Day 7
Its our first day of ministry in Chennai, and we are going to come out of the gate at full speed. We have an all day pastor’s conference with the SCY pastors. SCY is for South Chennai Youth Pastors. It is a group of pastors who meet once per month to discuss what the Lord is doing in their ministries and plans on how to come together to accomplish goals and establish the kingdom of God in Chennai.
The core group, or leaders, if you will of SCY is about 7 pastors, but the whole group consistently gets about 150 pastors together for meetings and combined outreaches.
For this meeting, we had 32 pastors and their wives come to a resort on the beach of the Indian Ocean for a day of teaching, fellowship, and relaxation to spend with their wives. The majority of these pastors are far too poor to afford to take their families to a place like this, but we wanted to bless them with a day of solid teaching on the family unit and also treat them to some great food and fellowship with each other. Often pastors go to a pastor’s meeting alone and get a bunch of good teaching, but don’t get a lot of time to spend getting to know each other.
So, we had several goals for the day.
One, to give them solid teaching on what a biblical portrait of marriage should look like, especially for those of us in ministry. Also, there was great instruction on child-rearing and also handling our finances in a godly way.
Secondly, to give these men and women a chance to get to know each other and develop relationships for the future of ministry in Chennai.
Thirdly, to bless them with a wonderful day in a great place with their wives. They enjoyed a fantastic spread of food, beautiful scenery and a relaxing time away from it all with their wife.
I was really looking forward to this meeting because we had such great feedback from last year. It seemed to have a great impact again, so we left confident that God would use the time for his glory. We all had a lot of opportunity to fellowship with them and get to know them personally.
Immediately we began receiving words of appreciation for the teaching and also for the time there. We hope to be there again next year and have them spend the night with their families. Then we could have some more teaching in an evening session as well. We’ll see what the Lord allows.
Sorry for the delay in getting more posts up for you. It has been really hectic since we got here in Chennai. More posts are soon to come!