{"id":879,"date":"2023-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/?p=879"},"modified":"2022-12-20T07:58:21","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T13:58:21","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-1 nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"--awb-border-radius-top-left:0px;--awb-border-radius-top-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-left:0px;--awb-flex-wrap:wrap;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-0 fusion_builder_column_1_1 1_1 fusion-one-full fusion-column-first fusion-column-last\" style=\"--awb-bg-size:cover;\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-flex-column-wrapper-legacy\"><div class=\"fusion-aligncenter\"><a class=\"fusion-button button-flat fusion-button-default-size button-default fusion-button-default button-1 fusion-button-default-span fusion-button-default-type\" target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/Flourish-January-2023-Full-French-Content.pdf\"><span class=\"fusion-button-text\">T\u00e9l\u00e9chargez les documents en fran\u00e7ais<\/span><\/a><\/div><div class=\"fusion-sep-clear\"><\/div><div class=\"fusion-separator fusion-full-width-sep\" style=\"margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;width:100%;\"><\/div><div class=\"fusion-sep-clear\"><\/div><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-1\"><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Welcome to 2023! Our big focus this year is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">equipping and training staff and volunteers<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (Master Trainers and Programme Directors)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2022 we announced our new calling statement. We believe that God has called us to create a wholistic discipleship movement that results in God glorified, churches strengthened, and poverty and injustice ended.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Take a moment to ponder that. Imagine if there really was a worldwide movement of wholistic discipleship. If each Christian understood what it was to glorify God in every area of their life and understood their calling to serve those facing need. Imagine if it was multiplying without our involvement. That churches, denominations and Bible schools were discipling people to see God\u2019s kingdom built. Imagine God was truly glorified, churches were strong and poverty and injustice was ending?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hopefully that\u2019s a vision that excites you, that makes you passionate to do your role. And yet, as exciting as this vision is, it\u2019s also HUGE. It feels impossible. (Except once before I said that it was impossible for a community to move out of poverty and they did, so now I am more careful about declaring something impossible!) But it is going to take God\u2019s intervention. It\u2019s going to take miracles. It\u2019s going to take all of you (and many more people) working hard. While God certainly amazes us, He works through us to achieve His purposes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that\u2019s why we are focused on equipping and training you (all our staff and volunteers). Because if we are going to achieve our vision, then we all need to continue to grow in our skills, in our love for the Lord, in our relationship with Him, and in our understanding of our role.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To help us to achieve that we are bringing together the Flourish materials, the monthly Day of Prayer devotions, and our Master Trainer development materials. We want to be learning all together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We will be looking at the Apostle Paul who, with God\u2019s help, led one of the first great movements\u2014the early church. We have identified four key areas of leadership that we long for people to grow in and that we see reflected in Paul\u2019s ministry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Walking in obedience to God &#8211; If we are going to be great leaders we need to walk in obedience to Him &#8211; that means understanding His word and what He is saying and being willing to obey.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Leading others &#8211; In the Bible leading is often related to loving and serving, caring for the sheep, washing of feet. How do we do that well, while helping people to get done what is expected of them?\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Executing on commitments &#8211; A leader who keeps saying that they will do something and then doesn\u2019t leaves us all frustrated. Thinking well about what needs to be done, prioritizing, managing our time, and not procrastinating are all key skills.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Strengthening ourselves in the Lord &#8211; Leadership is hard. In Christian ministry the number that don\u2019t finish well is too high, the number of families that are sacrificed to ministry is concerning. A great leader knows how to find strength in God. When the disciples were exhausted, Jesus invited them to spend time with Him (not head home for a nap). Do we know how to find our strength in God? Do we know how to Sabbath well or is the day just filled with activity or sleeping?\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Please find the devotions attached. As we go through our studies this year they will help us to think about how we apply the ideas that we are learning. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><div class=\"fusion-aligncenter\"><a class=\"fusion-button button-flat fusion-button-default-size button-default fusion-button-default button-2 fusion-button-default-span fusion-button-default-type\" target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/JANUARY-Devotions-2023_English.pdf\"><span class=\"fusion-button-text\">Download the Devotions<\/span><\/a><\/div><div class=\"fusion-clearfix\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership-skills","category-eng"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":886,"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions\/886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reconciledworld.org\/flourish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}