By: Resan Navalta
In the business of winning souls for God, workers are very much valued. Our section is so thankful for JECPP Southern Mindanao for the support given to us during our Church Planting Movement (CPM) Training last March 8, 2017 @ D8, Eco Building, General Santos City. CPM is an evangelism and church planting training for church members. JECPP believes that every Christian is not only a soul winner but also understands and supports the process of empowering communities of believers by nurturing them in local churches. Because the harvest is plentiful, more churches and outstation gatherings are to be planted. When this vision is not acted upon, placed on the side line, or watered down to ideas such as giving money to mission as alternative to personal soul winning, the church ignores its purpose and loses love to people whom Jesus commissioned His church to seek and save. Members are to be trained to go out and be with people who need to hear God’s hope. As God commands in Luke 14:23 to “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled”.
Committed to this vision, 21 cell church leaders from Malbang, Koronadal, Polomok and General Santos City joined the training. Truly, it was a day of so much learning and challenges with our powerful and anointed speakers, Pastor Gregorio and Pastor Rosario Simpas of EFC-Tagum who drove almost five hours just to inspire and empower us on this day.
Though it was just a one-day training, it was packed with so many fresh revelations from God. It gave us reminders and likewise inspired us to be more supportive in our local churches especially with our mission to plant more churches. We had a wonderful morning session with Pastor Rosario who passionately shared to us the importance of honoring our pastors. She also challenged us to be more prayerful and to be sensitive to our pastors‘ needs for they too are vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy. The second session talked about the blessing of faithfully giving our tithes as the key to financial freedom prosperity.
The afternoon session was indeed reawakening for all of us. I was personally moved and thrilled as Pastor Greg boldly shared about evangelism. He stressed out that aggressive evangelism is an effective tool in reaching to the community. Pastor Simpas emphasized Luke 14:23 where we see that God’s will for every Christian is to freely and lovingly go out where the people are and invite them into the fold of believers. This verse reminded us of our purpose as Christians and church leaders. We learned three important Greek word from his talk: “Anagkazo” which means to compel, “Biazo”, to use force and “Anaideia” which means to be shameless. These surely serve as our guide and reminder in passionately winning souls for the Lord.
At the end of the topics, the challenge was left to us. We need to share the Gospel without fear and hesitation at any cause any time.
We all went home, filled with so much compassion, fearless to continue our mission, and refreshed to count the cost of following Jesus. To God be the Glory!
