Stories of the transformation of established churches are told by Ed Stetzer on The Exchange blog at www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/july/stories-of-transformation.html. These stories are related to the Transformational Church consulting services that are offered to U.S. churches by the CAD team. For information about those services, see www.gci.org/CAD_Services#consulting. For additional detail, see the issue of Equipper posted at www.gci.org/files/Equipper6.10.pdf and watch the video embedded below. If your congregation would like to discuss these services, contact the CAD office or any CAD team member (including your district or regional pastor).
Church Administration and Development (CAD) held important meetings last week in Asheville, North Carolina related to GCI’s GCnext mission to plant new churches and renew established churches.
Church planting consultation
From left: Tom Nebel, Heber Ticas, Greg Williams, Randy Bloom.
Members of GCI’s Church Multiplication Ministries (CMM) team met with church planting expert Tom Nebel who helps denominations develop church planting cultures and improve church planting processes. Tom has authored several books on church planting, including the soon-to-be-published, Leading Church Planting: Locally, Regionally, Nationally (co-authored with Steve Pike).
To participate more effectively in Jesus’ disciplemaking mission, Tom suggested that GCI move from a denomination that says, “We have church planters,” to one that proclaims, “We are church planters.” In pursuing that goal, CMM and other CAD team members will help congregations participate in GCI’s church planting movement serving, as God calls them, as a parent (that plants churches directly) or a partner (that helps others plant churches).
ChurchNext Training
Following the church planting consultation, CMM trainers Heber Ticas, Travis Jarrett and Randy Bloom conducted a two-day-long session of ChurchNext Training (CNT). Participants (pictured below) included prospective church planters, pastors of established churches and regional pastors.
CNT equips leaders who are planting a new church or re-planting (re-missioning) an established church. The trainers presented basic church development principles and practices including identifying a focus group (focus community), developing church leadership teams, evangelism, gathering people, disciplemaking practices, and steps for starting new worship services.
CNT trainers Travis Jarrett (left) and Heber Ticas.Prospective church planter Chad Pendergraft presents his team’s “disciplemaking pathway.”Left to right: Effie and Chad Pendergraft, Heber Ticas, Rick Shallenberger and Mark Queener.
On June 29, GCI members from the Portland and King City, Oregon, areas hosted the annual King City veteran’s celebration. Eighty four community participants, including 17 WWII and Vietnam veterans (pictured below) enjoyed the festivities, which included a surprise salute to the veterans in the form of a gift of hand-crafted quilts (pictured at right) from Oregon Quilting.
GCI pastor Dee Bulante emceed the event, which included patriotic music and a flag presentation by members of the Portland squadron of the Civil Air Patrol. Pastor Dee then showed two video interviews of local veterans, including a World War II vet who had been awarded the Bronze Star and a helicopter pilot who served three tours of duty in Vietnam. Local resident Jennifer Lamaye then spoke about Mission Mahalo which she formed in 2010 to acknowledge the service of those serving in Afghanistan by sending them over 1,000 care packages to date. A picnic-style lunch was then served by church members.
Robert W.T. McKinney, GCI senior pastor in the Bahamas, was born in Freeport, Bahamas. “I was born on December 19, 1961, then born again on December 20, 1981.”
Robert first became aware of WCG when only eight years of age. “I grew up in Freeport, where I graduated from Hawksbill High School in 1979. One week later I began my employment as a banker, and was fast-tracked to become a bank manager. My experience was to prove very beneficial later in pastoral ministry. I became pastor of our congregation in May 1995 after the senior pastor left over the changes. Prior to that, I served as assistant pastor.”
Robert was always interested in attending Ambassador College, but it took a dramatic event to get him to actually send in an application. “When my childhood friend Nathania Curling was accepted in 1984, my interest in attending intensified. At that time I was interested in her and the thought of losing her led to my applying. I was accepted the following year (1985). We were married a year later and continued as married students. We both graduated in 1989, and since then, she has been my partner in ministry.” Robert continued: “My wife and I thank God for GCI (she grew up in the church as well), and there is no other place we would rather be than right here with God’s people in this part of his vineyard.”
Robert and Nathania have been married 28 years this month (July). “We have three children, Robert Jr, (24), who is completing a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering Technology, Gabrielle, (22), who is a pre-med student at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, and Ann-Marie, (12), who will enter the 9th grade in September.”
Robert says what he loves most about being a pastor and being part of GCI has to do with connections. “As a pastor I really enjoy seeing people connect with Jesus and begin to grow spiritually. I also enjoy performing weddings. I truly treasure our international and local connections as a church fellowship.”
