harvestnet july 2014 newsletter
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Congratulations TO THE CLASS OF 2014!The Kingdom Ministry School, the training arm of HarvestNET International, celebrated with 43 students and interns at their graduation and commissioning ceremony on May 23, 2014. Through KMS Complete, seven students graduated after fulfilling the requirements of both the Year 1 Foundations and Year 2 Internships over a two-year period. KMS Immersion had three students, who fulfilled the same requirements through our one-year intensive program. Two were international students from the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. KMS, in partnership with Gateway House of Prayer, also commissioned 33 interns who completed the Kingdom Foundations Internship, a five-month discipleship training program.
The banquet celebrates not only what our students and interns have accomplished but also how God is moving across churches and denominations to bring transformation to the region and advance His Kingdom. This training and equipping, as testified by the students and interns, has prepared them to work, grow, and learn together as a multigenerational force to bring change to their sphere of influence.
Congratulations to our 43 students and interns for finishing well!
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A Change of Season FOR THE KINGDOM MINISTRY SCHOOLMARLENE ULRICH has stepped down as director of the Kingdom Ministry School after faithfully serving for nine years. In 2005, under her leadership, curriculum was developed for four classes offered at one location in fulfillment of the school’s vision: to train and equip believers to walk victoriously in the power of the Holy Spirit in their God-given destiny. Nine year later, KMS offers certificate programs along with twenty-six Equipping Classes and has made some classes available online and at two additional locations. During that time the school grew and impacted more than 1,200 students from over 150 churches, including 5 international students from the United Kingdom, Haiti, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The school has been an essential part of accomplishing HarvestNET’s vision to resource our region and beyond.
KARA SENSENIG will be the new KMS director, which will begin this summer. Prior to accepting the role, Kara was on staff as the director of prayer ministry at Petra Christian Fellowship. In addition to equipping and teaching, she was also involved in deliverance, inner healing, and spiritual warfare in crisis situations. Through their ministry, Equipping the Harvest, she and her husband, Pete, travel to equip, activate, and release individuals into their kingdom assignments. She also leads Eastgate House of Prayer in New Holland, Pennsylvania. Kara holds a Bachelor of Science in Agronomy and Environmental Science from Delaware Valley College, a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction from Bloomsburg University, and a Master of Divinity from Evangelical Seminary. Kara and Pete have one child, Kaleb, and reside in Ephrata.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to lead the Kingdom Ministry School into this next season. Without a doubt, our region is being primed for a significant move of God, and I believe KMS is and will continue to play a key role in preparing workers to bring in the harvest. My hope is to see KMS expand both locally and internationally as it equips and releases individuals into their kingdom callings. Marlene is leaving some big shoes to fill, but I look forward to the challenge and to joining my passion and calling with the purpose and mission of HarvestNET.” - Kara
kingdom ministryS C H O O L
Simon and Monika Velkoborsky, along with their children, Anna, Tadeas, and Jan, arrived last September from the Czech Republic after God miraculously provided finances for their airfare. The purpose of their move was for Simon to attend the Kingdom Ministry School Immersion program to be trained and equipped for further ministry within his home country. The training helped him in his relationship with God, especially in his openness to the prophetic ministry. Not only did he enjoy the teaching, but he especially enjoyed getting to know the instructors and receiving from the inspiration and passion they imparted.After they return to the Czech Republic, Simon will continue his studies to become a state-approved trainer in their public school system. This training will enable him
Train to Walk in Your Destiny
The Kingdom Ministry School’s foundational teaching and hands-on focus will impact your heart and change your life. Take part in our one-year intensive program, KMS Immersion, or our traditional two-year program, KMS Complete.
Instruction and Hands-On Training
To get a flavor for the school and nurture your calling—whether in the marketplace, the local church, counseling, foreign missions, or more—you can choose from over 20 classes each year that will strengthen your faith and release you to passionately pursue Christ-centered transformation in your life and in other’s lives.
From the Secret Place to Every Place
The Kingdom Foundations Internship is a lifestyle curriculum of worship, prayer, meditation in the Word of God, fasting, study, and service. It is designed to teach you how to position yourself in the presence of God and then be sent from that encounter into His will for your life.
For more information on all of the program options or to register, go to kingdomministryschool.com.
International Students
to teach and hold discussions on topics such as relationships, bullying, drugs, and alcohol. Once relationships within the schools are established, Simon will create opportunities for further discussion outside of the school environment where the gospel can be shared. Simon believes that through God’s grace many people will be brought to repentance and salvation.
