Work Behind The Scenes
There’s no doubt that the pandemic has slowed down our travel, but that pause has given us a chance to work behind the scenes on projects like our ‘International Partnership Program’ (IPP). Todd Peterson, Pastor of Cross of Grace Church, El Paso, TX is heading up this project for us. Here’s the scoop…
It was some months ago now that we started work on the IPP and myself, along with Pat Tedeschi (Pastor of Green Tree Church, New Jersey), Allen Dicharry (Pastor of Sovereign Grace Church, Midland, TX) and Pete Schefferstein (Pastor of Lakeview Christian Church, New Orleans) are really very excited to be working on this new initiative together.
In headline, the goal of this endeavor is to help US Sovereign Grace Churches to connect in long term partnerships with our international Sovereign Grace Churches. We know that there are many existing SG churches that already have meaningful and fruitful international partnerships, but we also understand that there are many more churches that have the desire for partnership but don’t know where to turn to get started.
That’s where the IPP comes in, which will entail things like:
Helping US churches to identify their heart for a specific region of the world
Identifying partnership interested international churches
Helping with partner matches
Helping with effective short term mission trip planning and creation
As mentioned above, one important aspect of international partnership is short term mission trips. These trips not only give US churches an opportunity to build deep relationships with an international church as they actively work together in the “local” ministry of the gospel, but also have a tremendous effect on those that have never experienced the struggle of gospel ministry in a foreign country.
We recognize, however, that running a short term missions trip is very resource and administratively intensive and so not every church can form their own team by themselves. This results in many individuals never really having the opportunity to go on a trip, and so, given the impact of these trips, it is our desire is to help make it possible for anyone who attends an SG church to go on a short term missions trip if they desire.
We plan to achieve this creating a website that will enable missions teams with room for extra people to post their trip on the website and therefore give the opportunity for others in SG to apply to join those trips.
Our goal is to have the ST missions site complete by this fall in time for 2021 trips to be registered. We also hope to have the partnership process ready by the second half of 2021. Please pray for us that we would be led by the Lord as we seek to better connect our ever growing global family of churches!
