On Tuesday, Ben, Julie, and Austin had the awesome opportunity to go with Frank Wardlow and Melyssa Cardenas (61 Isaiah Ministries) into the mountain village of San Pedrito to study with some of the pastors that are part of the 2nd year of pastor training. Each month from March through October, the pastors all come to Gracias for 2 1/2 days of training. As a part of this training, they are broken into groups and each group is assigned a scripture to study and prepare a sermon, which they will preach in the training later in the year. During the month, the teachers all split up and go into the village to meet with the pastors there and help them study their passage. We were able to go with Frank and Melyssa so we can learn what they are doing when they go into the villages and be able to get a translator and go separately ourselves to help carry that teaching responsibility.
So if our mission is, “We believe in giving at risk children a new beginning in life with love, hope, family, discipleship, and opportunity to hear about the love of Jesus Christ.”, why are we spending so much time involved in pastoral training? The answer is found in Ephesians 4:11-16:
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:11-16 ESV).
You see, the command from our Lord and Savior is to make disciples, but our calling in how to do that is to give at risk children a new beginning in life with love, hope, family, discipleship, and opportunity to hear about the love of Jesus Christ. The only way we can accomplish our specific calling is to teach, mentor, and disciple the pastors and leaders of the local churches to fulfill the great commission themselves. We are not called here to do their work for them, but to equip them to equip their people to do the work of the ministry. As we train and mentor and care for at risk children, we will set the example of what we are teaching, but it is the people of Honduras that have to do the work of the ministry in order to truly reach the people of Honduras. As a result, other than caring for at-risk children, we spend the bulk of our time developing pastors and leaders of the local church. Part of that development of local leaders includes teaching them what the Bible says about caring for the orphan and widow and helping them develop their own ministries to at-risk children.
On the way up the road to San Pedrito, we went through a San Manuel, which has the oldest Catholic church in Honduras and the 2nd oldest in all of Central America. Sadly, this church is mostly a historic icon and only has a priest to come occasionally to lead mass.
