PRMI’s Dunamis Fellowship

I’ve returned from the Annual Meeting of the Dunamis Fellowship of Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International in Black Mountain NC. 

I have been part of this organization since at least 1997, and have been a faculty member of the Fellowship.  This means that I am called upon to teach their courses, particularly the Evangelism Dunamis Tract, at various locations in the country.

I attend the annual meeting every year since it is a chance to reconnect with "family" friends that perhaps I only get to see once a year.  It is also my annual prayer retreat.

This year, I had the privilege of leading the morning Bible study.  The theme that the Lord had put on my heart was the "Father’s Heart for the nations."  We are called into the kingdom of God, not only so that we’ll have eternal life, but so that we can participate in God’s plan to gather the nations to worship Christ.

Another rather significant development took place.

I was set apart as "Pioneer Faculty for Missions and Evangelism in the Americas."  I received commissioning prayer in this role. 

I will become their point person for training and teaching on Missions and Evangelism, in both English Speaking and Spanish speaking congregations in the Western Hemisphere.  That’s a broad territory!  

PRMI doesn’t have much inroad yet into the Hispanic churches and so the need is pioneer that work.  How this will all work logistically (funding, developing more leaders, for example), we are still sorting out, but we both sense that this is God’s doing as our ministry unfolds. 

There is so much crossover between the work of PRMI and the work of EvangelismCoach.org that there is a natural synthesis of the two.

Upcoming Schedule

Here are some upcoming events where we are scheduled to present at workshops:

February

• Youth Retreat — Seeking the Holy Spirit; Gorgona Beach, Panama — 18-22 February

March

• Mount Oak United Methodist Church, Washington DC, March 9
• Missions Conference, Iglesia Communidad Evangelica, Richmond VA, March 9

April

• Presbytery of the James Evangelism Conference, Richmond VA, April 5
• PC USA Multi Cultural Church Conference, San Antonio TX, April 10-13

I will be in Richmond VA from April 4 – April 9.  I am available for workshops in DC and Eastern NC during that time.

If you would like to schedule EvangelismCoach.org for a workshop around any of the above dates, feel free to contact me directly.  If you simply want to meet for some coffee when I’m in town (I miss starbucks), please let me know.

January EvangelismCoach.org Newsletter

The January Newsletter for EvangelismCoach has been released.

If you haven’t received it via email, visit on the Newsletter Signup page at EvangelismCoach.  You’ll find the link to the archive there.

January’s newsletter has a free resource: the power point presentation given at the Dunamis Fellowship for PRMI about God’s Heart for the Nations. 

Articles in January include a discussion on the definition of Evangelism and a 4 part series on God’s Heart for the nations.

Networking with other Pastors

Willow Creek Leadership Summit

In early January, Willow Creek Community Church sent their advance planning team for the Global Leadership Summit. 

It is a leadership development conference held every August in Chicago at the Willow Creek Campus, and broadcast via Satellite to multiple locations throughout the country. 

The videos are then edited, dubbed into Spanish, and then we in Panama would have a leadership summit held at our church for pastors around the country, and perhaps from neighboring countries like Costa Rica and Colombia.

In 2006 alone (Source):

• 85,000 leaders were trained
• 176 cities in 18 countries hosted events
• 10,000 volunteers participated
• 8,000 churches were represented

We met the Willow Creek team at our church, together with about 20 pastors from various different denominations.   When each pastor was introduced, most every one was also a supervisor of some kind in their denominational tradition.  I had the chance to speak with several of them, and invitations are beginning to come for evangelism workshops.

The group did decide that they would form the local planning team and I will be a part of that team, offering the administrative gifts as necessary.

Foursquare Church Pastors

Also that week, we had a visiting Foursquare pastor from the US who brought us the Word in church, and he invited me to dinner with nearly 15 other visiting pastors from the United States.  It was a good dinner at an ocean front restaurant.  We ate outdoors to enjoy the breeze. 

The pastors were here in Panama to learn about the History of the Foursquare’s work in Panama.  Panama was the first country that Foursquare missionaries went to when the denomination was in it’s infancy.

That same weekend, I also met people from the Foursquare Press who are in town working on some youth material – they have not yet made contact with Vida Joven (young life) to get their input and I will put them together.

Children’s Leadership Conference – Penonome Panama

Brenda and I have returned from the Interdenominational Camp for Children’s Leaders, held at the Foursquare Camp in the mountains around Penonome Panama.

There were nearly 250 children’s workers, pastors, and elders in attendance from 9 denominations (not one Presbyterian but us), from nearly every province in the country.  Some came on a 14 hour bus ride to get there.

We shared the stage with recognized experts in the US in Child Evangelism (http://www.onewaystreet.com/, http://www.chagy.com/, and Kurt Jarvis of www.incm.org).

Our workshops

Brenda taught a workshop on crafts, and appeared to have nearly 100 people in attendance.  She showed how one can use every day materials (e.g., toilet paper holders, paper plates, paper towels, egg cartons) and cheap supplies (like popsicle sticks) to make all sorts of simple crafts.

I taught two workshops on Developing and Stepping into your vision, based on some principles gleaned from Nehemiah.  I still teach with a translator, but conversationally, my Spanish is improving.

Brandon and Anakarina had a great time and had the opportunity to participate in some choreographed dances (Anakarina stole the audience’s heart) and Brandon even managed to get several to play the UNO game with him (which he taught in his limited Spanish).

This conference has allowed us to network with many workers here in Panama.  Brenda and I both received invitations for follow up workshops at churches all over the country.  To accept them all, or follow up on all of them, would keep us busy here for the next several months.

Other workshop topics included:

• Teaching Bible Lessons Creatively
• Basics of Children’s Ministry
• Introduction to Puppets
• Developing Leaders in Children’s Ministry
• Introduction to Christian Clowning
• Teaching the Bible using Object lessons
• Ideas for teaching children about the Bible and prayer
• Bible Memory via music
• Principles of successful leadership
• Using face painting to teach the Bible
• Visual Ideas to teach the Bible
• Recruiting and Training Volunteers
• Clown Makeup
• Ideas for maintaining discipline and attention in the classroom
• Child Psychology and development
• Creativity with Crafts for Sunday school
• Intermediate Puppet training
• Creative Evangelism with clowning.
• How to make balloon sculptures
• Games to learn Bible stories
• Development and Maturing of your vision
• Basics of clown movement
• Tools to aid in Bible Memory
• The development of faith in a child regarding salvation
• Sleight of hand tricks to use for gospel stories
• Ventriloquism with puppets
• Using the Wordless Book
• Motivating leaders
• Songs with puppets
• How to work with Children in High Risk Areas.

I got to get familiar finally with the evangecube and the wordless books for children’s evangelism.  These are tools I have been aware of, but never had my hands on them.

See our photos here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=26674&l=0e01c&id=577988295.

Continue to pray for our work here.  For those of you who donated in December, we give you deep thanks for your timely gifts.

Children’s Leadership Conference

Brenda and I leave to the interior of Panama to teach at an annual conference of Children’s ministers and leaders.  Brenda will be teaching a workshop on crafts, and I’ll be teaching two workshops on leadership.

It’s an annual conference, sponsored by our church, and this year, it will be held at a denominational camp about 3 hours outside of the city.

We look forward to the fresh air, being in the mountains, and trust that God will use us.

Pray for our safe travel, pray for divine appointments as we continue to seek clarity in our call here.

We will spend Sunday resting at a beach on the pacific before returning to the hustle of the city on Monday.