When asked about his passion, Robert said, “One of my greatest passions is helping the young people see that Jesus and his way of life is really fun. I especially enjoy working with them at summer camps.” In his personal home life, Robert said he also enjoys gardening.
His most memorable pastoral moments include his family. “Over the years I have baptized a lot of people, but my most memorable moment as a pastor has been baptizing my three children. Other memorable moments have been planting a Sunday congregation in our fellowship and overseeing the purchase and acquisition of our church premises.”
Living in the Bahamas, it’s no surprise that Robert loves the beach. “I feel closest to God when I go to my particular spot on the beach, which I have been doing for more than 20 years. There I enjoy a nice, gentle breeze on my face, smell the ocean, listen to the waves lapping in and meditate on the goodness of God. I always find it to be a time of refreshing and renewal.”
We are saddened to learn of the death of Greg Williams’ father, Dean Williams. Greg is the associate director of GCI Church Administration and Development, USA. Here is a note from Greg:
On July 16 I asked several of my GCI coworkers to pray for my dad, who was suffering from various physical ailments and seemed near death. The Lord answered those prayers by giving us two weeks for my family to say our final farewell. Dad breathed his last on July 29 with me, my two brothers and my son Glenn at his side.
My dad meant so much to us and his passing leaves a big void. But we praise God that his suffering is over and he is with the Lord forever! Please keep my mom lifted up in prayer as she grieves the loss of her husband.
Cards to Greg and his family may be sent to:
Grace Communion International P.O. Box 5005 Glendora, CA 91740-0730 Attn: Greg Williams, CAD office
Rose Neumann requests prayers for her husband, Al, an elder in our Glendora, California church. Al underwent surgery on July 14 to amputate his right leg below the knee due to complications from type 1 diabetes, which he has had since age eight. Please pray for healing and relief from pain and also for help with the hard work of physical therapy to come.
Cards may be sent to:
Al and Rose Neumann 1205 W. Cypress Ave., Trlr 26 San Dimas, CA 91773-3514
CAD-USA wishes to draw your attention to new content on the GCI website (www.gci.org/). CAD recently closed the Ministry Development website and moved much of its content to GCI.org under the “Church Development” tab. On the Church Development Resources page (gci.org/churchdevelopment) you’ll find links to resources that equip churches for sharing with Jesus in his continuing ministry. New to the list of resources are two CAD ministries:
CAD also has posted a curriculum that links to a wide array of resources useful for mentoring church workers and leaders. The curriculum has three parts:
Ministry Foundations (helping your protégé share in Jesus’ heart for God and for people) (gci.org/foundations)
Ministry Competency (helping your protégé share in Jesus’ missional knowledge and skill) (gci.org/competency)
Ministry Strategy (helping your protégé share in Jesus’ disciple-making focus) (gci.org/strategy)
For assistance with any of these CAD resources, feel free to contact CAD communications coordinator Ted Johnston at Ted.Johnston@gci.org.
Fourteen international missionaries spent eight days sharing God’s love and the gospel with hundreds of people in Mexico June 21-29. For a few “old-timers” of Crossing Borders, this was the 17th trip to Mexico. For others, this was their first experience with international mission work. These missionaries came from Alaska, Colorado, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin—ages from teen to 80+. We all enjoyed working together to provide encouragement and resources to our Mexican ministry partners as we assisted in the ministry they provide on an ongoing basis to the people in their community, church and children’s home.
Crossing Borders missionaries with their adopted family
Economic challenges, political instability, criminal elements and other factors create very tough living conditions for many in Mexico. The good news is that these factors often lead people to seek stability and personal peace in spiritual foundations. It’s exciting for Crossing Borders missionaries to be able to share the hope of the gospel with these lovely people.
In the end, no matter what country or problem, it comes down to this: Jesus is the answer.
Throughout our years of mission trips, we have found that the main benefit we provide to our Mexican ministry partners is encouragement. They struggle with limited resources, unhelpful government, overwhelming social problems and satanic darkness. The apostle Paul sent Timothy on a mission of encouragement (1 Thessalonians 3:2-3) and we seek to emulate the same principle. By coming alongside our ministry partners, we give them a physical, mental and spiritual boost. As a result, they are rejuvenated, excited and thankful. And while we provide encouragement to them, we find that God provides encouragement and inspiration back to us through our partners.
