Last week was a ministry week. But isn’t every week a ministry week? Ministry week at IGSL is unique and one of the key experiences that separate our ministry training from many others. This is a week where each faculty member goes with their small group of students to a local context and partners with a local ministry in grassroots Great Commission ministry.

This was a different ministry week in that most of the guys in my group are graduating this year, meaning this will be the third year together and third year of doing ministry weeks. And it was a joy to see them really excel when a couple years ago some of them were limited by English or relative inexperience.  We partnered with a network of churches in San Jose Del Monte in the province of Bulacan (north of Manila) to help them train and equip their emerging leaders for evangelism, follow-up, and with some small group leadership training.

The church was planted 9 years ago by an IGSL alumni. In the 9 years, they have grown to several hundred members with most of their growth through new believers from nominal Catholic or a-religious backgrounds. They also began church planting immediately and have 6 daughter churches all that have 150 or more members (over 1100 members among all the daughter churches)  and that are thriving in their parts of the city. Their strategy has been to release 50-100 of their members and leaders to help launch a new church when they have the people and the Lord’s leading. The main church needed help training their new leaders after releasing over many of their top people in the previous three years.

Each of our team got opportunities to preach and conduct various trainings.  I conducted a couple sessions on “Leader Conversations” helping train their people on how to lead teams and small groups through the many challenging conversations that leaders must be able to initiate and handle well in grace and truth. Jonathan (Mindanao), Quang (Vietnam) and Dondi (Indonesia) conducted evangelism trainingsand new believer follow-up training. Amiyo (Bangladesh) helped train them on how to use their personal testimony in witnessing.

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One of the highlights was that we conducted two different digital ministry and digital evangelismtrainings – one for the church leaders and another for the young professionals, college, and high school students. Dondi (pictured above from Indonesia) led these times and did a fantastic job introducing them to various ways to share the gospel through phones, gadgets, and various apps like facebook.  He introduced them to apps like God Tools, you-tube short films, the Jesus Film, Soularium, and others that can be used in various ways to initiate spiritual conversations or help guide someone through a gospel presentation (I also like the Big Story gospel app from IVF). This was extremely well received and so many expressed excitement to share the gospel in a way that felt comfortable and native to how they relate to their friends (i.e. through their phones!).

But the ministry is only one benefit. This was the most fun I’ve had on a ministry week – some because of the years of investment with some of these guys. But we laughed pretty hard throughout the week serving together and facing various challenges together. It was a great bonding time and there were numerous opportunities for heart to heart mentoring with individual guys through the time. These will be some of the more memorable times from these guys’ time at IGSL!

We had a great week of seeing the Lord work in people’s lives and were very encouraged by how God is using one of IGSL’s alumni to multiply churches. Overall – IGSL sent out over 25 teams and collectively we saw several thousand people come to faith in Christ, but probably more significantly all of our teams collectively were able to train several thousand believers and church leaders to multiply their faith through evangelism and discipleship. It’s invaluable for students to integrate classroom learning with field experience and that’s one of the things we do really well so thank you for your prayers. These weeks are always a high point of the school year and an essential part of the curriculum!

Partnering With You,
Brian & Christine