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     I received the annual UN report on the global situation of HIV/AIDS at the end of December 2001. The figures made me sweat. I became speechless for a moment. As a public health professional, I was taught to look at statistics and try to make sense of a situation. This time it was more than I could handle. The report shows an estimated 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
     When I shared these figures with one church leader, he said that if many of these people would just change their ways of life, then HIV/AIDS might not be such a big deal. His response made me realize once again that we Anabaptists still have a lot more work to do.

• We need to recognize that involvement in the fight against HIV/AIDS is not outside our mandate for church-planting, leadership development, and capacity-building. One of the pastors I met in Africa and who is HIV-positive told me that he contracted the virus when he was a truck driver. Some church people still look at him in light of his previous life. As I listened to him tell me his story, I wonder what we would say to Paul today?
• We need to reach to the heart of our theology, ethics, and mission. Churches must acknowledge that they have unwittingly contributed both passively and actively to the spread of HIV virus. Our difficulty in addressing issues related to sexuality, our tendency to exclude people, our interpretation of scriptures and theology of sin that promotes stigmatization and the suffering of those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS are theological issues that our churches need to deal with.
• We need committed leadership from our churches. This is crucial in the fight against any major issues in society in general and in churches in particular. It is more so when dealing with HIV/AIDS. It is this commitment that will inspire action and attract the necessary human and financial means.
• We must recognize that people infected/affected by HIV/AIDS are not just statistics. They have faces and names.
• We must realize that most of our fastest growing churches are located in regions with a high prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS. More than 90% of people who were living with HIV/AIDS in 2001 were from countries in the South. An estimated 3.86 million Indians are living with HIV/AIDS, more than in any other country besides South Africa. In Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country and where we have a large number of Anabaptist churches, infection rates are increasing rapidly.
• Finally, we must intentionally decide to work together. We might have our reasons to work separately or choose to protect our own turf, but the HIV/AIDS pandemic does not recognize national, religious, denominational, or socio-economic boundaries.