Here are examples of our ministry activity on this trip, all in partnership with our Mexican friends:
We gave testimonies, led in songs and served meals to over 200 mostly homeless people in an outdoor “Church in the Park” setting. We also handed out hot meals, bags filled with socks, toiletries, caps and T-shirts.
Praying with refugees
We interacted with women and children refugees streaming across the border from Central American countries. We heard their amazing tales of travel danger, fed them, gave them Bibles and prayed for them.
We treated a family we “adopted” two years ago to a half-day of recreation at a park and a swim outing.
We purchased items for, packed and distributed 50 bags of food items for needy families. This was done as an outreach of a church to their unchurched neighbors, in an environment of singing Christian songs, hearing a Bible message, laughing and having fun. As a result, five people made a public commitment to follow Jesus.
We provided lunch and fellowship to thank and honor the leaders of a church we have worked with for several years.
We helped two ministry partners by contributing manual labor in the hot sun to clear brush and trash from properties they recently acquired for their ministry work.
We conducted Vacation Bible School programs for over 50 children in a very poor neighborhood. In doing so, we helped a local pastor train his emerging leaders.
Visiting children’s home
We visited two children’s homes where we played with the children, did crafts, performed in costume a “superhero” skit with a Jesus-centered message, fed the kids hot meals, fixed homes and purchased household supplies. The hugs, laughs and happy faces of the kids melted our hearts.
Crossing Borders is being used by God to help encourage and train some of our Mexican GCI youth and young adults in outreach, leadership and other ministry skills. On our winter 2013 trip, four of them joined us and, on this summer trip, Samuel Mercado (a key Mexican youth leader from Guadalajara) joined us. We are hopeful that many more Mexican youth and adults can participate in future Crossing Borders trips.
God calls us all to be encouragers—far from home or in our own communities. Many reading this have been encouragers of Crossing Borders missions. For that, we thank you.
This announcement is from Bret Miller, manager of information technology at GCI headquarters.
Perhaps you know someone who has had an online account hacked. Maybe you’ve been hacked yourself. In most cases, hackers manage to get in using your own password. That’s what happened to me when my accounts were hacked. I had protected them with a one-word password that my wife and I were sharing. That’s a very bad idea!
Simple one-word passwords are easy to crack using dictionaries of commonly-used passwords. It might take longer if your word isn’t common, but it’s still a bad idea. I knew it was, but hey, who’d want to hack me? Thankfully, the hackers only intent was to send a link to a malware-infected website to my mailing lists (my apologies to them!).
There’s a story circulating about a guy in the Midwest who had his bank account drained. He thought he was protected—his password included letters, numbers and symbols. But he used the same password on all his online accounts. That made it easier to remember, but the online newsletter he subscribed to didn’t need as much security as his bank. So the hackers managed to get into the newsletter’s server and got the passwords for all subscribers. Then they used those passwords to try to get entry to bank accounts. They hacked this poor guy’s bank account and drained it.
The best practice is to use a different, long and complicated password for each online account. But how do you remember all those passwords? That’s where a password manager comes in. It will generate a strong password, then remember it for you the next time you need it. I have 421 online accounts in my password manager. It would be a nightmare to try to remember all those on my own. But how do you know if your passwords are securely stored on your computer in a password manager? All good password managers encrypt the data using a master password that you assign.
Several password managers synchronize passwords to multiple devices. How can you be sure those passwords aren’t being stolen during synchronization? Again, the passwords are encrypted before they leave your computer and the master password is never stored. Thus the data is inaccessible by anyone who doesn’t know the master password, including the company who makes the password manager. Therefore, it’s vital not to forget your master password!
Which password manager is best? I use and recommend LastPass because it works well for me. It’s free to use on computers, but costs $12/year to use on mobile devices. KeePass is recommended frequently because it’s also free, though I don’t find it works as well as LastPass in Firefox and Chrome, it doesn’t automatically sync, and it requires more knowledge to use. RoboForm has been around a long time and is well-recommended, but not free. Click here for a recent PC Magazine article rating password managers.
Participants in recent U.S. regional conferences were blessed to witness the ordination of Jan Taylor (pictured below left) who serves as an assistant pastor in the Nashville, Tennessee church; and Terry Lambert (pictured below center) who pastors the Abilene, Texas church. On July 13, GCI-Africa mission developer Kalengule Kaoma joined with several African pastors in ordaining Frederick Dwamena who serves the GCI congregation in Atwima-Koforidua in Ghana (Frederick is pictured below right with his wife Joyce). Congratulations to these three servants of Jesus and to their families and congregations.
