Global Ministry Center Gets Latin American Gift
The projected Global Ministries Center in New York received a check this week in the amount of $5,000 from churches in Latin America as the first in a series of donations to help fund development of the new training center that will equip men and women to plant churches in the urban centers of the world.
Tim Hill, director of Church of God World Missions, presented the gift to Andrew Binda, administrative bishop of New York. The ministry center will be set up in Brooklyn and will attract global students who will train in the largest urban area in the United States to establish churches in the largest cities in their nations.
“It’s practical to offer training in an urban context to ministers who will be planting new congregations in metropolitan settings,” Hill stated. “They will prepare themselves in a hands-on, living laboratory, actually helping to plant churches in greater New York as they train for future ministry elsewhere.” The metro area hosts residents who speak more than 800 languages.
The $5,000 donation came through the offices of David Ramírez, field director of Latin America. Following a challenge by Director Hill to the leaders of Mexico, Central America, South America, and Brazil in a continent-wide meeting earlier this year, the Latino ministers agreed that each local church would receive an offering between now and the 2014 General Assembly and send it to World Missions.
“We in Latin America have received funds from the United States for many decades,” Ramírez commented. “Now it is time for us to cooperate with World Missions by participating in evangelism and church planting on a global scale.” The Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking churches will continue to send offerings to assist with the New York project.
New York, not content to be only a recipient of World Missions funding, has adopted a major mission effort in the Caribbean. In coming months the Empire State churches will rebuild a hurricane-stricken church in Grenada, assist the Bob Cary Learning Center in the Virgin Islands, and buy Bibles for children in orphanages in the Caribbean.
“Once again these actions demonstrate the global partnerships and the cycle of giving that is developing in World Missions,” observed Hill. “One mission area—Latin America—gives to the United States; the state that benefits in turn gives to another mission area—the Caribbean in this instance. All are blessed by giving and all are blessed by receiving.”
(Source: Church of God World Missions)
