Timeline

What an exercise we did in class. Putting your entire life down on paper. Compare all the significant, non-spiritually related events on one side and all the significant spiritual events in your life on the other. Then look back and compare both sides to each other and see how each event impacted you in both a non-spiritual and spiritual way. It was neat to see those two separated on two timelines. We tend to mesh together both sides so many times when we think back and we can loose a large point of perspective if we do that. But taking the time to separate them (which really doesn’t take that long) can allow you to see just how God moved in your life. In my life I was amazed to see just how late the events that shaped me occurred in my life. It wasn’t until 2006 that I truly felt and recognized God as more than a god, but as one who wants relationship.

It hasn’t been 6 years, making it amazing to see what has happened in such a short period of time. All of the significant events that shaped me have happened in the last third of my life, which also shows just how much discipling has occurred within that time. It is neat to look back at the picture of my life and see how good God has been through all of my mistakes and poor decisions.

Thaddeus/ Jude of James

It was the best time of my life, never before had I ever experienced such an experience. Walking with the man named Jesus, from Nazareth was something that I, nor anyone, had even dreamed of. I was walking with Christ. There is nothing else that I wanted to do but that. I am called by two names, either Jude (not the kissing one though) or Thaddeus, which I prefer because I don’t have to worry about the negative association with the other one. I remember one time we were together with another crowd and He, Jesus, was talking to us in parables, which he always did.

He told us a parable about the kingdom of heaven and compared it to a field in which a farmer sowed seeds and during the night the enemy came and sowed weeds. When they sprouted and grew so did the weeds. This forced the farmer to wait until both were up to maturity to prevent pulling up the roots of both the good wheat and bad weeds. They were to cut the weeds and burn them before they began harvesting the wheat, I thought to myself. “ah, interesting”

When the crowd left we, the disciples, asked Him to explain what he meant by that parable. He explained to us what it meant and that the field is the world, the weeds are evil people, the wheat are good people, the enemy that sows the seeds is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are the angels. So as the weeds are burned in the end so will the evil people be while the good wheat will be saved from the fiery furnace.

What a lesson, but I wondered why he always spoke to us in parables, it makes me reminisce on childhood and when my mom and dad would tell me stories of what happened when they were little and even when their parents were little. His parables are different than the stories though. We pressed on and we saw Jesus do great miracles following that day, even Jesus walking on water!.

Another day Jesus called the Pharisees out on their hypocrisy and it was harsh! He let it go on them and man were they offended. So we went to Jesus trying to let Him know that He did that and then responded with another parable, which we were used to at this point and kind of numb to. We asked him to explain it to us so that we could understand it and what did He do? He let it at us! He said “Are you still so dull?” Ouch!! Me, dull???? No way! I’ve been with Him for so long and listening to Him speak so much wisdom. How could I be dull? Wasn’t he sharpening us, all of us? Apparently we haven’t been getting it. He shook me pretty bad, but regardless, I will continue to follow Him, He really knows what He is doing and hasn’t gotten us into any trouble without getting us out of it and showing the right way.

Mark Gungor

Watching Mark Gungor speak communication in marriages was really interesting, educating, and most certainly entertaining. He shared at the start that marriage brings things to ones life such as happiness, heath, financial ease, and even longer life and broke a very wrong paradigm that you have to be a Christian to have a great marriage. Also stated was that Marriage is a life giving institution, not a life sucking institution unlike what most believe relationships are today.

He goes on and compares the communication differences between guys and gals, noting more than a comfortable number of differences. He says that guys have boxes in their head, and everything in life, absolutely everything, fits within a box. These boxes have one rule, they don't touch. This means that when a man is focused and thinking about something that he is not and cannot think about anything else simultaneously. This greatly from the female brain in that everything is connected by a single wire and driven by emotion. Therefore women are able to have more than one thing on their mind at the same time. This significant difference can cause a whole lot of headaches within a marriage and any close relationship between a male and female. Men, being "single taskers", focus solely on that one thing and tune all else out allowing them to end with a fantastic final product. This, of course, is difficult when their multitasking counterparts approach the man asking 3 different questions and each pertaining to a completely different topic all within 2 minutes demanding a quick and fully thought out answer. This is not a realistic objective for the man to complete because of their inability to change focus from that one task that they were engaged with to whatever else was just asked and required of them.

Another venue where difference is evident is in how issues are dealt and vented out. Women need to talk about it, and every detail associated with it, in order to relieve and release the pressures from a situation. Men, with their short attention spans to "just talking" have a more than difficult time connecting and tend to miss a significant amount of whatever she may be saying because of his short attention span. A guy would handle those emotions VERY differently, choosing to just bury it away, not even think of it, and go inside of our "nothing box."

