Christian Growth

Your oldest child heads off to college. A friend you led to Christ and have been discipling moves over 1,000 miles away. Your work contract ends and those you have seen and witnessed to daily for years fade from your life. Our time on earth often passes in cycles—family cycles, ministry cycles, and work cycles. We go from one phase to the next. What has been will be no more. What will be in the next phase is often unknown. Solomon wrote of these changes: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). How do we respond to the changes brought about by the natural cycles of life?

Last time, I began sharing some of the main lessons I have learned through the first four years of my service as a church ministries representative for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

In Part One, I wrote about the need to multiply our ministry’s effectiveness, and also regarding the importance of relationships in ministry. I would like to share two more lessons in this concluding installment.

The first relates to the necessity we have to make a greater and more intentional and effective use of media.

I can’t believe it’s already your fifth year!

A statement like that was recently made by a friend—with a sense of amazement—regarding the fact that I have now begun my fifth year as a church ministries representative for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

Yes, four years ago at this time I was nervously pondering how to announce to church congregations (many of which already knew me) that I now represented FOI and—the most dreaded issue of all—was in the position of attempting to raise financial support.