What It Will Be Like

 

We have had a lot of people ask what it will be like to go to missions school in Southern Texas. What will you do? Where will you go? What will life look like for you? These are all good questions so I thought I'd post what one group of first year students are doing right now (great video at the end).

Three weeks a month are spent in the classroom learning from top-notch christian leaders and missionaries about how do do the work of proclaiming the gospel to unreached/unengaged people groups around the word. We will be trained to be biblically qualified to share the gospel, disciple new believers, start the local church, and leave a self sufficent growing national church reaching out to their community and beyond. I am SO excited to be trained in all of these things! We are also going to be trained in missional living and the way to be prepared for it. Make no mistake, there is no sugar coating or romanticising the hard work ahead for missionarey families. But the joy of sharing the good news of life with someone who would otherwise never hear it is unbelievable. To be able to share the key to peace and joy and delight forever, namely Jesus, is worth it all!

So to give you a flavor of the teachers/professors we will have the privilage to study under I have taken a sample of the teachers from the To Every Tribe website. Some names may be farmilar to you.

 

Steve Best is Director of the Center for Pioneer Church Planting. He has over 30 years of pastoral and church planting experience. Steve leads the CPCP Chapel and Prayer Ministries, oversees the mentoring of trainees and teaches Bible Exposition, Discipleship, and Chronological Bible Storying at the CPCP.

 

Chad Bresson is one of the pastors of Clearcreek Chapel near Dayton, Ohio where he also directs and teaches at the Biblical Theology Study Center. Chad teaches Bible Exposition at the CPCP.

 

Jerry Bridges is a well-known Christian writer and conference speaker. He is author of several books, including, the Pursuit of Holiness, the Gospel for Real Life, and the Discipline of Grace. He has been on the staff of The Navigators since 1955 and currently serves as a resource person to the Navigators University Students Ministry in the United States. He teaches Biblical Spirituality.

 

David Depew is a former missionary to Thailand and the current President of New Life Advance International. He teaches Ethno-theology and Team Development.

 

Paul Dreblow is a missionary with To Every Tribe to Muslims in Minneapolis, MN, and works to develop leadership and mentoring among converted Muslims in places like Azerbaijan and Indonesia. He's currently pursuing a Ph.D. in New Testament. He teaches Muslim Missions and General Epistles.

 

Dr. David Edgington is the lead Biblical Counselor at Compassionate Counselors, Phoenix, AZ and is a certified Nouthetic Counselor. He teaches Biblical Counseling and Teams.

Dr. AJ Gibson is the To Every Tribe Mexico Field Director. Before coming to To Every Tribe, he served as the Director of Theology at the Christian University of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico, where he also church planted. He teaches Systematic Theology.

David Harrell is the former Executive Director of To Every Tribe. He teaches Spiritual Warfare in Western Context and Systematic Theology.

Dr. Eddie Johnson is a respected, gifted and wise Bible teacher. He teaches Pentatuech to Joshua and OT Poetry and Prophets.

Dr. Stephen Leston is the pastor of Kishwaukee Bible Church in DeKalb, IL and has a Doctor of Biblical Studies Degree. He teaches Bible Exposition.

David Morris is an itinerant evangelist and conference speaker who previous served as a pastor for 20 years. He teaches Judges to Nehemiah, Christ in the Old Testament and Gospels.
 

Dr. Robert Reese is the Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural Ministry at Roanoke Bible College, Elizabeth City, NC. He teaches Dependency, Indigenity and Church Planting.

 

Don Richardson is a missionary, teacher, author, and international speaker who worked among the Sawi people of Western New Guinea, Indonesia. He teaches on redemptive analogy, Islamic Issues, and the Stars & Sand Seminar.

 

Martin Rizley is an Elder at Texarkana Reformed Baptist Church and a former church planting missionary to Spain. He teaches on Roman Catholicism.

 

Ron Sanford is the Executive Director of To Every Tribe, assists in team-building and teaches Christian Liberty and Relationship Building at the CPCP.

 

Margie Sanford has served in several roles at To Every Tribe. She teaches Chronological Bible Storying and Training for Missionary Wives.

 

Dr. David Sills is the Professor of Missions and Cultural Anthropology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. He teaches Cross-Cultural Church Planting.

 

David Sitton is the President of To Every Tribe and teaches several classes at the CPCP, including Theology of Suffering and Martyrdom, Spiritual Warfare in Animistic Cultures, Contextualization, Principles of Pioneer Church Planting and Cross-Cultural Mission.

 

Vernon and Carla Sterk served as missionaries in Chiapas, Mexico for over 40 years. There they did work in pioneer church planting and missions. Vernon holds a Ph.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission. The Sterks teach Mission Across Cultures at the CPCP.  

Harry Stoliker is the pastor of Emmanuel Bible Church in Schooley's Mountain, NJ. He teaches on the book of Hebrews.

 

Curtis Thomas is a former pastor, co-leader of Little Door International in Myanmar, co-owner of several land development communities, and has authored several books. He teaches on Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

Greg Van Court is the pastor of Dayspring Fellowship in Austin, Texas and a Ph.D candidate in New Testament at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He teaches Reformed Theology.

Steve Weaver is pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY and Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  He is pursuing a Ph.D. in Church History from SBTS and is Managing Editor of the semi-annual Eusebeia: The Bulletin of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He teaches History of Missions.