EQUIPPING CLASSES
KINGDOM FOUNDATIONS INTERNSHIP
KMS COMPLETE & IMMERSION
SIMON AND MONIKA VELKOBORSKY
Apply by August 6, 2014
ZACH ESTIME & NEW LIFE FELLOWSHIP(Written by Pastor Kevin Horning of New Life Fellowship)
Our congregation, New Life Fellowship in Ephrata, has been ministering in a small Haitian community called Cherrier. Zach Estime, the brother of our Haitian director, was studying English in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake hit in 2010. Through a series of circumstances, Zach was not in class that day when all of his classmates lost their lives. Recognizing that God spared his life for a purpose, he began to prepare for leadership by training and serving with Youth With A Mission. As our relationship with Zach grew, we saw his heart for God and the leadership gifts God has given him. While many Haitians aspire to get to America, Zach’s heart was to minister to his own people. We recognized that call on his life and realized an investment in Zach’s leadership training was an investment in advancing the Kingdom of God in Haiti. Several people agreed to sponsor Zach’s travel and tuition costs so he could attend the Kingdom Ministry School. After completing KMS, Zach said, “I have always had a heart to lead others, now I not only have the heart for it but am equipped for it.”
CULTIVATING FIERY DEVOTIONSet Your Spirit Ablaze
Taught by Jimmy NimonSeptember 8–October 6, 2014
5 Mondays, 7:00-9:30 p.m.
MATT AND LUCY GWYNMatt and Lucy Gwyn, and their son, Charlie, came from the United Kingdom for KMS. They have really enjoyed their time here in the United States, learning and serving at the Kingdom Ministry School and Ephrata Community Church. During the nine months Matt was enrolled and busy studying in the KMS Immersion program, Lucy volunteered many hours in the KMS office. Her administrative giftings were greatly appreciated and put to good use as she handled the weekly responsibilities for the Equipping Classes, which included registrations, formatting notes, classroom setup, and scholarship processing.
They are prayerfully seeking clear guidance from God as they walk into the next season of their lives. As the end of the school year drew near, the opportunities available to them only increased, rather than crystallizing into a definite direction, so they would appreciate your prayers at this time. They return to the UK mid-July and are looking forward to seeing their family and friends. If you would like to stay in touch, you can reach them at [email protected].
COMING OF THE KINGDOM
Encounter the SupernaturalTaught by Barry Wissler
September 11–October 23, 2014 (except October 2)
6 Thursdays, 7:00-9:30 p.m.
SPEAKING WELLPublic Speaking Made Easy
Taught by Becky ToewsSeptember 8–October 6, 2014
5 Mondays, 7:00-9:30 p.m.
BACK-TO-SCHOOL EQUIPPING CLASSES
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Searching Out the UnsearchableEXPLORING THE VASTNESS OF GOD’S GOODNESS!by Marc Dupont, Mantle of Praise Ministries
King David, the worshipping warrior, wrote in Psalm 145, “Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.” In other words, the vastness of God as a person and in all His
attributes and deeds is way beyond what we can ever completely grasp or understand. Yet, our human tendency is to assess God and what He can do, in any particular situation, from our own perspectives and experiences.
The primary reason Israel failed to recognize Christ as the long awaited Messiah was pharisaism. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of the time. Over the centuries, they had come to a place of almost automatically rejecting anything spiritual that they could not understand, nor had themselves experienced, as being demonic. This brought them to the craziness of labeling the casting out of demons that Jesus did as demonic. As representatives of humanity, they went on to crucify Him because the goodness of God that Jesus proclaimed and released was so far beyond their comprehension.
There is a very real tendency towards pharisaism in almost all of us. This stems from the very beginning of humanity when Adam and Eve bought into the lie that if they simply had enough knowledge they could be “as God”—in control of their lives. Ever since then, our constant temptation regarding the spiritual realm is to reject or, at least, be highly suspicious of anything that we cannot fully grasp on an intellectual level. Solomon’s encouragement to “lean not to one’s own understanding, but trust in the Lord with all one’s heart” is more easily valued as a nice quote than a lifestyle.
The resulting problem of pharisaism is that God is so vast in both who He is and what He does that our natural minds and mind-sets can never completely come to grips with Him or His actions.
As Job put it concerning our knowledge of God, “these are the fringes of His ways; and how faint a word we hear of Him!”
The first question this raises might then be, So in what can we be absolutely sure about God, if we cannot fully grasp Him or what He may be doing at any one point? We can be absolutely sure of His goodness, His compassion, His mercy, His grace, His faithfulness, His majesty, His power, and His Word. In short, we can be absolutely sure of His character and attributes. What we cannot usually be sure of, however, is the depth of what He is doing at any one time. This ignorance is not because we don’t have true inklings and indicators of what He is doing. It is due to the fact that He is working in us and through us, and in and through our situations according to His brilliance and power—not according to what we can fully perceive. As Isaiah put it, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).
