Andrew Mendonsa

About Andrew Mendonsa

In 1987, I felt led to start a ministry with low income, older African American widows, living in urban/inner city neighborhoods in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This faith led non-profit was based on James 1:27, a scripture that I would dedicate over 25 years of study in order to answer the question, "why are widows almost universally the most invisible demographic in Christendom. In 2017 I published my conclusions in a book entitled "Spiritual Widowhood." This book, essentially, is a study of this one verse in the context of most of the Bible, beginning with Genesis 2 and the creation of Eve through Adam through the end of Revelation. And the one key root cause that I discovered through this study for discovering why widows are universally invisible to the church is our understanding of "worship" and the fact that it is not based on a written scriptural definition, but on an assumed definition that is actually based on our worship practices. Incredibly, in the single sentence that is James 1:27, the entirety of scripture is contained/revealed. Yet, with Biblical scholars, this passage seems to have escaped all notice for it's significance, and in fact, has been even further discounted, in all probability, because of the addition of the word "and" which does not appear in the original Greek text. It is my belief that correctly understanding this one passage is key for determining the actual condition of the church today, and how deceived she has become (if you will). If, as Jesus said to the religion leaders after the seven woes in Matthew 23:38 "Look, your house has been left unto you desolate," might actually be the condition of the church today despite it's outwardly prosperous looking appearance. The word for widow in the Old Testament means "desolate" and in the New Testament its "bereft." What Jesus was telling the religious leaders back then, and us now, that chief among those they were neglecting, widows, he then likened their own condition to be like theirs: desolate/bereft. This is not just a theory that this same condition exists in the church today, it is 100% scripturally provable.