The Team Expands

We welcomed on to our team this month James and Donata Gray. We are excited to have them on board as they bring with them a large amount of youthful enthusiasm. The following is a sort of introduction to how they came to join us and what they hope to do. It is written by James Gray.

THE GREATEST GAME I NEVER WATCHED!

I’m not sure there has been a moment in armchair sports history more incongruous than this: a bunch of Dutchies and rugby novices watching the All Black’s semifinal with Australia while a born and bred Kiwi cowers downstairs in fear of defeat. Sadly, that timid individual was me. However, this lack of ‘moral fibre,’ I tell myself, is not surprising given a generation of rugby failure on the greatest stage. Rugby is so much a part of the average Kiwi’s identity that another knock could not be tolerated without visiting a mental health professional the next day. Thankfully, as I sat in the hallway preparing myself for the worst, such an appointment became unnecessary – we won, and won well.

As I thought about my rather odd behaviour…again, I became a bit jealous of God. He knows the beginning from the end and no matter how bad things get, He knows the final result, He knows that He has won and that He will win well. That’s the wonderful satisfaction I had when I watched the replay. No matter how bad things got for the AB’s, I knew there was nothing to fear. While I’m still not convinced the All Blacks had everything under control, on the other hand, I’m beginning to see that God has everything under control concerning our lives.

King David wrote about this in Psalm 139, verse 16 stands out: “your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”Couple this with Eph. 2:10 – For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do – it’s clear that no matter how difficult it gets, life is less worrisome if we stay close to the One with the unique plan for our lives.

This tailor made designer quality of God’s plans has been brought home to us recently. We had begun CO (Candidate Orientation) intending to join WEC with the expectation that God would clarify our field of service, somewhere abroad. We were considering two particular fields but neither seemed right at this time.

Interestingly, another opportunity arose during CO which would utilize our gifts for communication and enthusiasm for advocacy, but we wanted God to make it clear that this was the next step. To our joy, God did exactly that by giving us a church to endorse us and freedom to bring fresh ideas to the role. Consequently, as of November both Donata and I will begin a two year appointment to promote and recruit for missions as WEC NZ ‘Mobilisers’.

Although based at the WEC NZ HQ in Gordonton, part of our role is to visit churches promoting WEC and a diversity of projects/ opportunities such as Rainbows of Hope (Children in Crisis ministries); BAM (Business As Mission); tentmaking; sports ministry; community development; church planting etc. As we talk with people, one of our mottos will be ‘flexibility’, that is, to listen and hear what each individual thinks God’s plan might be for their life without imposing our own ideas of what service should look like.

This could mean working in the Middle Est as a Christian plumber, planting churches in Japan, teaching theology in Mongolia, engineering in mainland China, helping street kids in Manila…whatever and wherever it is, God has a unique plan for each person using their gifts and talents to serve him, by serving others and we’d love to help facilitate that.