The second question that might come to mind is, So how do I assess my current situation, especially if I’m in the midst of transition or crisis? The best way to answer that would be to glean from the basic lesson Job learned in the midst of his crisis. Job’s primary problem was not personal sin in comparison to others. His problem was he tried to assess his situation by projecting onto God his own understanding and perspectives based on his life experiences.
Viewing Life Through the Eyes of the HeartJob’s breakthrough, according to chapter 42, came when God opened up ‘the eyes of his heart.’ Job proclaimed “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.” Many of us have heard so much about God through the preaching and teaching of the Word, testimonies, and otherwise. Good teaching and preaching based on the Bible can never be
overestimated in value. However, when “the eyes of our heart become enlightened” (Ephesians 1:18) by God and we actually gaze firsthand on even a bit of the wonder of which He is, we become like Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration. We come to a place where we can only see Him and nothing else! (Matthew 17:8). In other words, God Himself becomes our reference perspective rather than our own understanding or experiences. As William Cowper, the eighteenth century English poet and hymnodist, put it, “God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain.”
I often refer to the word transition as ‘the T word, as in trouble with a capital T’. We usually do not feel overly comfortable with transition due to the fact that we never fully know what we’re stepping into. God’s heart for us, however, is that our sense of peace and comfort would be derived from the Comforter (the Holy Spirit), not from whether or not we feel in control of our situation. To satisfy our need to be in control, we constantly want a sense of vision of what’s to come. May I suggest that more important than vision of what’s to come is a constantly growing vision of the One who controls and knows what is to come? To quote another centuries-old poem/song:
Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, Be all else but naught to me, save that thou art; Thou my best thought in the day and the night,
Both waking and sleeping, thy presence my light
Concerning the year 2014, I put forth the 2014 Pioneer Challenge (see marcdupontministries.org). Essentially, this is an encouragement to embrace the promise of God’s greatness towards us as found in 1 Corinthians 2:9 and Ephesians 3:20-21. Respectively they read “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.” and “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” Essentially, both of these passages smack of the goodness of God to us and through us being far beyond what we can think, imagine, pray, or hope for. The challenge and hope of these promises, indeed, ought to prompt us to lift our heads above and beyond our present situations and predicaments and to take comfort and have faith in the absolute goodness of the one who can, indeed, make all things work to the good of those who love Him—especially those situations in which we deem hopeless according to our understanding. After all, any time God allows us to be surrounded by impossibilities, He is merely setting us up to experience the miraculous!
As we go through this year, regardless of whether or not it’s a year of transition, let me challenge you to do two things. First, ask God to speak to you through dreams, visions, prophecies, and/or open doors so that you might step into opportunities of fruitfulness in areas and ways beyond your past experiences. Secondly, if you are, in fact, going through serious challenges or transition, keep your heart in a posture where you are giving glory to the One who can do far more for you than you can think, ask, or imagine. It’s not a matter of pretending the challenges do not exist. Rather, it’s a matter of realizing God is so much bigger and better than we can ever think or imagine!
God Moves In a Mysterious Way
God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill He treasures up His bright designs, And works His sovereign will.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace;
Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.
WILLIAM COWPER, 1773
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Save the dates HarvestNET International Summit • November 20 & 21, 2014
Transition & Installation Service for Barry Wissler & Kevin Eshleman • November 23, 2014
HarvestNET Missions Conference • April 10–12, 2015
WELCOME TO OUR NEW
PARTNERS
JASON KIRSCH Nebraska
BRANDON MACCARTNEY Pennsylvania
DAN ROGERS Pennsylvania
CHRISTOPHER & ANA COZZONE Pennsylvania
SHARATH BHUSHAN India
Kingdom Perspectives
JULY 2014
WIKIMINISTRY AND THE WEAPONS OF MASS COLLABORATION Barry Wissler, Senior Pastor of Ephrata Community Church and President of HarvestNET International
We have Wikipedia and Wikinomics, but the concept of a wiki is much more than an encyclopedia. It represents a way that huge tasks can be completed by many people working together. So, why not Wikiministry?
A small Toronto gold mining company was in debt and failing. The owner heard Linux’s story—how an entire software system was developed through collaboration and open-source code—and decided to apply the same principle to his goldmine. He ordered his geologists to make all their data available online, and he put up a prize for those who helped find gold. In the precious metals industry, companies don’t just give away their secrets, but it worked. Within weeks, submissions came from geologists all over the world. Contestants found 110 targets on the mine’s property, and 50% of them were new. Over 80% of the new targets yielded substantial quantities of gold. The struggling company turned into a $9 billion corporation all because they opened up their work to collaboration.
Couldn’t we take advantage of this collaboration in our Great Commission work? Many Christian churches and ministries are actually a lot more competitive that we will admit. We say we are open to partnering, but we hold our cards close to our chests and never really open up. But aren’t we all working toward the same goal of world evangelization? Don’t we all work as partners in God’s field? In order for leaders to truly collaborate, we must reach a new level of openness and resist subtle competitiveness.
