This past Sunday, October 20, I had the privilege to attend the launch service for Belong Church in College Park, Florida. Over the last 10 months, Howard Salter and his team have been taking the necessary steps to make the launch of the Church a reality. 83 people were in attendance, including nine children. The service was an awesome celebration of the good grace of our Triune God.
Howard and Becky grew up in the old WCG but when our theological transformation occurred, the Lord took them in a different direction. After participating in different Baptist churches, Howard felt the call to come back home to GCI. They made their way back through Grace Communion Orlando (GCO) where they already had a relationship with Pastor Steve Shantz. Pastor Shantz had married them back in the day and had stayed in touch with them throughout the years. Ish and Beatriz Beloso, and Felix and Mirelly Gaetan, from GCO joined Howard and Becky in the adventurous journey of starting a daughter Church.
Howard shared how the Lord’s calling on his life to start a daughter church goes back to his wife’s (Becky) childhood. Becky and her family moved to College Park when Becky was a child. Her father was murdered in College Park in a botched robbery when Becky was just a nine-year-old girl. As Becky grew older, she also grew bitter at the person who took her father’s life. In short, the Lord did a wonderful work in Becky’s life, bringing her to the point of forgiveness and healing. When they moved back to Florida some 7 years ago, they could not get close to College Park. Becky would have panic attacks and was not able to cross the town.
When Howard felt called to plant a congregation with GCI, he never envisioned starting the church in College Park. When he was initially exploring the different areas where he can connect with the age demographics that he felt called to, College Park was the community that was the best fit. The Lord continued to work in Becky’s heart, bringing her to the point of fully reconciling her past and comprehending that the residents of College Park belonged to the Lord, hence the name, “Belong Church.” She slowly warmed up to the idea of launching the church in her old town, and Sunday was a testament to the grace of God.
Four months ago, the Salters moved their family to College Park and started engaging their community. The Lord opened many doors for ministry, including a school across the street from their home where Belong Church now meets. GCI is catching the wave of the Spirit and joining Jesus in his everyday mission in our communities. Please join me in lifting up prayers of thanksgiving for the Salters and their team as they continue to missionally engage their neighbors in College Park.
Heber Ticas National Coordinator of Church Multiplication
GCI Mexico City is a congregation of Grace Communion International. Though going through difficulties in life, Natanael Cruz surrendered to God’s calling on his life to be a pastor. Through his faithfulness, the church is a community that is engaging and making an impact on their neighborhood. The church continues to be the church that lives outside its walls.
Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God. Psalm 69:1-3 NIV
There are days in our life when even putting one foot in front of the other seems too hard. Days when we feel overwhelmed by the challenges life throws at us, when even the well-meaning request of a friend can feel like too much; like the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back. What do we do when we are struggling in these moments of darkness? When our lives seem paralyzed by regrets about the past and anxieties about the future?
The scripture above was written by King David in a moment of brutal honesty and is a prayer to which many of us can relate. David bares his soul to God, refusing to hide the emotions, turmoil, despair and anger that he is feeling at his present circumstances. He even acknowledges that the bleakness of his situation is affecting his relationship with God. In his darkest moment, he cannot see God, he cannot see his Savior, but rather than hide this from God, he confesses it to him. As the psalm continues, David finds solace in who he knows God to be—a God of great love, of great mercy, and who answers with a sure salvation (Psalm 69:13,16).
It is worth remembering in these moments that in Jesus Christ, we have a great high priest who knows what it is like to go through dark times. Jesus’ anxiety about his crucifixion was so great that it caused him to sweat “like drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). On the cross, the Bible records Jesus’ feelings of separation from God (Mark 15:34). Yet God did not forsake Jesus, and he will not forsake us. In Christ, there is always hope beyond our despair, and like David we must cast ourselves upon God’s great love, great mercy and sure salvation.
Our Father in heaven, in our moments of darkness, your light can seem so far away. Do not abandon us to our sin, to our pain and to our suffering, but let us feel your presence, your love and your comfort. And let us never forget the sure salvation we have through your Son, Jesus Christ. In his name, Amen.
By Gavin Henderson, Operations Manager of the National Ministry Team UK and Ireland
A recent Christianity Today article stated that “Sixty percent of Protestant churches in America average less than 100 people in weekly worship.” And the abundance of small churches is growing. I found encouragement in this that we are not alone in this trend, and I believe we should take heart that this similar pattern in GCI is commonplace among the body of Christ.
