WORD OF GRACE VISION
When you begin working in missions you will soon learn that the
need is so vast and the opportunities are so great that you have to
limit your scope or at least put parameters on what you get involved
with. Here is an example of how I intentionally limited the focus of
Word of Grace Outreach:
I do not simply choose a country, go in, and do mission work on
my own. I only want to go where nationals, who are already actively
reaching out to the poorest people in their area. When they invite us to
come along side and assist them in their ministry, I try to arrange for
teams to go and provide spiritual training, along with temporal
supplies, so that they can better spread the message of God's care and
mercy on their own.
I am only interested in doing mission work in places where it directly benefits the local church.
I believe that the Gospel must be shown as well as spoken. In Luke 8:1,
it says that Jesus taught and showed the Good News in every village He
visited. Our teams pray for the sick and cast out devils whenever we are
confronted with the need, but we have also seen power demonstrated in
the giving away of the simplest things. You would understand this if you
could see the face of a farmer who has just been given a bag of seed.
It brings great joy to the face of a mother to receive some antibiotic
ointment or toothache medicine for her children. We have watched old
women weep as they receive baggies filled with aspirin. It was as if we
were giving them gold. In a village where there are no medicines, it is
gold! These practical things speak volumes wherever we go. They
transcend all the language barriers and confirm our message of mercy.
Each item we bring is a type of something that we bring in the spirit.
The garden seeds represent hope, the medicine represents healing, and
the study tools represent the importance of God's Word in the believer's
life.
My desire has been to build long-term relationships with our national brethren and to demonstrate long-term commitment to their own outreach efforts. Anyone can go somewhere once, but to go repeatedly to the same place is somewhat harder but it bears fruit, and fruit that remains.
Those with whom I work closely
tend to be Charismatic or Pentecostal by experience and desire to share
this experience with others. This is in keeping with our own objectives.
If this mission work is to have a lasting effect, it must be done in the
power of the Holy Spirit.
It is my desire to motivate and train people here to “do the Gospel” and give them an opportunity to actually practice what they have caught. This requires compiling, preparing, and sending teams, into the fields that have opened to us.
One goal we have worked hard at is to
help believers to become disciples by giving them a chance to share the
Gospel here and overseas. However, we need to balance this with the reality that
people can only do in other places what they are already doing here. In
other words, it is the same work in both places, except the foreign
environment makes the work more complicated. If you are not willing to
reach out here at home, you likely won't be very effective on the
mission field. Someone wisely said, "If it doesn't work at home, don't
export it."
We have many other contacts in
various parts of the world that are asking for more teams; more than we
can personally take on. If you would like to lead a group you have put
together from your church, we may be interested in helping to get you
there.
It has also become our goal to find regular financial support for the native pastors in India and the Ukraine. We support orphanages, schools and medical staff, along with national pastors or key workers and their families. Most of the money for this comes from the teams that go with us. If you would like to support any of these needs, you can join us in this ever-expanding need. Contact us if you are interested in any of these ways of getting involved.
FINDING THE PEOPLE AND PLACES
1. It is
about relationships. We have never looked on a map and simply
chose a country to go to, but have been invited to go into each place we
have gone. It is always because of some relationship or connection that
opened the doors for us.
2. I look for a condition. I don't feel called to a particular country, as much as to a condition. When we see certain conditions it moves us to want to help. A condition might be a kind of poverty, a need for teaching, or a degree of legalism that needs to be countered with my message of Grace. Each of these moves me to want to go there time and time again.
3. Follow compassion. When I look back on how I was led into the various countries that we now work in, the common thread for going back has been compassion. I noticed in scripture that whenever Jesus acted upon compassion something happened. We have learned to follow compassion, as it always leads to the miraculous.
OUR FOCUS
1. We providing teaching, oversight, financial support, and material aid to national workers who are already trying to reach out to their communities.
2. We poor help the poor by providing tools and inspiration.
4. All of these efforts must ultimately result in bringing people to Christ or church planting.