On Saturday, March 9, about 70 people gathered at Wooster Grace for Connect & Equip day. The day afforded many opportunities for participants to connect with other local church missions leaders as well as to be enriched by the many workshops and two plenary sessions.
PLENARY SESSIONS
Encompass Executive Director Dave Guiles presented the moving story of the sacrifice and cost of planting the seed of the gospel in Central Africa, a sacrifice that, by God’s grace and blessing, has resulted in hundreds of thousands of believers and thousands of churches in five countries. (Link to video of the Africa Story presented the following day at a local church. Start at 29:00 minutes.)
WORKSHOPS
Among the many workshops offered was one by Encompass Crisis Response director Barb Wooler entitled, Grief: A Silent Crisis Waiting To Be Redeemed. The premise presented in the workshop was that, not only that grief can be redeemed by God for good, but that the Church and believers are His primary means of doing so. The vision for a fellowship of churches that are equipped to be part of how God is redeeming suffering and loss for good and loving purposes – both in the church and their community.
Each participant was given a simple tool that can help them care for someone processing a loss, and two other trainings were offered for later this year in the fall.
TRAINING OFFERED THIS FALL
Encompass Crisis Response will be providing a weekend of training this Fall for churches interested in equipping mature believers to help people with grief counseling. This bible-based training will run on Thursday and Friday evenings and all day Saturday. If you or your church are interested in learning more about participating in and/or hosting this training, please write crisisresponse@encompasscrisis.org.
