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In connection to the National Women's Ministries of the Free Church now called EFCA Resound, our district team is thrilled to present to you our heart and plans for women's ministries in the Midwest District. (all of Nebraska and Kansas along with Kansas City, Missouri) We want to come alongside you in your churches, as you choose to open the door to us, for one of two things. Our first desire is to connect relationally in order to provide support, prayer, and encouragement to you in the things that you are doing. Then, if it makes sense we'd love to come along side to help you evaluate, make plans for change and find the resources to make it happen. Our heart is to see effective ministry to women in all of our churches that will produce disciple makers. We want to see women all over this district experiencing a ministry that has deep and lasting fruitfulness.
Our hope is that once you read through this vision document, you'll get as excited as we are about the potential and then connect with us on how you want to partner.. In the very near future, there will be links that introduce you to our team, the resources we have for training, the trainers we have available to do the training and a monthly training tool you can use to keep you moving forward with the vision.
God bless you as you invest yourselves in the Kingdom of God!
Judy Brower
District Team leader and National Mobilizer
judy@riverviewcc.org;
(402)-521-0257 |
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Our calling: The Great Commission
To make disciples who will change the world! (Matthew 28:18-20)
"Go, (and as you are going) make disciples (lifestyle)
"of all the nations" - it can't be done by addition. We have to be committed to multiplication!.
God has not called us to anything less. Every other accomplishment is insignificant in comparison and too small of a thing! (Isaiah 49:6) Nothing less is worth living for! (Matthew 13:45,46) Everything has to be about the ONE thing, people finding Jesus and becoming passionate and equipped to help others find Him. This must be the highest purpose for everything we do in our ministry to women. (1 Cor. 9:16-23)
Since our goal is to learn to live out this great commission "as we are going," we need to equip ourselves in parenting, marriage as God intended it, and all of the other daily relationships that matter to us! But we can't ever afford to do those things or even build our own relationship with God as an end in itself! Everything has to be about the ONE thing Jesus modeled His entire time on the earth. He was with people for the purpose of winning and building everyone He came in contact with, but His overall purpose was equipping His disciples to win, build and equip others so that the message would go forth over time in an exponential way! While there is a logical progression from winning to building to equipping to sending, we will not view them as isolated phases. Jesus was equipping His disciples as He was winning the lost. He was equipping them as He was calling them. (Luke 5:4-10) He was equipping them through His modeling, even before He called them. Jesus was building and equipping His disciples all the time, but it was always around winning the lost because that was His primary purpose for coming to earth. (Luke 4:43; 15) He was intentional about doing all three.
When we are focused and intentional we can do the same. We have seen such a great movement toward building women in their faith in the last decade. Now our goal is to build on that, resourcing women's ministry to embrace the broader focus of Jesus. We believe in women's lives being used by God to win, build, equip and multiply laborers for the Kingdom.
The disciple making pathway is a tool to help us evaluate what we are doing and where it is taking us. This is essential for these reasons. Our natural tendency is to build. Building the believer is the road of least resistance and therefore the easiest road to get people on. It is also the road we've been on the longest and where we feel the most competent to lead. Building believers by itself is impotent with regards to the call on our lives revealed in the modeling of our Lord Jesus and His final Great Commission for our lives!-
Our commitment: The Great Commandment
To love the Lord your God... and your neighbor as yourself! (Matthew 22:37-39)
"Go, (and as you are going) make disciples
"of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you..."
All that He has commanded summed up into one. So simple, and yet as we live in this sinful body, so impossible! Loving behavior, we can pull that off most of the time. Love that is genuine and from the HEART, that we can never pull off. Nothing but the truth of God's word has the power to set our hearts free to that kind of love. (John 8:32) As Paul told Timothy, "The goal of our instruction is LOVE from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith! (1 Timothy 1:5) We cannot afford to go to the Word of God with any other goal than to know the truth that will set us free to love. It is full of life giving truth about who our God is and what this life is all about. It is those very truths that will set us free to keep the great commandment and in so doing, fulfill the law of God!!!We are needy people and our flesh CRAVES so many things that without intentionally taking life giving truth to heart and learning to live by it every day, we will always go back to living for ourselves!
Great Commission work can only be done by those whose hearts and lives are abandoned to the purposes of God. The sacrificial life of Christ must be lived moment by moment . It means a continual laying down of our lives. Not for the purpose of being nice people or making others happy, but for for the sake of the Kingdom of God in them and through them!
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Our confidence: The Great Companion
"Go (and as you are going) make disciples of all the nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:20)The fruit of the Spirit makes us into the kind of people we need to be. (Gal 5:22,23)
The power of the Spirit is the only way laborers can be raised up. (1 Cor. 2:4,5, 12-16)God's presence with us is all anyone has ever needed to complete an assignment from God!We have the Holy Spirit of the Living God within us! He is the only companion we will ever have as we live this life who can know us and love us the way He does. The only one capable of always being with us. The only one capable of changing us or saving another soul. We have to learn to walk in and with this powerful and life giving Companion.The fruit of the Spirit cannot grow out of trying harder nor can laborers be made from human effort. The life of Christ can only be experienced through a deep and constant connection to His Spirit within us. If we have no life within us, we have no life to give away! The goal to impact the world through multiplication requires that we learn to live in a moment by moment awareness and full on surrender to our Great Companion and His great purposes in our lives! |
