Building Gospel-Partnerships with Peruvians
Right in line with what I wrote above, I have really begun a greater focus on building what I would call "gospel-partnerships" with Peruvians. "Gospel-partnerships" simply means intentionally teaming up with Peruvian brothers to accomplish specific ministry tasks. It seems that the best way to realize my desires of training up Peruvians who will train other pastors and leaders or to plant churches is to more intentionally focus on pouring into and working with Peruvians. Moreover, building several different gospel-partnerships seems to better follow the model of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament in which we can see him working with perhaps more than three dozen different missionary partners to accomplish specific ministry objectives. Finally, like Paul's model, this wider web of gospel-partnerships will allow the work to have a more far-reaching influence.
By God's grace, I am already seeing the Lord bless this approach. For example, as I have mentioned before, I am traveling with Pastor Aurelio every month to preach and teach in rural villages. I am also partnering with another brother, Martin, in sharing the preaching load in a local church whose pastor is working through being restored to the ministry after falling into sin. The pastor of our local church, Darwin, and I are working on partnering in a few different areas. Beyond that, I have started to more intentionally identify several pastors in our trainings who have good potential to teach others. As a result, I have begun spending more time with them and will be developing deeper training for them with the hope of eventually having them teach alongside me. As, I said above, the process of developing national brothers to partner with in the ministry is a slow one. However, I truly believe it is worth the long-term benefit it will ultimately produce not only in the lives of men that will be working alongside me, but also for those they will teach and equip.
The best part of these gospel-partnerships is the mutual learning and encouragement that happens between my Peruvian brothers and me.
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