In the Old Testament, Proverbs 15:22 says,
"Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed."
 |
| Leadership study session |
Do you have an amazing team you work with? We do! In fact, we have two great teams, our American Board of Directors here in the US, and our Mexican Leadership Team with whom we met with last week in Puerto Vallarta. This Fall as we were planning out the rest of the year, one of my US board members suggested that I take our Mexican Leadership Team to a nice hotel with their families and bless them with a time to relax and study together.  |
| Pastor Oswaldo and his wife Natividad |
 |
| Pastor Pedro and his wife Maria |
 |
| Pastor Marco and his wife Rosa with two of their 5 children |
I have to admit that while I love relaxing, sitting in a chair, and reading a good book, I usually feel like there's one more thing that I need to do, "and then I'll sit down." Our great Mexican leaders are all the same hardworking folks that rarely take a break, so the idea of leading them to take a break was a genius idea. |
| Fernando and his wife Claudia and their daughter Pauley |
 |
| Pastor Rafael and his wife Ofelia |
Early on in this ministry we realized that inviting the spouses of each pastor to the conferences was a critical aspect of both training them, and encouraging them. Our leaders are no different with most of them pastoring their church while working a job, and their wives working another job also, AND they volunteer their time helping lead the ministry we have together to train, mentor and encourage pastors. Thus, it was a wonderful idea to bless them with a party of sorts where they could bring their families, and mix a little study and discussion time in as well. Wow, what a party!
I've mentioned previously that one of my core philosophies of ministry is the belief that God brings your team to you. The people who are around you are your team, and each one has a God-given talent to contribute to the great fulfillment of your organization's goals and vision. The hard part is organizing all of that passion and vision into something that enables people to participate, but doesn't end up going in 50 different directions.
 |
| Maria Soto leading our discussion on women's needs |
One of the aspects of each conference in Chacala, Nayarit has been our focus on blessing the women who come with a special event. As Colleen has developed relationships with many of these women as well as the wives of our Mexican leaders, she has developed a better understanding of how we can minister to the women at each conference and develop ongoing mentoring groups for women in their regions. It was to this end that we were both excited to have the wives of our Mexican leaders join us for our meetings. In fact, from now on when we refer to our "Mexican Leaders" we hope you understand we're talking about these 8 couples and not just the pastors. Thus, after I had finished some teaching on the character of leadership (for those of you interested in what we teach you can find it here), I told our team that I wanted to use the remainder of our time brainstorming and studying how we transform the lives of the women at each conference. It was like popping the cork off a bottle of champagne. Immediately, we had large post-it notes filled with ideas, and before long we realized we had been talking for 4 hours into the night. It was truly the best, most effective discussion we have ever had. Then it was time for tacos! Thanks for being a partner with us in this great privilege it is to serve these pastors. Since you've made it this far, if you're ever in Vallarta and want to impress your friends, you HAVE TO go one night and get tacos here. If you want to see more pictures of our retreat time you can click here. Enjoy!
