The past few weeks have been filled with planning, meetings,
and strategies about how 4-Dimensional Ministries will run and what it will look like. For that reason,
we haven’t had as many blog updates just yet. But as part of the planning
process, we took part in a wonderful training seminar last weekend.
We had the opportunity to go to a Christian
Community Development Conference (CCDA) in Cleveland, Ohio. Do you want me to
describe it in one word? Amazing!
We attended various sessions led by local leaders and heard
from the author of Toxic Charity Bob Lupton. It was a great experience to hear
from someone with such wisdom on community development and how to get involved.
For Whitney and me, the conference brought things full circle. We first heard
about and read Toxic Charity when we were in Mexico. Now, having the chance to
hear directly from the author and be a part of an organization that uses
healthy models of community development is incredible!
God has been putting the pieces in place in perfect timing. The book When Helping Hurts is another one that really opened our eyes to healthy models of community development and working with the poor. We recently had a meeting with the leaders of Circles, a community-development program ran by Think Tank Inc. There is an entire chapter in When Helping Hurts about Circles! God has been leading us closer and closer to our passion with each moment.
We hope to take what we learned there and continue
developing things here in Dayton. Please pray for insight and direction as to
what God’s plan is for this city and what role we are all to play.