Small is not automatically indicative of bad or unhealthy. Yet when a church is small, it is easy to become fixated on growth strategies. How do we get new people through the door? How will we fill the seats? Will there be people to contribute to the offering basket? The downside of this thinking is that we start thinking about people as projects, and not as beloved children of God who are made in his image.
Because Jesus Christ is the center of our theological understanding, we understand that all humans are under his spilled blood. And because atonement has been made for all people, we cannot look at anybody outside of that atoning blood. This core understanding not only prevents us from devaluing people, but it also prevents us from approaching evangelism as a growth strategy.
In GCI, evangelism is relational and invitational. Relational evangelism teaches us that people matter, that building chemistry, and trust is hugely important, and that as believers we are to be prepared to give an answer of our hope when the conversations turn toward God. That’s when invitational comes to play. Once a relationship is built, then we invite them to join us in worship. Regardless of their initial response, we continue the relationship.
At a recent US Regional Celebration, I watched how the Spirit guided the speakers as each of them made presentations about how they are connecting with the neighbors around their church buildings. One presenter discerned that the word engage was better than outreach. Outreach sounds as if we are extending ourselves to help others who are somehow less than us, and it can subliminally make us treat them as a project rather than as a person created in God’s image. Another presenter said, “We want to be in face-to-face relationships with our neighbors.” I liked the movement toward deeper, personal connections.
We’ve also come to learn that beyond our individual efforts, the church must work together corporately through active engagement with the neighborhoods where we meet, and develop an annual rhythm of activities that allow us to invite new people in (see the Equipper articles in April, May and June on the Love Venue).
I hope you have noticed that our GCI leaders around the world are working diligently to help your church be healthy, vibrant, and effective at the size it is right now. Being healthy, vibrant, and effective is what allows us to be the light on the hill that radiates Christ’s love and truth.
In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” (Matthew 5:14-15).
It is within our movement toward health, vibrancy, and effectiveness that we glorify our Heavenly Father and more readily represent the light who isJesus.
The Lord is not surprised by the condition of the church that Christianity Today documents. And Jesus, the Head of the church, continues to work through his church no matter how large or small. It is simply our calling to actively participate with him in the opportunities he provides and allow his light to shine through us, and we trust him to add to the church daily as it pleases him.
May your church shine brightly in your little corner of the world!
We Are GCI Series is a collection of videos where various GCI leaders and members are highlighted. In this episode, Richard Bolner, GCI Pastor of Tipp City, Ohio, shares a little about himself and why he likes to serve in GCI and his love for bluegrass music.
On September 20-23, GCI President, Dr. Greg Williams, joined Michael Rasmussen (Superintendent of North America and the Caribbean), Bill and Averil Hall (National Director of Canada) and Robert and Tanya McKinney (future Regional Director of the Caribbean) for their first Community of Practice (CoP) meeting. This was the first opportunity these individuals have had to gather together face to face to discuss the vision of GCI and how to best implement and share it with those they oversee. The meetings took place in Nassau, Bahamas, just three weeks after the category 5 Hurricane Dorian devastated the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama Islands. Nassau experienced some high winds and some flooding but escaped the worst of the storm.
Left to Right: GCI Canada National Director Bill Hall, Averil Hall, GCI President Greg Williams, Susan Williams, Caribbean National Director Robert McKinney, Tania McKinney, North American Superintendent Michael Rasmussen, and Juli Rasmussen
These meetings began on Friday morning with Dr. Williams giving a presentation on GCI’s structure and vision. His presentation generated good flow and alignment for the rest of the meetings. Michael Rasmussen followed with a presentation on Team-Based / Pastor-Led and what it looks like for a congregation to be healthy with multiple layers of mentored leaders who are positioned and freed up to serve in various areas of ministry.
Bill Hall gave a report on how things are progressing within Canada and some of the challenges they are facing. Robert McKinney followed by sharing some of the challenges they face in the Caribbean, with congregations spread across numerous islands with different cultural backgrounds and where different languages are spoken. We discussed what we mean when we use terms like Healthy Pastors / Healthy Churches as well as the Faith, Love and Hope Venues. Time was provided for all participants to share and to dream about what God is doing within our denomination and to pray for one another as we join him in what he is already doing.
President Greg Williams and North American Director Mike Rasmussen meet the GCI members who survived Hurricane Dorian.
