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Which Bible College Should I Choose?

March 25, 2015 by Patrick Leave a Comment

Questions that I am asked:  Bible College?

In continuing the series, “Questions that I am asked”, I wanted to address the question about Bible College.  We have seen it a few times in our deputation travels.  A young man is excited about God, gets a glimpse of the need around the world for the Gospel of Jesus, and surrenders to go.  This is such a beautiful thing to see.  I love to talk to guys like this.  They are excited, nervous, unsure what to do next, they just love Jesus and want to give themselves so that people around the world can know and love Him too!  I was actually talking with one man about this very thing this week.  This time last year, he was on the verge of deciding to give himself to God fully in world evangelism.  He surrendered a few months later and now is contemplating Bible Colleges.

First off, let me say that I believe there are MANY Bible colleges out there to choose from.  So as I continue this post, I am not highlighting one to diminish another.  That being said, I have a strong bias in this subject.  Again, I do not think that there is only one place for men to go to train for the mission field.  This is my answer to this question I am asked from time to time.

I am a young man who has surrendered to go to the mission field, where should I go to college to prepare/train?

I am a HUGE proponent of the Our Generation Training Center. It is in Alpharetta, GA (near Atlanta). I am a part of the OGTC. Here are some things to consider about Bible College as a missionary…

  • How many of their current students are missions majors? This is important because it will show where the emphasis is.
  • What makes “this” specific bible college different from “that” bible college? Compare them!
  • How much does it cost? Tuition, books, room and board (if applicable).
  • As a missions major, why should I go to this school? Are there teachers who will invest in me that have experience on the mission field?

The OGTC (Our Generation Training Center) is very different. We do one thing, missions! We are led by missionaries. You will be taught by men who are on the field and who have been on the field. These men are proven, successful church-planting missionaries. Brother Austin Gardner is our leader and President. He is not just a president of OGTC, he will become your friend and mentor!  You will spend a lot of time with Brother Gardner. Brother Gardner was a missionary in Peru for around 20 years. Many, many men were trained and sent out, many churches were started. There are now Peruvians in Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Burkina Faso (Africa), Morocco, and the U.S. (as well as other places).  These missionaries all came out of Bro. Gardner’s ministry. He is a proven missionary and he will give himself to you.  All of our teachers are missionaries or pastoral staff.  These men don’t just teach a class, they become friends with you.  The relationships will far outlast the class.

The cost is really affordable.  Monthly tuition is just $250 per month, and books/materials for classes is about $100-$200 per semester.  Housing for single students living in the OGTC provided apartments cost approximately $250 – $300 per month. These prices are based on the current apartment rent and monthly utilities. The price includes all utilities with the exception of telephone expenses. Our training center is a 3 year program.

What makes us different is that you will not only get academic knowledge from the Bible, but you will get ministry experience…

  • Preach and/or teach 100 times.
  • Disciple three people into faithful Christian maturity.
  • Baptize five people (men only.)
  • Perform the Lord’s Supper service (men only.)
  • Prepare 100 sermon or lesson outlines.

As a student at our training center, you will also spend 6 months of the 3 years on the mission field training under a veteran missionary who is training men and planting churches.. This is time on the mission field with an experienced, veteran missionary who is proven. You will learn missions ON the mission field!

Again, in choosing a Bible College, there are many options.  After seeing with my own eyes the difference that the Our Generation Training Center offers, I gladly give my recommendation to anyone considering the mission field to go to the OGTC.

If you are going to be an accountant, engineer, or mechanic, the training center is probably not for you.  If you are going to be a missionary, come to the Our Generation Training Center.  If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask me.

For More Information: Our Generation Training Center , Online Application

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: 2015, Argentina, Baptist, Bible, College, Henry, Missionary, Missions, Patrick

Deputation?

March 18, 2015 by Patrick Leave a Comment

Questions I am Asked:  Deputation?

I am asked a lot about deputation.  Is it hard?  Do your kids like it?  Are people disrespectful to you?  Are you tired of it?  These are just a few of the different questions we are regularly asked about deputation.  Here are my thoughts.

What is deputation?  In one word, work.  Deputation is the process in which missionaries raise support by traveling from church to church to share their burden for mission field God has called them to.

How do you get meetings at all of these churches?  I call churches.  I spend the day calling churches requesting an opportunity to come by and present what God is doing in our hearts and what we believe He (God) is going to do in Argentina.  Our goal is to present our burden in as many churches as will allow us an opportunity.

