For the past few days, I have had one of the greatest honors of my life. The Lord opened up a door for my teammates and I to lead a pastors and next generation leaders conference here in Romania. Tommy and Linda Gable in Nicaragua did something similar on a weekly basis for the pastors of Nicaragua. As we talked with John Fracker about how we would love to take part in something like this if the Lord opened the door, God threw the door wide open. I can’t even begin to explain how my heart leaped at this opportunity. I firmly believe that the church is God’s answer for all that is wrong in the world (Acts 1:8) and one of the best ways to help any church shine brighter for the kingdom is to help equip the leaders of the church to shine brighter. It was a huge blessing from God to even be a part of something like this.
Will, Tiffany, and I spent a crazy amount of time praying about what to teach on and preparing the curriculum for the conference. After ministering here for about 3 weeks, we felt that the major issue facing the churches in the area is the lack of emphasis on living in a personal relationship with God. Christianity in this area looks like more of a routine than enjoying Jesus.
Go to church.
Give.
Pray from time to time.
And that is about it.
The Gospel is absolutely being preached. These church leaders in the area fully affirm that salvation is by grace through faith alone and that the cross of Christ is sufficient to cover all sin (Eph 2:8-9). Yet when it comes to driving people to a place of enjoying the Lord and fully living for Him, there was an obvious void there. So we felt that instead of teaching leadership principles, we would focus on what walking with Jesus looks like seeing as being a great worshipper of God is infinitely more important than being a great leader for God.
It was one crazy and amazing time for sure. We started with about 14 pastors on the first day. And by the end of the second session, we had grown it down to about 8 pastors. There was some hard truth that we felt God had laid on our hearts and by some it was not well received. But we could not say that we truly cared for the church here if we did not tell them that religious routine is not the way to the heart of the Father. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him (thank you Dr. Piper). Also this was the first time that I would face persecution for being an American. One of the pastors said that he had to leave because his tooth was hurting him. We suggested that the group should lay hands on him and pray over him to see if the Lord would heal his tooth so that he could stay at the conference. His response was that if we “Americans” touched him, he would beat us over our heads with his bible. The was a strong spirit of pride in the room and some of the pastors left after the session on how to engage in a relationship with the Lord.
The pastors that stayed were so hungry for God’s Word. They wanted to know Jesus and what the Bible says and were willing to listen to anyone who would teach them. The Lord is moving greatly in their hearts and the way they sought after Him during the sessions that were set aside for personal devotional time was amazing. We talked about what community looks like (Acts 2:42-47), how to handle conflict resolution (Matt 18), Purity (1 Cor 6:18), Missional Living (Acts 1 and Isaiah 1), and lastly Humility (Prov 16:18).
There were so many cultural issues that we had to combat, but God showed up in the most amazing way in their lives. John loved what he saw the Holy Spirit do in their hearts and is going to be continuing to train pastors on a monthly basis from here forward. This brought us a great amount of joy. The Lord is already using John as a leader of leaders here. And we were able to partner with him in his desire to equip the leaders of the surrounding churches to shine brighter for the Kingdom.
Praise the Lord for His faithfulness and working through a bunch of twenty-somethings who have nothing to bring to the table except a love for Jesus.
for God
for People
for the Nations
for the Kingdom
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