]