As we finished out our first term serving as missionaries overseas and knowing that we needed de-briefing during our forthcoming home assignment, we were referred to a ministry we had never heard of before, The Institute of Biblical Leadership (IBL). As you will see, IBL was truly a God-send helping us in more ways than we could have imagined; and we are healthier and more prepared for serving the Lord in ministry having crossed paths with them.
Dear Russ, Doris & Dawn, It is always in season to give thanks. I want to share with you what God has done.
The culmination of my captivity has arrived. God has brought me back. He has emptied the vile and made my mouth to praise Him. He has redeemed me from the grip of the terrible and made me able to stand before Him. Blessed be the Lord!
Here is some feedback we have received from a recent volunteer leader training seminar. This particular seminar was held at a large church here in western North Carolina and was attended by deacons and small group teachers. We taught six topics from our essential ministry leadership material: Understanding the Essentials, The Prerequisites to Godliness, Right Relationships, Relational Sin, Marks of Engaged Leadership, and Generational Distinctives. We were very encouraged by the level of participation, depth of discussion, and overall enthusiasm for the topics.
I was recently walking a little boy down the hall toward his dad. The toddler wrapped each of the little fingers of one hand around a single finger of my own, focused on getting to his Daddy. He wants to be with Daddy wherever he is and keep him in his sight. As I was walking the boy down the hall, his Dad was calling to him, looking at him and smiling, “Come to Daddy.” He was walking WITH me, but I was clearly nothing more than his vehicle to get to his dad.
To my perception, it’s not all “ministries” are actual ministries. The fact on earth is that we here in Vietnam have experienced for decades various forms of “Christian ministries” who claim for themselves the ministry of equipping the Church, but just for a noisy starting and then ending in a dim disappearance, leaving here all kinds of doctrinal confusions.
