In my role as Associate Pastor, I am continually engaged in one-on-one discipleship and pastoral care, while also equipping our church for missions locally and globally.
Locally, I am thrilled to share a Gospel Community that meets in our home. While some have moved away this year, we have thirteen currently gathering to embrace their identity in Christ, becoming who Christ has made them to be, to walk daily in the light of God’s Word, and to live as an Ambassador of Christ who shares the message of reconciliation and acts out the ministry of reconciliation.
Read on for more updates on our global missions at The Gathering Place.
Our purpose is to be disciples and equip disciples.
Our Mission Team together discipled thirty-seven missionary units that serve throughout twenty-seven agencies locally, in the US, and around the world. This is how we practice being disciples and equipping disciples — in the words of Acts 1:8 — in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the world.
To best equip these missionaries, we direct financial resources toward meeting these missionaries’ needs and especially in responding to critical needs — from health problems to natural disasters, transportation needs to financial care for their disciples on the ground, or needs related to persecution and violence in their countries. With the body of TGP striving together, we support and equip these missionaries to make disciples around the world.
Scripturally Rooted.
Relationally Committed.
Sacrificially Minded.
Missionally Driven.
While Missions reaches around the globe, our approach to Missions is Relationally Committed through and through.
We are constantly in communication with our missionaries and provide personal care for their needs, finances, and challenges throughout the year. We bring missionaries into our Spring and Fall Missions Weekends so that our whole church can be personally invested in their stories, their needs, and their ministry. Together, we pray for them and united our church behind them.
Next year, we want to strengthen our value of being Missionally Driven and see more members of our church family move into mission here at home and on short-term trips around the world.
Life Change:
the result of being disciples and equipping disciples together
There are countless stories where our church family’s sacrificially minded giving has changed the story for our partner missionaries. For example, we were able to equip Mark Smith, among indigenous peoples in Canada, to reach new groups through a strategic men’s conference. Or in Costa Rica, when a woman’s shanty blew off of the cliff it was built along, we partnered with Lillian Solt to help relocate this woman safely and rebuilding her a secure dwelling.
When our church gives to support missions, we are able to help incredible causes like Jason & Jenna Weigner’s project in Bolivia to build a discipleship center that is powered by solar power and able to sustainably extend the mission into new territories. We have been able to put direct resources into war-torn Lebanon rescuing women from trafficking.
Every investment from our church body equips the global body of Christ.
What does engagement look like?
We currently support 37 missionary units in nations around the world.
We all must respond to God’s call to be disciples and missionaries in our world, so explore where you can and should respond: is it at home through a Gospel Community, through increased giving to send a partner, or through a short-term trip where you go into the wider field?