Philippines
(MNN) — A short-term team from Christian Resources International will soon
leave for the Philippines
to minister at pastors' conferences. They will go to a couple of pastors' conferences in Manila,
as well as Doan Baptist Seminary's annual pastors' conference in Iloilo.
"One of the places where my heart really is, is to work with
the pastors and help prepare them," said Operations Manager John Lowrey. "knowing that if you work with a pastor,
you're indirectly reaching thousands of people through their ministry life. So
we're pretty excited about that."
To the best of Lowrey's knowledge, this trip marks the first
time CRI has done overseas pastoral training. Some members of the team are experienced pastors who will speak at the
conference.
CRI will also distribute several hundred study Bibles and at
least as many other resources to the pastors, many of whom are very poor and
would never be able to buy them otherwise.
"Many of the pastors that we will be dealing with will be
men with wives and children, and they are working on a five or ten dollar per
month income," Lowrey said. "[That's] just
absolutely so far below poverty level, they're barely surviving and they're
trying to do ministry on a full-time basis."
Some of the pastors attending the conference are in the
process of training for the ministry, but many of them are already pastoring
churches. Lowrey has been pulling out
all of the most valuable resources out of the literature donations sent to CRI,
just for these pastors.
When a boxful of material comes in the back door, I scurry
back there and go through it," he said. "And I'm looking for good study Bibles. I'm
looking for commentaries, other kinds of good resource material, bible
dictionaries, etc. and those kinds of things that will be a great resource for
helping a pastor with messages, etc."
"I really have sort of robbed other programs. Our shelves
are not as full as I would like them to be," he said with a laugh, asking that
Christians would send more literature. "I've
kind of created a bit of a vacuum by sucking them all up for this particular
trip."
The boxes of literature shipped for the Philippines on Saturday, so that
everything will be ready when the team arrives. There is still room for a few more people to travel with the team.
"If we had an additional four or five people to help, that
would be tremendous," Lowrey said. "It
would be a great opportunity for somebody to be involved, and they could have a
really meaningful impact in ministry with us."
Lowrey asked believers to pray for the safe delivery of the
boxes, which cost several thousand dollars to ship, as well as for the pastors
who will receive the literature.
"Pray for these guys and their faithfulness, and for God's
blessing on their lives, for the work that they're doing, for the impact they
will have," he said. "And [pray] that the
distribution will be an encouragement and a blessing to the men in ministry all
over the Philippines."
