MORE AREA MINISTRIES
Training & Mentorship Programs
Many young men and women travel from the hills to our training center where we helpthemto develop life skills. Traditionally, we have starting our training by giving them a hoe and sending them out to the fields. Offended, may would say, “We came here to study the scriptures.” In return, we respond, “How many of the people, who you will pastor, are farmers...How often do they work all day behind that hoe? This is your most important lesson: Learn to meet God behind that hoe. If you personally cannot meet with your God by daily worshiping Him behind the hoe, how will you understand your people? How are you going to teach your flock to know God, when they spend every day behind that hoe?”
Knowing God is the foundation stone of healthy change. From this bedrock there are fundamental places of growth. Shifts in understanding can unfold as these students understand who God is and what He requires of them. We also focus on changing the student's worldview or paradigm. In the 3rd world regions, we help the students aretaught how to move from hopelessness (fatalism) to innovated partnership with God. Teaching young people the skills of good thinking puts them far beyond many regional college graduates in their abilities.
The young adults that we mentor learn how to care for orphans, study the scriptures, master basic skills such as reading and writing in their native tongue. They are exposed to agriculture methods and are trained to be progressive thinkers in their culture. Many of the young people we mentor are orphans we raised, and are now in the next level of preparation for life and service in God’s kingdom.
Another vehicle for training is "extension", or yearly modules taught to field workers during a one to three month time frame. This gives individuals, who labor in God’s vineyard, the chance to be tended to and be watered themselves. Most of the national pastors we partner with have very little outside help and struggle to make a living AND preach the good news at the same time.
Discipleship is a model that Jesus left His church and it has hard to go wrong by investing in folks such as these...people who labor and live in places most of us would dread.