So let me ask you some personal questions: Are you open? Are you free? Are you flexible? Or do you remain closed in your networking and partnership attitudes? Leaders who compete will lose in the end.
Mass collaboration could change the way we do ministry and missions. We have a huge job to do, and we need each other to do it. Maybe it’s time to use our “weapons of mass collaboration,” so everyone can get involved.
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BRANDON MACCARTNEY Pennsylvania
SHARATH BHUSHAN India
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PRAYER FOCUS: INDIAIndia is the world’s largest democracy and the second most populous nation (behind China). Despite India’s growing economy, most of the rural population remains impoverished. India is the birthplace of Hinduism and has the world’s second largest Muslim population.
India’s population is very religious: 75% Hindu, 14% Muslim, 6% Christian, and 5% other religious subgroups. Their constitution guarantees freedom of religion, yet many states have instituted laws against “forcible conversions,” which are frequently used against Christians. These laws make it illegal to convert someone to Christianity by “force, fraud, or allurement.” The Voice of the Martyrs has labeled India as hostile to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
PRAYING FOR INDIA:• Recent elections cemented a Hindu government, which may cause problems
for local Christian and international ministries working within India. Pray that India would honor their constitution and protect religious freedom.
• The world’s least-evangelized people are concentrated in India. Of the 159 people groups with more than 1 million people, 133 are unreached. India has more unreached individuals than any nation on earth. Pray that the Lord would give the church a strategy to reach the unreached.
• There are 150 languages in India without a Bible translation, representing about 65 million people (often the poorest of the poor). Pray for increased resources to make God’s Word available to everyone.
Sources: Operation World, The Voice of the Martyrs, Wycliffe Bible Translators
MINISTERING TO YWAM CARIBBEAN STAFFFrom May 5 to 10, HarvestNET International sent a team of six to the Dominican Republic to minister prophetically at the YWAM Caribbean Conference 2014. The staff and leadership come together from YWAM bases all over the Caribbean to be equipped and refreshed, report on their ministry, and cast vision for the future. The team ministered in pairs to 200-250 staff. While they were there, the team was privileged to see several great examples of dance ministry that the Caribbean bases use in evangelism. Ninety-eight percent of attendees said the prophetic ministry time is their favorite part of coming to these times of refreshing. The team was blessed and privileged to be there to encourage them!
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LEARNING & BUILDINGHarvestNET International led a mission trip to London, England, from May 28 to June 7, 2014. The team was comprised of five Gateway Mission Staff, six Kingdom Foundations Interns, and HarvestNET Director of Ministries Jere Shertzer. The trip was a chance for the team to serve and impart vision to the staff and community of the newly formed City of London House of Prayer (COLHOP) at City Temple Church. There they connected with HarvestNET Partners Rod and Karen Woods. The trip was a beautiful pairing of learning and building relationship with Rod and Karen as well as equipping and ministering to the City Temple community.
The Gateway staff and interns led two equipping services and a half-day seminar on Gateway’s history, internship development, and sustaining prayer. The team ministered through teaching, music, and artistic worship, including dance, painting, and spoken-word poetry.
The team also joined in weekly evangelistic efforts where they distributed tea and coffee on the street in front of City Temple and started conversations with people about the gospel. During the day, Rod taught the team on strategic missions work and how the Kingdom of God is advancing. During the evenings, the team led harp and bowl intercession at COLHOP. They also got to spend a Sunday with Alan and Eileen Vincent, their son David, and Barry and Cheryl Wissler.
The redemptive work of God all over London is very apparent. The team was blessed to be a small part of this work during their short stay.
HARVESTNET INTERNATIONAL PHILIPPINES In May 2014, Jere Shertzer (accompanied by Nielsen Griener) joined HarvestNET Partner and Pastor Dan Dovidio for a week of meetings with HNI pastors and their churches in the Philippines.
There is a great desire among the pastors for life-giving relationships with one another and increased equipping for themselves and their churches. The economic conditions are extremely challenging for the church, especially the rural-village churches, and there are limited resources to fund travel to villages or create regional gatherings for pastors. We spent considerable time discussing the challenges and potential solutions for effectively strengthening of the work and releasing of resources. We agreed that solutions must not create a financial dependency on the US church but must be locally sustainable and locally reproducible.
We celebrated Pastor Nathan and the Philippines Community Church’s vision to expand their church facility to create a training and equipping center! Theological training for church leaders and discipleship of believers is a real need in the Filipino church.
The HNI Philippines leadership team includes Nathan Bendoy, Jun Bucag, Dan Dovidio, Jere Shertzer, and Barry Wissler.
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