On Saturday, we all gathered for worship services. Due to the storms, there were regular power outages throughout Nassau. It was amazing to see the members adapt so quickly to the outage by moving the chairs and lectern near a glass door where light from the sun was shining in. The temperatures and humidity were extremely high, but the warm hearts and passionate attitudes of the members were even higher. It was wonderful to worship together with brothers and sisters from a different part of the world. We had the privilege of meeting some of our members who lived on Abaco and the Grand Bahamas who had survived the hurricane. All had lost their homes and earthly possessions, but they were still smiling and praising their Lord and Savior for sparing their lives. Their stories of God’s deliverance were inspiring and hair raising at the same time. Lots of help will be needed in Abaco and the Grand Bahamas, and GCI is coming alongside our local leaders to help where the need is the greatest. I have no doubt, these joy-filled, faithful brothers and sisters will rebuild and will continue to live their lives to the fullest in order to be a light to their communities and bring glory to God.
Left to Right: GCI President Greg Williams, Tania McKinney, Caribbean National Director Robert McKinney, North American Superintendent Michael Rasmussen, Averil Hall, and GCI Canada National Director Bill Hall
On Sunday morning, we once again gathered for worship, this time with no power outages. Greg Williams and Michael Rasmussen shared a sermon message and then commissioned Robert McKinney as the next Regional Director for the Caribbean. Greg Williams ordained Natania McKinney as an Elder. There was great rejoicing for what God is doing within our denomination.
On Monday we wrapped up our meetings with a time of reflection on what God has been doing and how we can be more strategic in joining him. We shared with one another some best practices our next steps in spreading the vision and the excitement of what God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are doing within Grace Communion International.
Almost one year ago, on October 22, 2018, the Christian community lost scholar, pastor, and Bible translator, Eugene Peterson. Peterson was a pillar for the Christian community and at age 85 he completed his “long obedience in the same direction.” Christianity Today interviewed eight different leaders to offer their reflections about Eugene. See the comments from Trygve Johnson below.
Pastoral ministry is serious, consequential work.
I first heard the name Eugene Peterson in college. My chaplain, after listening to me wrestle with a sense of calling, squinted like a doctor making a diagnosis, pulled a book from his shelf, and handed me The Contemplative Pastor. “Read this!” he said. I did. In Eugene’s words, I found a vision for pastoral life I had always hoped existed but did not know how to articulate.
Years later Eugene befriended me. He had recently retired to Montana. I was a young aspiring pastor, and he took me on, inviting me into a mentoring relationship through letters, conversations, books, and pilgrimages to Flathead Lake. This invitation changed my life and my ministry.
Eugene gave me a vision and a language for who I could be as a pastor. He restored honor and dignity to the calling of the pastor. Eugene revived a vision of a pastor as someone serious, intelligent, savvy, creative, playful, and prophetic. Eugene encouraged those in ministry to resist the seductive sirens of the pragmatic pastor, in favor of a ministry animated by the patient and cruciform witness of a long obedience in the same direction.
Through this encouragement, Eugene pulled me into a larger world of consequence. His words and vision helped me see and experience the wide-open country of salvation. Here, Eugene invited me to explore the geography of the Trinity, which expanded my imagination and bent my reason back into shape. The use of cliché or paint-by-numbers theology was unworthy of the work. The pastor, Eugene counseled, required a charged imagination, an earthy piety, with a double shot of humor! He showed me that a ministry at play in the expansive fields of the Triune God was a more interesting place to spend the day.
The key to this larger world was the Bible. Eugene showed me how to read with a scriptural imagination. He taught me that the goal of reading Scripture was not to know more, but to become more. His great lesson was that Scripture had everything to do with the neighborhood, because the neighborhood is where Christ shows up.
Maybe Eugene’s greatest legacy on my ministry was that he taught me to love by simply loving me. Eugene gave me time. He always wrote back. He never refused a call. He always welcomed me into his home. Never was I treated as an abstraction or a project to solve. He treated me as a friend. He showed me that healthy ministry requires, even demands, relationships where we can be known and understood.
Receiving the news of Eugene’s death feels like what the Fellowship of the Ring in the Tolkien novel of the same name must have experienced when they lost Gandalf. What do you do when your guide is gone? But Eugene taught us well, for he reminded us to practice resurrection. And so we carry the Message on! — Trygve Johnson, Hinga-Boersma Dean of the Chapel at Hope College
Comments
What a testimony. Eugene Peterson impacted scores of people with his life-on-life style of mentoring and friendship. He instructed and mentored even more through his prolific writing.
Certain lines stuck out in Johnson’s tribute. “Ministry at play in the expansive fields of the Triune God” is such a brilliant way of characterizing the context of pastoral ministry. It is finding the rhythm and dance steps that allow us to commune with Father, Son, and Spirit, while experiencing the peace, purpose and passion that flows from the divine relationship. It is joining in with what God is doing within our sphere of life and entering this divine participation that penetrates the human realm.
