Ron Boehm, shown here with his wife, Chery, is the Midwest career church-planting missionary with Grace Brethren North American Missions. In this encouraging report Ron conveys his excitement at what God is doing in raising up Grace Brethren church planters in the Midwest.
Where do you find church planters? They are very special people who serve a peculiar work of the church to bring the Gospel to all kinds of people in all kinds of places.
Our God is a sending God (John 20:21) and those who successfully planted churches were sent out or scattered by His Spirit (Acts 8:1 & 13:2f). It makes sense that we should be looking for those whom the Spirit is sending.
Pastor Tony Webb and I have been working together in conjunction with the VisionOhio Church Planting Operations Center to find those God is sending into His harvest fields.
Tony has focused his two-day-a-week efforts on contacting individuals in Ohio who have completed our “R U A Church Planter?” web survey. Consequently we have more than 46 who are seriously contemplating and evaluating if God is sending them to plant new churches.
We try to help these individuals evaluate the call of God on their lives. We use three online assessments and a very intense interview to appraise the skill level of each one for the work of church planting.
In addition we gather references, encourage extended relationships with other Grace Brethren leaders, and provide leadership training environments, trusting that God will clarify to them and the church His call on their lives.
So you can see why we need your prayers for this holy work. How can we find the men God is calling into His harvest fields unless the Spirit leads us throughout the process?
Furthermore, if the number of potential church planters continues to rise as it has the past six months, pray that we will be prepared to seriously engage the sending and supporting of many new church-planting leaders into His harvest fields!