Blake White is pursuing a Ph.D at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of five books including The Law of Christ: A Theological Proposal and The Newness of the New Covenant. Blake teaches New Covenant Theology and Paul's Epistles.

 

Dr. Hershael York is the pastor of Buck Run Baptist Church, Lexington, KY, and a Professor of Preaching at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. He teaches on The Book of Acts.

 

 

One week out of every month students from Center for Pioneer Church Planting(CPCP) go across the border into Mexico to bring the gospel to villages where there is little or no access to the gospel. This is where they apply what they've been learning about cross-culture missions in a real ongoing church plant setting.  I'll post more about that later.

I really wanted to post what a group of first year students are doing right now.  Along with the one week every month, students go on a 3-4 week trip every spring.  Five students are in India right now.  We have had the priviledge to meet these students in January and we are excited to see what they are doing and what we may be doing in the future.  This is a great video Jarod complated and put together from other video of India.  Please take 3 minutes to watch it.

 

                                                         CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO

Finally, here is a schedule of what this team will be doing in India for their 3-4 weeks.  Pretty amazing!

 

Quick Trip To Texas

A couple weekends ago, just in time for a big storm and a cold spell to hit Montana, Josh and I flew to Texas.  The Center for Pioneer Church Planting (CPCP) was having their annual open house and we were so excited to attend!   

 

The day before we left.

Our trip south included waking up at 3:30 am, driving to the airport on icy roads in 9 degree weather, a four hour delay at Salt Lake, the discovery of a lost drivers licence in Houston, difficulty picking up our rental car because of said lost drivers licence (thank you Jill for mailing Josh's licence to us!), and then a six hour drive south to Los Fresnos where it was 75 degrees and humid at 11:30 at night, and finally our arrival at our destination at 1:15 am.  It was a long day full of twists and turns! 

On the plane (Felt like we were on our honeymoon!) 

We were blessed to stay at the Chachalaca property, which has recently been purchased and will most likely be the ministry headquarters and the CPCP campus in the future.  The Chachalaca Inn is wonderful and we were so blessed to be able to stay in such nice room for free!

 Where we stayed



  

 

    

 



The sessions for the open house were great.  There were thirty prospective students, supporters of the ministry, and some people who came just to encourage the missionaries they support.  It was insightful to see where To Every Tribe has been and where they are headed.  There was also a lot of information about what the school's aim is- namely to launch gospel centered, biblically qualified, vocationally trained, unreached peoples focused, missionaries who treasure Jesus.
      

 It was similar to drinking out of a fire hose! The school's focus on training in the classroom with professors and missionaries from all over the world is exciting.  To be trained by former missionaries that have countless years of practical experience and can help students avoid common pitfalls is great.  
 

The In-field training was great to review again.  The CPCP is not simulating cross-cultural, unreached missions and church planting.  They are actually doing the real work through the students!  There are four villages that CPCP has been working with in Tamaulipas Mexico, all within 70 miles of the US border and another 15 minutes from Los Fresnos.



The emphasis on team missions was also great.  I can not verify these statistics but we were told the  average missionary lasts 2.4 years.  And the number one reason they leave is due to conflict within their team.  We need teams to do this work but no matter how focused on a unified goal people are, people are people.  They are all different and this two year training helps teams learn how to work through these differences and still keep the main goal in front of them.

The greatest part of the open house was to talk with the current fist and second year students and look at how community life works.  How do the families interact? What kind of support is in place for the families while the students are in Mexico or Paupa New Guinea?  How can you live in a two bedroom apartment with five kids!  It was great to ask some of these students and families what life looks like on campus.

The apartments where we will live



We were able to make a quick trip to South Padre Island.  It was cool and windy but still a treat to go to the beach! 

 



We were glad it wasn't a blue flag: presence of venemous marine life!

 

It's amazing how God graciously gives us something that seems so hard looking ahead at it, but with His help we get through it and that very same event seems easy compared to the next storm in life. The best illustration for me (Josh) is kids. When Brita and I were first married and going to college we truly felt like we had no time. Ha! We were going here and there; school, work, youth group, tennis, fishing, and the mandatory Saturday sleep in were taking all our time. Then we had Dan and life was crazy! It was so good but we looked back at life before kids and couldn't believe all the time we had. Then when we had two kids and thought we were spoiled with two parents to one kid with just Dan. Now we had man-on-man defense and again, this stage was more challenging than the last. But with the challenge came the greater reward. We now have been rewarded with four awesome kids and can't imagine life without them! But if you asked me if I could handle four kids one month after Dan was born, I would have looked at you with my sleep deprived eyes and said emphatically no! 

So it has been with our life.  Selling our house and moving into a two bedroom apartment was hard, but as we look to living so close to so many people in a smaller apartment in Los Fresnos, away from family and friends, this first step seems easy in comparison.  And what was really exciting was that when we got home to our apartment in Bozeman, it felt like home.  I was glad to be there.  And the joy for taking these baby steps in faith have already deepened our relationship with each other, with our kids, and most importantly it has made our relationship with Christ sweeter!  We are so excited we get to do this!

In short, it was a great trip and we continue to ask for your prayers as we move forward with partnering with others to reach the nations with Jesus!