Just Like Jesus

I am determined to emulate the ministry of Christ.
-John Jackson

A noble goal for any Christ follower is to model your life and ministry after the life and ministry of Jesus. Personally, I want to live a life that screams of Jesus. I also want to lead and minister in the same ways as Jesus. I'm finding that leading and ministering like Jesus is easy in some areas but difficult in other.

It's easy to lead like Jesus when the people are coming to me. However, going out to get or find them is a totally different story. Especially, when it comes to mentoring leaders. I really want to mentor in a way that's natural, life giving, and above all experiential. Experience is the best teacher.

Jesus' mentoring 'program' was experiential. He gathered his tiny band of followers one by one or two by two. He told them to follow and they did. His mentoring included eating together, traveling together, sleeping together, teaching together, healing together, baptizing together, etc. etc. etc. By now I hope you get my point. They did everything together. Jesus' mentoring was come, follow me, and do the things that I do. As a leader, I want to mentor in this simple way too.

I'm fortunate enough to write this post from London while on a trip with one of my mentors. So far we've eaten together, taught together, and traveled together. We sleep in the same general vicinity but I hesitate to say we sleep together. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. But if they do, then they do. He has decided to model his mentoring after Jesus' mentoring. After all, isn't his way to mentor the best way to mentor?

Who are you mentoring? Who has mentored you? Why is come, follow me, and to what I do the best way to mentor others? What can you do to mentor more like Jesus? What can you do to get mentored like the disciples?

Building A Multiethnic Community

We're going to have our first Building A Multiethnic Community Roundtable this Friday. I'm getting amped about this already. My goal is to have this seminar once a year. During this seminar we'll talk about culture, race, and ethnicity from a biblical perspective.

I'm not really going to teach this seminar. I'm going to facilitate it. It's not really a seminar. I consider this to be a town hall meeting or a round table meeting. I want to get people from different ethnicities together to talk about our differences and learn more about each other. The meeting will have scripture, videos, stories, stats, and more.

My goal is stated in Ephesians 2:14 "For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility." It's time for us to let Jesus break down the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.

Please pray for our first of many roundtables. Pray that everyone gets at least one thing from the roundtable. Pray that the Holy Spirit is there and that we allow him to do his thing.

CRV Prayer Newsletter

Hello Prayer Partners,

It’s that time again. I can’t believe it’s so humid in Virginia Beach already. I’m hoping this isn’t a sign of things to come for the rest of Spring and Summer. Oh well! At least the heat makes people come outside, especially after a very cold Winter.

We had a really good series after Easter. You may have been praying for The Cross but I changed it on you. I can never settle on one title until it’s in print. The series was called The Icon. It was pretty good series for us as a church and people received a lot of prayer. Our goal is for people (churched, unchurched, and dechurched) to have an encounter with God every week during our service. I really believe that happened during this series. I’m looking forward to Mother’s Day, a series on Pride & Humility, and a series I’m calling Generations. We are seeing a few new people each week, which is always uplifting. There were a few weeks where no one new came in. However, that’s just a part of church life. It is what it is and we just keeping rolling with it.

Our outreaches have gone well. I delivered 15 Easter lilies to different businesses and organizations in the Salem area. This was very cool! Everyone was very surprised by the gesture. Our annual Easter Egg Hunt was amazing. We had close to 300 people come out. It was truly a good time. We’re ramping up to do more outreaches. I would like to do at least one outreach a month. Pray that we can reach that goal.

God really blessed our family recently. We haven’t had a dryer since late November. Our dryer broke and I couldn’t fix it. So for the past 6 months I have spent about two hours each week washing and drying clothes. A few weeks back our neighbor asked if anyone in the church could use a dryer. I immediately said, “Yes!...Us!” So we got a free dryer. It’s not new but it dries clothes. That’s the only thing that really matters. Praise God for his provision.

That’s about it for now! Thank you for your faithfulness!

So please continue to pray for the following requests:
~Protection for our family (immediate and extended)
~Attract families with children to the church
~New people to come in our doors and we retain them.
~Continue to grow 226 Street volunteers (children’s ministry)
~Implement our church wide communications strategy
~Growth in our Life Groups and identify the next Life Group leaders
~Open doors in Salem and Green Run for the gospel
~Finances for outreaches and operating budget; giving has slowed down … pray that it picks back up
~Ideas for outreaches
~My (André) personal growth and reading plan
~Implement some of the things I’m learning
~The discernment to know which things to implement as a part of our strategy

See you in a few months!
The Jenkins Family