In discipling, these differences are extremely important to be aware of. A guy would naturally know and be aware of some of the ways that he may be able to communicate with another male with great effectiveness, as would a female discipling a female. The same could not be said about a guy working to disciple a female (or visa versa). They, if they did not know each other previously, would begin speaking and the other would not be understanding the meaning of what they are saying leading to an extremely unproductive or even counter productive time of discipleship. This lesson stressed the importance of how essential it is to make sure that we communicate in ways that the other person is able to understand and not just in the way that we know how to communicate in, which leads to nothing being accomplished.

Dave Peterson

Dave Peterson told us his story of many experiences as he believed in faith and lived a pursuit of God's calling for his life. His ministry is chaplaincy to the old and dying, a place where there can be a great amount of grief and sorrow. He has served in a few places of employment and has been able to directly and indirectly minister to hundreds of elderly as they get even older and their lives come to an end. Nursing homes are in great need of pastors to be their full time serving the elderly and providing a consistent word of biblical truth and love into the lives of all the patients that are there.

Dave secured a job as a chaplain in a nursing home and was given the opportunity to write his own job description and chaplaincy program for the nursing home that he was working at. The flexibility that was given to him by the nursing home allowed him to go and minister to the patients very well, so much so that the owners of the nursing home that he worked at made a decision that the program he wrote would be implemented in all of their nursing home locations across not only the local area but the entire United States. Because of that decision he had over 40 separate nursing homes and 45 chaplains that worked under him being disciple and trained to minister to all the patients of those clinics.

After the government changed its financial support to nursing homes and no longer provided reimbursement for pastoral care he found himself without a job and was on the search for another job. That search led him to work for a Lutheran establishment and was given strict guidelines that he had to follow and was not permitted to leave any earlier than the official closing time. This new workplace was very difficult for him to transfer to because he went from an establishment where he made the rules to one that he had to follow them exactly, a very unpleasant situation.

It was while he was working there, though, that he was asked to fill in for a chaplain in hospice care that was absent from work for an extended period of time. Long story short he ended up with the job in place of the other and now works there making a good amount of money to support his family and live well. He also pastors two Lutheran churches in the area of congregations between 30 and 80 people. The stories that he has seen and that he testified of from working in hospice has been amazing. There was one man who seemed to be a vegetable in every sense of the word until Dave asked the gentleman if he would like to take the communion and the man popped his head up and was fully responsive.

What Dave shared was strong and expressed a side of ministry that isn't talked about too much in modern day religious venues, especially the Pentecostal church. He has a special calling a and one that’s importance will never go away or diminish as long as there are people getting older.

Otto Wegner

Otto Wegner is certainly a man who has served many years faithfully in ministry. Born in the midst of one of America’s greatest wars just days after the landing in Normandy in 1940. He attended Central Bible College and pastored a traditional church until he began planting churches throughout New Jersey. He planted 11 churches in urban areas between 1988 and 1999 and ended up pastoring at Highway Tabernacle, which was the second oldest Assemblies of God church in the world until it closed its doors and led Otto to Wyckoff New Jersey, a very wealthy area. During this time he struggled with what he felt his calling was in urban ministry and where he was, a church with an extremely wealthy congregation in the suburbs.

When Pastor Otto decided to follow that calling on his life into the urban arena and announced that he would be planting churches in the city the church came together and announced that they would pay for him to be admitted into a mental institution. Thus East Global Church Planting was created and allowed upperclassman from Central Bible College to come and be apart as interns for 6 months to be coached first hand in church planting. There the interns learned by being brought to the city and being exposed directly to the community that they would be ministering to and experimenting what worked for outreach and what didn't.

Resurrection Life Church was one project that he took on which was far greater in magnitude than anything else that he had handled before in his life. In the end there was over $800,000 of funds raised and spent in the renovation of that building. Otto was such a great man of faith who took on the project with only $2,500 in his, at that time, current church's bank account but enough faith and determination that he pursued the end product of seeing the community come to know Jesus.

Now he is working with Next Generation Ministries which is geared to take students who are in their latter years of high school and disciple them so that they can be a positive role model in their families as their grow up and become a father figure to their children since 90% of the children in that town are raised by single women.

He shared a great deal of his heart with us and much wisdom in many areas but I grew the most respect for him when he shared with the class about his wife who is suffering from Parkinson's disease and about his faithfulness to her in this challenging time of their lives.