Religious Missionary Order

Last Saturday Ryan and I participated in our induction ceremony into World Impact's Religious Missionary Order (RMO). The RMO is a group of Christians who have committed themselves to living a certain way in order to accomplish a certain mission. World Impact's mission is to plant churches among the urban poor. As members of the World Impact RMO we have taken 3 vows and commited ourselves to 5 spiritual disciplines.

The 3 vows are:

1. Obedience: Joyfully obeying God's will for my life as revealed in His Holy Scriptures, and to obeying the leaders appointed over me as they follow Christ and the teachings of Scripture.

2. Purity: Not engaging in adultery nor fornication and with God's help keeping my thought-life pure. I understand that divorce is not condoned.

3. Simplicity: Searching after God with all my body, mind and spirit, not pursuing a life of materialism.

The 5 disciplines are:

1. Bible Study

2. Memorization

3. Prayer

4. Meditation

5. Worship

I must say that I was slightly overwhelmed at the evening's events. It was much more formal than I expected which helped me to realize the gravity of what we were doing. The vows were read to us and we repeated "we will." After making these vows, the leadership team of Wichita gathered around us and prayed a wonderful prayer for us and our future as missionaries with World Impact.

We now have our license as Ministers with World Impact and are even card-carrying members. (We have yet to figure out exactly why we need a card, but surely it will get us a discount somewhere and we look so official :)

I would like to take this time to ask you to continue to pray for us and the ministry that we have now officially committed our lives to unless God calls us elsewhere some day. We have greatly enjoyed our first year here and are looking forward to many more. One of the immediate needs we have right now is in our support raising. All missionaries raise 100% of their salary. Until very recently we were blessed to have 100% of our support. With the many challenges of our economy, that level has decreased. I know that many of you that read my blog do so because you love us so much and you are already giving to our support in one way or another. So, maybe you have a friend or family member that might be interested in giving or maybe you would like us to come speak to your small group at your church. We also have some printed materials that we can send to you if you would like a way to tell people about our ministry.

I know I pretty much only talk about Ben on my blog, but if you have any questions about our ministry or the work we are doing, please ask me. I will try to write more about it. Ben is my primary job and he is just so cute, so I can't help writing about it.