“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12 NIV)

 

Fourteen years ago, I decided to take a leap of faith from my full-time job as an environmental engineer to full-time pastoral ministry. I didn’t leap alone: my husband and two children jumped with me. We landed in Miami, Florida at Trinity Church in August 1999 where I became the benevolence pastor. Since that time, the benevolence ministry evolved into the Peacemaker Family Center (PFC). PFC has provided social service assistance to thousands of individuals and families and has managed $24 million in Federal, State, and locally funded social service programs. Not only have many lives been positively impacted, I have been changed. The people who I have had the privilege to work with and the programs I have been involved with taught me lessons that I could not have learned in a classroom. The purpose of this book is to share my lessons learned.

Our world is filled with communities of people who are suffering desperately from a variety of social problems. Could you visualize yourself as someone doing God-inspired greater things to bring help, hope, and transformative solutions to your community? Maybe you have your doubts, but Jesus said that whoever believed in Him would do even greater things than He had done. Consider Jesus’ disciples. They were ordinary men, but God filled them with power to do extraordinary things throughout the world. Jesus said these words to them:

 

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling the people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8

 

This supernatural infusion of power from the Holy Spirit inspired them to accomplish what they could have never accomplished in their natural strength and abilities. God has created us to do greater things as well. He wants to infuse each one of us with this same power so we can do the work He designed us to do. What we do and how we do it will be unique to us, but what is common for all of us is that God only asks us to be who He designed us to be. And this is the most important lesson that I have learned: ministry is more about being than about methods of doing.

The book is written in a devotional format. The ideas contained in each chapter represents key learning that has shaped who I am and how I approach social service ministries today.

I am expecting Inspired for Greater Things to be available from Xulon Press in January 2014.