What is EMC Anyway?

We just returned from a week at the ABWE home office in Harrisburg, PA, where we participated in a required training called Essential Missions Components. Thank you, again and again, if you have partnered with us in prayer and finances, because we had to be at 50% support to attend.

If EMC were a university course, it might have been called Church Planting Theory. Without neglecting the more minor but still vital practices in church planting, like building the right team, executing purposeful evangelism and following with true discipleship, our instructors and facilitators led us through a global vision for church planting: strong local churches lead to church planting movements which lead to worldwide missions movements. We want "to the ends of the earth" to be in the DNA of every church plant, no matter how resistant to the Gospel our initial community might be.

We started each day with this Gospel song. Then we soaked up as much information as possible, practiced and simulated church planting teamwork with others appointed to serve in places with similar worldviews, and discussed what we were learning as a way to review the material.

One phase of local church planting is Connecting. Building relationships with the people in our community by meeting their needs, getting to know them, living life side-by-side.

By loving them. I tried to keep love in mind in everything we practiced. In church planting, preparing to minister in Spain, it sort of comes naturally (granted, I'm not doing it yet).

I yearn to be used by God to reach Spain. I long to see young people surrender their lives to Jesus, and I love them with a God-gifted passion. We know Spain in the hands of the Holy Spirit will honor Jesus Christ and inspire a global missions movement in His name, and we are so blessed to be part of it!