Teaching the Pastors

We dropped off the group from The Summit Church from Missouri and picked up Mark Puckett the same day to do a pastor seminar at our house. This was Mark's first time to visit and teach in Guatemala. His church has been a part of our ministry for over a year now! He came ready to teach and encourage the pastors in their personal relationship with God and leadership within the church. We had 18 pastors come to participate in the two and a half day seminar. The seminar was a eye opening experience for us all. We grew deeper in our understanding of the scripture! We learned so much about leading our families, churches, and communities through our influence and examples. Mark was able to share many personal experiences in reaching out and leading the church to love and influence the communities...in ways that are "outside" the norm for churches and pastors. I had many of the pastors share how this opened their minds and gave them some new ideas on ministering and reaching out to their communities. Many times we get so caught up with the traditions and religious way of doing things that we miss out on God's way. Not saying that God doesn't use some of our traditions and our religion to accomplish His purposes and reach lives...but we need to keep our minds and eyes open to the moving and direction of God in our personal live, families, and churches! We also went through a prayer clinic with the pastors. Many actually said that this gave them a more orderly way to pray and how to teach others to pray. It is simply the Lord's prayer that He taught His disciples.Mark went through the different areas that the prayer touches, and then we went through a time of prayer together using this model. So we had a great time learning together and sharing experiences and ideas. This time the pastors participated more than usual with questions and comments. They were very excited and ready to go back and put into practice what they learned!
Brandi and Nancy did a wonderful job cooking for all of us and the pastors during the seminar. The kids helped clean and cut vegetables too! And the food was so good!
Mark's church also bought a Communion set for each pastor that participates in the ministry! It was a stainless steel plate and cup. Beautiful! And we were able to give these out to the pastors at the end of the seminar and have continued to give them to the others that weren't able to be there. What a wonderful gift for these guys! And I have been to their church services since and seen them using the set as they served Communion to their church. Good stuff!! Praise the Lord!!