What began as a disease infecting homosexual men has become a worldwide crisis that is decimating populations of women and children in sub-Saharan Africa. And the Christian response that began with shunning and condemnation has become an answer to the call for help from the 43 million people now living with HIV/AIDS.

According to Dr. Carl C. Stecker, senior program director of the AIDSRelief ART Project, involvement in the AIDS crisis is "our mandate as Christians." Stecker cited the biblical directives found in Matt. 25 and Luke 10 that require Christians to help those in need and heal the sick.

He spoke for the third year at the Global Missions Health Conference, held Nov. 11-13 in Louisville, Ky. The ninth-annual event brought together more than 2,000 Christian health professionals, medical students, relief groups, church leaders and missionaries to consider the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Along with a new Christian response to the crisis has come a U.S. government response in the form of a $15 billion grant from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). And because President George W. Bush's plan includes allocation of funds to faith-based organizations, many of which were represented at the conference, there was renewed dialogue on solutions to the HIV/AIDS problem, much of which centered on the involvement of the Church.

Stecker said his philosophy endorses the weakest of the weak and the poorest of the poor. He is working with a consortium that includes Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Medical Missions Board, Interchurch Medical Assistance and others to provide antiretroviral therapy to some 137,600 Africans and Haitians by the year 2009. Both the $335 million in PEPFAR monies and the decrease in the cost of AIDS drugs led to this tactic by Christian groups interested not only in disease prevention, but in treatment and care for HIV/AIDS sufferers.

Tom Davis of Food for the Hungry, another organization recently put on the receiving end of a share of $100 million in PEPFAR funds and a $2.5 million private gift, said the organization will focus on disease prevention and care for people living with AIDS and the increasing number of orphans.

"The dust has not settled on the treatment issues," Davis said. He pointed out problems in the manufacture, transport and cost of AIDS drugs as well as the stigma and discrimination issues that continue to surround people infected with AIDS, so that many, "would rather die than die of the shame."

So, Davis and Food for the Hungry conclude: "To be able to halt the epidemic, there's going to have to be a really heavy dose of prevention."

While that has also been a controversial topic in Christian circles over the last few decades, with many groups opposed to endorsing condoms rather than abstinence, Davis, along with other experts at the conference, took a more moderate approach. While Food for the Hungry has created an in-depth program of abstinence education, there are instances where the abstinence message will fall flat.

"Obviously the abstinence message isn't going to work for someone in prostitution," said Dr. Clydette Powell of the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID). "It wouldn't be fair." Instead Powell, Davis and others working with another coalition of nine Christian organizations that received a total of $18.2 million from PEPFAR, are advocating life change for prevention.

"The Church has been specially selected to get involved in this process," Davis said about behavior change. He said the Christian message gives people hope in God to help them change.

Powell cited statistics about the effectiveness of the ABC (Abstinence, Be faithful, Condoms) message in Uganda and other places where the program has been fully endorsed. She also cited numbers indicating that HIV/AIDS infections increased at a parallel rate to condom sales.

"Condom sales in themselves are not going to turn the tide," she said.

According to Dr. Ann Peterson, appointed by President Bush as assistant administrator of the Global Health Bureau of the USAID, preventing AIDS comes down to evangelism and discipleship.

"If we're going to get ahead of the AIDS epidemic," she said, "it's each individual we need to change Ã¢â‚¬â€ their behavior."

She cited James 4:17, "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins," and called for many more workers in the fight against the plague of the 21st century.

Jared Onserio of Global Hope Care in Kenya and Carolyn Chapman of Monroe, Mich., pray together during the Global Missions Health Conference. They attended a workshop to learn more about mobilizing churches for missions. Some 2,300 Christians gathered during the annual event, Nov. 11-13 in Louisville, Ky., in part to consider solutions to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Food for the Hungry's Davis said the organization is mobilizing churches through it's new project aimed at AIDS prevention, care and treatment, "Bringing Hope to the Hopeless."

"We're working through the churches that are already there," Davis said. And he said, "We have a biblical base for this process."

The program involves a sort of foster care model for AIDS orphans and people living with AIDS that has already found success in Ethiopia where Dr. Florence Muindi reported she works with a church of 300 members to fight against AIDS. Although the congregation has few resources and meets in a tent in a rural area, Muindi said, "the Lord began to move them to do something about HIV/AIDS." They started a program for pregnant mothers, aimed at caring for those suffering from the disease and preventing mother-to-child transmission.

Another church in the capital city Addis Ababa began to hold worship and fellowship meetings for people living with HIV/AIDS. "The church provides food for them and care for their orphans," Muindi said.

"Finding that hope in the Church is a wonderful opportunity," she said. "To see poor churches help, we are challenged to see what more we can do."

But in the face of such worldwide devastation churches and Christians are also succumbing to the paralysis of an overwhelming problem.

"I think one of the obstacles is where do you begin," said Food for the Hungry's president, Ben Homan. The Bringing Hope project is the first project specifically targeting AIDS relief for Food for the Hungry. And Homan said he is especially encouraged about the partnerships that have resulted. "When you're faced with the overwhelming nature of a problem, it can bring people together."

World Vision is also joining the new troop of Christian soldiers arming late for the AIDS fight. Ken Casey, special representative to the World Vision International president for the HIV/AIDS HOPE Initiative, said the organization realized three-and-a-half years ago that all of its other humanitarian work was quickly being unraveled by the rising problem of AIDS.

World Vision is involved in a prevention, care and treatment program similar to Food for the Hungry's new project. Both groups are targeting their work toward the 15 million AIDS orphans with a community care model.

Already 10,800 orphans and vulnerable children have been reached in one Uganda province through the World Vision program. The organization is now bent on mobilizing churches.

"On the one hand, some of the most heroic work on HIV/AIDS came out of the faith community," Casey said. "At the same time, I think it's equally honest to say the Church has not been at the forefront of this until recently." World Vision is now educating church leaders in a biblical perspective on the fight against AIDS. So far 491 pastors in 359 churches in 19 countries have attended workshops on the subject.

"When you actually are able to sit down with church leaders in the United States and Africa and go through the reality of what's going on and brining in scriptural principles, hearts warm up, and it's been encouraging to see what's taking place in the lives of church leaders."

Casey noted that 8,000 people die each day from HIV/AIDS and said becoming aware of the vast nature of the problem is a first step toward involvement for churches. "When Jesus told us to love our neighbor, he never told us how far away that neighbor was from the building."

Read more in a related story: Spiritual healing: Shifting the Church's missions paradigm