Another Voice, Part 4

Meet The Rees Family. 

Kevin, his wife Shellie, and their five kids will be joining our Bundi team within this next year for him to provide pastoral discipleship and shepherding for our team, as well as for local pastors within Nyahuka and surrounding villages. We first got to meet Kevin and Shellie at Assessment & Orientation with World Harvest, and recently enjoyed a visit with them as they passed through Birmingham on their way back home to Arkansas. I hope you enjoy the perspective Kevin has about what his role will look like on our team.
 
1. What will be your primary role on the Bundi Team?


My primary role on the Bundi Team is to bring a pastoral arm to the existing team that is already established as a medical/mercy- and community-building ministry.  This pastoral arm I hope to bring is not a brand new work, although it has been dormant for the last several years.  There have been other excellent WHM pastors and church planters in Bundibugyo in the recent past with a successful church planted and transitioned to local leadership--which is a huge deal!  This local church is healthy and eager to expand their ministry influence for evangelism and church planting beyond just the immediate village, but they recognize their need for a "next tier" in theological education and ministry leadership development at this important threshold of expanding into regional ministry.  Therefore, the local church leaders have invited me, together with the WHM leadership,

(1) to establish a seminary for existing and future church planters and pastors in and around Bundibugyo, 

(2) to build relationships with these church leaders for collaborative and strategic ministry in and beyond the village, and 

(3) to offer pastoral ministry to the existing team of American missionaries on the field.



 
2. What do you picture the flow of a typical day looking like for you?

A typical day will be surprisingly common--building relationships, making disciples, gauging spiritual maturity and engaging spiritual need, preaching/teaching/praying the Scriptures, and cultivating an environment that is conducive for ministry leadership.  In a way, I have been doing that wherever I have served--in the States, overseas, in cities, in rural settings, in the pulpit, in the classroom.  Granted the pace will likely be slower and the environment vastly different, but the core of ministry is amazingly universal-- 

to know Christ deeply, to love God and others authentically, to serve the world compassionately.

   I anticipate learning what God is already doing in and among and through the local people, seeking to understand the local culture and pursuing together with those around me how Jesus really is the answer to questions that we have not even figured out how to ask yet.

 
3. What do you anticipate will be your greatest challenge in ministering in Bundi?

My greatest challenge in Bundi will be ME; my pride, self-sufficiency and propensity to disbelieve the very gospel that has set me free.  But beyond that, the physical side of life will be a challenge.  The lack of technology will be a strain.  The constant need for fund raising will be a concern.  But I anticipate both great joy and great pain will find us through our relationships--within the family, within the Team and among the people I am seeking to catalyze and edify and propel into ministry.

4. What do you hope to be your greatest reward in ministering on this team and in this people group?


My list gets very short on this one, thinking about hope for reward--

happy, healthy, holy.  

Honestly, if my wife and I can continue to live and minister together with genuine unity, if our children can own their faith and find that the Lord is at work in His wonderful grace all over the world, if the team with whom we share life finds that supernatural fellowship, friendship and solidarity that the Scriptures extol, and if the Babwisi people magnify the great name of Jesus in spirit and in truth--then I will be a staggeringly blessed and greatly rewarded man.  I don't want to save the world.  That's already been done.  I just want to trust and obey as the Lord gives me strength.



5. What do you hope to see transpire in Bundi in the next 5 years?

 In the next five years I hope to see Bundi, even if only in seed form, as I imagine the biblical Antioch must have been--a Bible-hungering, disciple-making, leader-developing, church-planting, missionary-sending community that replicates other mature Bible-hungering, disciple-making, leader-developing, church-planting, missionary-sending churches all over the Semliki River Valley ... poised to spill over into eastern Congo and northern Rwanda.  But wait ... you said five years!  Okay, at the end of the next five years I hope that we are still alive, still on speaking terms and still convinced that God is God, that God is good and that God is more than good enough in every way.

Thanks for your input, Kevin! We are so excited to have you guys with us in Bundibugyo, and can not wait to minister with you there!!