What is your goal for deputation?  Truthfully, the ultimate goal is to raise the needed funds to go to the mission field so that we may be equipped to plant churches, proclaim Jesus, and train men.  We also desire to be an encouragement to the pastors and people of the church as well.  Another goal is to challenge believers to surrender and head to the mission field.  Through this year, we have seen a few who have done so.  I can say that it is more exciting to see men surrender to God’s plan of reaching the world than being taken on for support.

Do you like deputation?  Deputation is the process that gets us to the mission field.  I believe, as in every other area of life, how we feel about deputation is a choice.  We choose to love it.  We choose to make it fun.  We choose to enjoy the time we have traveling.  We choose to do what we can make this time in our lives fun for each other and for our children.  It is still work, it is still hours in the car, it is still a process, but we choose to make it fun.  We do not choose to think of deputation as a necessary evil, or a “broke system”.  It works and we make it fun.

How do your children like deputation?  Our children are of the age where our attitude on things has a huge impact on our children’s attitudes.  That being said, we do the best we can to make everything fun.  There are times where they get tired, where they miss home, but overall they like it.  They have friends all over the place that they would have never met otherwise.  They enjoy meeting people and making new friends.

We are one year in to deputation.  Our goal is to leave between March and June of 2016 (this is totally dependent on how God continues to raise our support.  We hope that this next year of deputation will be incredibly productive.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: 2015, Argentina, Baptist, Deputation, Henry, Missionary, Missions, Patrick

Why the Foreign Mission Field?

March 11, 2015 by Patrick 1 Comment

“Questions I am asked”  This is the title of a new series of blog posts I will be addressing from time to time.  We meet all sorts of people who ask us various questions.  Some questions come up more than others but all of them are interesting.  I will address one of the more common questions I am asked.

Why the Foreign Mission Field?

What a great question!  Doesn’t the United States need more churches?  Yes, the United States certainly needs more churches.  We need an “awakening” in our generation!  There is a great need here.  So why the foreign mission field when there is a need here in the States?

Here are a few of the things that compelled us to the foreign mission field…

  • The Great Commission is a Global Commission!  Jesus did not say “Go into your own country, to your own people and tell about Jesus, baptize, and teach whatsoever things I have commanded you…”  No.  Jesus made clear, “Go ye therefore, and teach ALL NATIONS…” (Matthew 28:19).  Jesus’ commission to take the Gospel was global, to all nations.
    • This commission is also given to us in reference to people.  In other words, God does not call us to lakes, mountains, or grass.  Jesus commissioned us to take the Gospel to the people of the word!
  • According to “www.census.gov”, there are currently around 320,000,000 people that live INSIDE the United States of America.  According to “www.census.gov”, there are currently over 7 billion people living in the world.
    • That means that the population of the United States makes up less than 5% of the world’s population.
    • To put it another way, 95% of the people living today live OUTSIDE the United States!

So what does all this mean?  Statistically speaking, if God sends us to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus to people, there is a 95% chance that I will be doing so outside of the United States.  I know that statistics alone are not what determine God’s path for our lives, but these things should weigh heavy on us and should at least be considered.

To make the foreign field even more compelling, we should consider where Bible College and Seminary graduates are serving.  I have heard raw statistics on this, but cannot back them up so I will not use them.  What I will make clear is that most of our (the U.S.) Bible College and Seminary graduates stay inside the United States to minister.  With 95% of the world’s population outside the United States, one would think that the majority of our preachers and teachers would be going to the foreign mission field.  Sadly, this is not true.

To sum it up, why we are going to the foreign mission field is because Jesus’ commission is a global commission, the harvest is unfathomably large and the laborers are staggeringly low.

Will you consider the foreign mission field as your place of service?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: 2015, Argentina, Baptist, Field, Foreign, Henry, Missionary, Missions, Patrick

Send Me, I’ll Go

March 4, 2015 by Patrick Leave a Comment

Last week, Jake Taube’s (missionary to Taiwan) book was released entitled “Send Me, I’ll Go”.  Jake was a missionary in China but was expelled on Easter of 2014 for his Gospel witness.  He has been used in China, he is being used in Taiwan, and I believe his book will be a blessing to you!  Here is an article from Jake’s blog about the book.  You can read his post below.

Last week was an exciting one for me as CLC released my book ‘Send Me, I’ll Go’. A lot has gone into this project, and I’m very thankful for this new opportunity to talk about missions. As the purposes of the book and the purposes of this blog overlap considerably, I thought it would be appropriate to share some of the book’s content for readers here (an excerpt from the introduction is in the last section of this post).

