Thoughts Along The Journey

The Mission¹⁴: Vision Forward Americas conference kicked off our year of Area conferences in 2014.  The conference focused on examining elements that promoted or encouraged church multiplication.  Topics such as: “Seeing with Pilgrim Eyes”; Engaging the Excluded Middle”; and “Thinking with the End in Mind” were parts of the daily discussions.  Large group and small group interaction provided opportunities to dig deeper into each topic and consider specific applications to current ministries.

As I wrote in the previous post, “I shared a number of challenges with each region or Area.  The purpose was to affirm and celebrate what God has done through us over the past few years as well as to challenge Area members to “excel still more” in their work and ministry for Jesus.”

During the Americas conference, I shared the following challenges.

First challenge: restructure. WT Americas is historically one of our longest standing Areas.  It is where one part of our mission found its start.  God has blessed through the number of people who have come to Christ and the communities and church associations that have arisen as a result of our WT Americas workers.  However, the number of WT sent workers has diminished over the years and we find ourselves in situations where there is only one couple or unit in a location.  We need to ‘restructure’ WT Americas in its ministry oversight so as to better serve our current workers and create opportunities for new workers, wherever they might come from.

Second challenge: partner to send.  The Latin America church is now sending workers to serve Christ around the world.  We need to initiate dialogue with one or more like minded agencies as to how we can come alongside them and serve them in seeing more workers from the Global South to be sent into cross cultural ministry.

Third challenge: develop and release to younger people.  WT Americas has a large number of highly experienced workers with significant longevity in ministry.  This wealth of experience should be shared with the younger generation.  Becoming mentors and coaches for the younger generation will open up new avenues of service for our highly experienced workers.  It will also mean that we will be quicker to release these younger workers into ministry and leadership so that they can begin to develop and grow in those ministry functions.

I share these challenges to the WT Americas workers with all of us both as a reminder and as a motivation to pray for one another as we seek to learn the further change and growth to which God is calling us.

Filed under: Development, Leadership, Vision Forward 2014 |