Equip the saints for the work of the ministry. How is that for a job description? Your job description was probably put together by some corporate guru and is two pages long with statements that seem to contradict each other. God’s job description for pastors is NINE (count them!) words long ed-italia.com. And this equipping mission was on display last week. Since we had some connectivity issues while our team was on the ground in Samana I’d like to give you some updates on the mission and another vital equipping subject.
Equip: Build People
Last summer I sat down with Pastor Jerlin and some of the church leaders from St. Peter’s Church in Samana. Some of last week’s team members were also present in that meeting. My goal was to listen to Pastor Jerlin and his team identify possible mission/ministry projects for the people of Samana. If we could understand the needs and goals then it would help us in planning appropriate mission work for our teams.
Many things were discussed in that summer meeting. It was a good brainstorming session. Building projects of all sizes were on the list. Some were for St. Peter’s while others were aimed at some of the mission churches in the area. After a while, I pointed out that our discussions were about building things but I had not heard any mention of building people. And people are the subject of God’s job description. I’ve often made this accompanying statement:
God’s mission is people and God’s method is people!
That distinction opened up a whole new set of possibilities. And Equip would be the operative word for last week’s mission! So the posts for this week will be updates and illustrations of this point. I want to share how we addressed the need to equip people for ministry. The cover photo for this post shows one of the things we did. Our friends at Unclaimed Baggage donated Kindle readers for the school teachers. Mission team members prepared the readers and located teaching resources for download. They explained the devices and the new teaching resources that would now be available in the classroom. The school got new tools and the students got teachers who were better equipped!
Equip: The Ministry
Equip was the word last week. But it’s also the word when it comes to this ministry. And we’ve laid the new website out around that word and idea. Some would say I moved from local church ministry into mission ministry when I joined R.O.W. (now Mission: Hope). But if you think about it, my job description never changed. No matter the ‘hat’ I wear the mission is the same:
Equip the saints for the work of the ministry – Ephesians 4:12
So our next post will highlight another aspect of last week’s mission work. And I’ll be walking everyone through how the new website can help accomplish the equipping mission. But more about that next time! And just so you know, the launch is just days away. So please tune in often. Good or bad, everything in place or not, this thing is getting off the ground!!!
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