Every pioneer is out on the edge. In our missions work in Latin America, we regularly are involved with pioneer missionaries:
- Young Life Missionaries opening new clubs in new communities
- Church planters seeking to reach people who need to meet Christ.
- Missionaries in training to work cross culturally.
Recently, Young Life Panama invited me to share with their pioneer leaders about maintaining an active prayer life. They are pioneering new clubs in at least two new communities, sending out leaders they have been training for the last few years.
One of these leaders is working in a community where one of our church families lives and will be a great connection for their teen daughter.
Pioneer leaders are often away from their church community during that initial season of plowing new territory. In Young Life’s model, new leaders spend months making initial contact with new teens and young adults, spending time with them, listening for community needs and so one. It can be lonely work for a season, though awesomely fun.
Every leader needs to take responsibility for their own spiritual growth. In the teaching of day, I shared about the responsibility to maintain your own devotional time and allowing the Spirit of God to shape your character through the word and prayer.
These leaders discussed their joys in prayer, as well as their difficulties in prayer. They did an exercise using sticky notes to brainstorm and work together to find ways to break through those challenges.
At then end, they wrapped up reviewing a possible structure for quiet times that I picked up out of a book called Transformative Prayer by Daniel Henderson.
At the end of the meeting, several leaders commented to me on how important this reminder was:
- A helpful tool to help me spend time in the word.
- A good reminder that I need to care for myself, not just the people I am reaching.
- Thanks for sharing this awesome teaching to help me grow in my personal devotions.
A Thank you to Supporters
We get to serve in situations like this because of our faithful supporters.
Thank you for your financial gifts that enable this kind of work.
Most of these teaching moments focus on leaders of ministries that are doing on-the-ground evangelistic work. There is no way we could reach all these people alone. Rather, the Lord has us in networks of evangelism activity to reach more than we can possibly imagine.
Your support of us enable us to multiply that training to reach new networks for Christ. Contribute your support towards the next training events by making your gift online today.
[…] These young adults are all learning about what it means to lead in a pioneer context, where they were sent out from their original group to reach at risk youth in new communities. That kind of missionary work requires leaders to be self-nourishing and to be self-disciplined enough to grow. […]