Quick Facts…
Event Title: RE-CON 2014 (SEND Annual Conference)
Dates: April 9-11, 2014
Location: Sand Lake Baptist Church, Anchorage
Focus Group: 100+ SEND North Missionaries (adults) + many of their children & teens!
Roughly two weeks ago the majority of our ABM missionary staff headed to Anchorage, Alaska to run a rather large missionary care conference. Once there, we met up and served with the SEND North Conference team. Our work was to serve over 100 of SEND’s church planting missionaries who are scattered across the Northern Hemisphere and most of whom had to be flown or ferried in for the conference. This partnership is precisely in line with our mission as we worked to strengthen & encourage the workers God has sent out to the edges of the globe. ABM’s role was to provide the much needed support and missionary care vital to keep these missionaries going strong. The realities that these missionaries face can often be quite surprising and even severe. Take, for instance, even the lack of photos in this very blog! It’s not by chance dear friends. The truth is that many missionaries and pastors that ABM serve cannot risk being photographed…can you imagine?
For that reason, the ministry work of Pastoral/Missionary Care and debriefing can be very complex. During this last conference we asked that the missionaries and speaker focus our participants on 3 central questions:
1) What did I experience in the field?
2) How has that impacted me?
3) What am I going to do about it going forward?
With these focus questions, our speaker Doug Anderson, volunteer teams, and the ABM/SEND team we were able to pull off one amazing conference for these missionaries. We are happy to share that this conference was the largest yet that ABM has helped run. Some of our participants commented on their surveys that it was the best conference they’d been to! Praise the Lord! We look forward to sharing more of what God is doing in the Arctic and how he is using Arctic Barnabas Ministries to connect and spread the good news of Jesus love & forgiveness.
If you’re interested in joining ABM as a Ministry Partner give us a call or you can create an account at arcticbarnabas.org/donate