Why did I write it?

Over the last several years, my wife and I have hosted many short-term missions groups. This has given us lots of chances to interact with a generation of young believers who are interested in missions (interested enough, at least, to come on a missions trip). And overall we have been impressed by how little consideration they have given to long-term missions service. So, first of all, I wrote the book to be a challenge to the objections usually raised against becoming a missionary. I endeavor to give responses to the most common reasons for not going. Additionally, I wrote the book to be a tool for all those who, like myself, are desirous of increasing the number of believers who are exported to the world. If you are a regular advocate for those who haven’t heard the gospel, I trust this book will aid you in your mobilizing efforts.

What’s the main idea of the book?

There’s a widespread opinion that only a small minority of Christians could be effective missionaries. Say, maybe, less than one in a hundred. Consequently, no one is very surprised when no one around them is moving toward the unreached. My contention, however, is that most any mature believer should be considered a potential candidate. Not that they are ready to go today! But if they would volunteer, the church could prepare them. The military does not recruit soldiers, they recruit those who could be made into soldiers. This shift in perspective alone has the potential to dramatically increase our global missionary forces. Indeed, I work with a team of missionaries that is constantly growing primarily because it has embraced the notion that volunteering for the mission is commendable, as long as it is paired with a commitment to undergo training. The vision for church-based mobilization presented in the book, then, is ‘every member a volunteer, every member a trainee.’

Who will be helped by this book?

I hope the book will serve you well if you…

  • are trying to decide if you should become a missionary
  • have questions about a missionary’s job description
  • wish to see your church do more for global missions
  • want to mobilize other believers to the world’s unreached
  • are responsible for making missions-related decisions
  • simply desire to magnify God with your short life!

What will I do with the massive royalties?

Well, maybe I should say ‘modest’ royalties! As there’s no Disney theme park in Taiwan, my share of the profits from the book will go towards the church-planting ministry here and in mainland China. So even if the book is just an overpriced paperweight, it is at least a missions fund-raising paperweight!

What’s in the book?

I try to answer this question in the introduction:

“First, this book is an examination of the gap between western churches and missionary service. What exactly are the factors that keep young Christian leaders – who love Jesus and who love people – from being exported to the world? This is a diagnostic task requiring us to open the hood of Western evangelicalism and run some tests that we ordinarily might not think about.

Second, this book is an extended application of theology. There is certainly no new theological innovation to be found here (so the Inquisition can clock out early today), but I do believe that there is something about God and the gospel to be learned. What I hope to accomplish is to follow the threads of the theology you already believe to some of its logical conclusions concerning the world’s unreached. I pray that those who love Jesus will find ways to apply the truth of his Gospel in more radical ways to their lives.

Third, this book is an argument meant to be taken personally. In other words, much of what it has to say is directed at your will, the decision-making part of you. I deeply desire that something said here might, in its weakness, be used to effect a change of mind – specifically, that you would change your mind about going as a missionary. These are the parts that might upset some, because such argumentation necessarily implies that there might be something wrong with how you’ve chosen to live your life.

Fourth, this book is a presentation of a vision. I praise God that it is a vision that was passed on to me by others. It is a vision of churches and believers living with the Great Commission at their very core. Some of you may have met such a Christian before – or maybe even a group of them – and if you have, you know what a rare breed they are. They are not just people with a general evangelistic concern for unbelievers they happen to already know and love; they are people who live and court death to bring the Gospel to the world’s unreached millions. I have asked God to use this book to conform me to this vision, and I pray he does the same for its readers as well. May we see clearly the eternal gains that might be made for God’s kingdom if the abundant reservoirs of Western Christianity were to surge forth to the arid ends of the earth!

If something written here helps to loosen the sediment or dislodge the debris that has dammed up young Christian leaders and all the other valuable resources of western churches, the effort will have been worthwhile. I personally leave this project more sure than ever before that I want the embankment in my own heart to break open, that whatever portion of my energies that I am holding back from the mission might flow out into the nations. That I may spend and be spent like so many great missionaries in the church’s history, and in joyful reenactment of the complete sacrifice of the greatest Missionary who has ever lived.”

You can get a copy of this book Send Me, I’ll Go by clicking here.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: 2015, Argentina, Baptist, Henry, I'll Go, Missionary, Missions, Patrick, Send Me

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