“Reading the Bible with a Scriptural imagination” is another choice line. As pastors and ministry leaders we don’t approach the scriptures with a clinical mindset attempting to exegete properly with the sole purpose of constructing a sermon. The Bible is God’s inspired word to us and ultimately points us to an engagement with the Living Word – Jesus. The words of the Bible should wash over us afresh each time we read the ancient words, and our imaginations should be re-ignited.
The final line that I want to highlight is “Scripture has everything to do with the neighborhood.” Pastoral ministry must navigate out from the private study, out from the sanctuary, and into the streets of the neighborhood. The Bible clearly communicates human nature and all its pitfalls; it communicates a broken world in need of deliverance, and ultimately it communicates about the Savior who is uniquely drawing all humanity unto himself and is in the process of redeeming all that is broken. This is the story that rings true for all peoples, in all places, at all times, and it needs to be proclaimed in all neighborhoods.
Thank you, Eugene Peterson, for a life well-lived, with long obedience in the same direction. And thank you GCI pastors for your long obedience in the direction toward Jesus and his eternal kingdom.
Greg Williams
P.S. In addition to The Message Bible, Eugene Peterson has contributed an entire series of books that help to guide and influence pastors in a true course. Here are a few titles of his books that are “must-reads” for any pastor who takes his/her calling seriously.
The Contemplative Pastor Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity The Unnecessary Pastor The Pastor: A Memoir
Featured image credit: Eugene Peterson lecture at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington, sponsored by the Seattle Pacific University Image Journal, by Clappstar via Wikimedia Commons.
Last Thursday, Al Nelson, GCI facilitator in Montpelier, VT, suffered a heart attack. His wife Arlene updated us on his condition, below.
Al had his operation on Friday. All went well. The surgeon was able to take care of all 5 bypasses, which is very good news. He’s out of the intensive care unit. They have had him up, walking and going up & downstairs. He might be coming home on Wednesday. But he won’t be back to his job, washing windows, for a few months! Thanks to everyone for their prayers. Praise to God.
The following is a follow-up to our article in the last issue, from Leonard Banks, GCI pastor in Rochester, NY, on his wife Patama, who has been diagnosed with lymphoma.
Patama’s recent tests reveal the lymphoma is more aggressive than doctors initially thought. She is required to be in the hospital for four days to receive chemotherapy treatments. They will give her three weeks rest at home and then she will return to do this all over again. In all, she will have six hospital visits, four days each time. She will have three weeks rest at home in between each treatment.
Howard and Becky grew up in the old WCG but when our theological transformation occurred, the Lord took them in a different direction. After participating in different Baptist churches, Howard felt the call to come back home to GCI. They made their way back through Grace Communion Orlando (GCO) where they already had a relationship with Pastor Steve Shantz. Pastor Shantz had married them back in the day and had stayed in touch with them throughout the years. Ish and Beatriz Beloso, and Felix and Mirelly Gaetan, from GCO joined Howard and Becky in the adventurous journey of starting a daughter Church. 
Howard shared how the Lord’s calling on his life to start a daughter church goes back to his wife’s (Becky) childhood. Becky and her family moved to College Park when Becky was a child. Her father was murdered in College Park in a botched robbery when Becky was just a nine-year-old girl. As Becky grew older, she also grew bitter at the person who took her father’s life. In short, the Lord did a wonderful work in Becky’s life, bringing her to the point of forgiveness and healing. When they moved back to Florida some 7 years ago, they could not get close to College Park. Becky would have panic attacks and was not able to cross the town.
When Howard felt called to plant a congregation with GCI, he never envisioned starting the church in College Park. When he was initially exploring the different areas where he can connect with the age demographics that he felt called to, College Park was the community that was the best fit. The Lord continued to work in Becky’s heart, bringing her to the point of fully reconciling her past and comprehending that the residents of College Park belonged to the Lord, hence the name, “Belong Church.” She slowly warmed up to the idea of launching the church in her old town, and Sunday was a testament to the grace of God.
Four months ago, the Salters moved their family to College Park and started engaging their community. The Lord opened many doors for ministry, including a school across the street from their home where Belong Church now meets. GCI is catching the wave of the Spirit and joining Jesus in his everyday mission in our communities. Please join me in lifting up prayers of thanksgiving for the Salters and their team as they continue to missionally engage their neighbors in College Park.
