On the whole, these posts are designed to be ministry updates so that people outside of 350 w. 26th street can have a window into the activities that take place here. After all, a church wants to know what their missionary is up to, right??

I took my first real time off from work here about eleven days ago. We scheduled ourselves to have one day off each week when we planned our food pickup schedule almost two months ago and I was careful to group my pickups in such a way that I have two days without any food pickups, but those are my school days. I started off taking fifteen credits in my pursuit of an MDiv but quickly realized that I needed to cut it down and ended up dropping two classes. The result of this is that I’m still taking nine credits, and trying to do all of that work during my two days “off” (Wednesday and Friday). All of that to say, when the time finally rolled around to head to Greenville, SC, for my cousin’s wedding, my back was in great need of some R&R. Did I mention that my “NYC vacation” was a vacation from NYC?

During my time in Greenville, I was given opportunities to present the ministry ten times. Two of my main teachers from my MA at Bob Jones University gave me a combined total of six openings to speak in classes and show pictures of the ministry between Thursday afternoon and Friday. In addition to this, I was given openings in choir, society, and the combined Ministry class. Then on Sunday morning one of our supporting churches, Heritage Bible Church, let me present in the Young Professionals class. All in all, I gave away about half a box of business cards, and spoke to around six hundred people.

The main goal was to recruit interns for this coming summer. (If you’re interested, send me an email at Andy.Woodard335@gmail.com We’re looking for multi-skilled, hard working, young people who are serious about the gospel)

After my time in Greenville was up, I drove a rental car from Greenville, SC, to Louisville, KY where I am enrolled at Southern Seminary and taking hybrid-module classes. They are mostly online and only requiring two days in residence. This format provides the opportunity for a person to work in a ministry outside of a seminary town, yet continue to work on further training. Quite frankly, one of the main reasons I picked SBTS for my MDiv was because they had the best distance options of the schools I considered.

I wasn’t totally sure what to expect, arriving at Southern knowing no one. I walked into the campus hotel and quickly found myself in a lively conversation with the man at the counter (himself a fellow seminarian)… then as more people were on their way through, they would stop and talk. Soon there were about five of us standing around talking about everything from NYC to eschatology and the local churches. All of us were seminary students, but of that group, it included a current FBI agent, future missionary to Ethiopia, and church planter in NYC. We came from extremely diverse backgrounds, hailing from all over America. And you know.. this funny thing happened. We had fellowship! Though the group had theology all across the spectrum of conservative orthodoxy, we had a great time together! There were continuationists, cessationists, covenant, dispensational, premill-pretrip, and amill views held by the various people, but none of that was a matter of contention because we all believe in and worship the same God. We all love the same gospel. We believe that there are primary doctrines and that there are doctrines which are not primary. More on this later.

Going into a new context, seeking to make contacts, to advance the gospel gives the opportunity to implement some things that I learned in a missions class. It’s a concept called the “Person of Peace.” The basic idea is that when you move into a village in the middle of the jungles of Siberia, you can start at ground zero, meeting everyone on your own and building a reputation over the course of several decades, but another option is to seek out a “person of peace.” In essence, what you want to do is to intentionally befriend the chief of the village. Once you have won the friendships of key influential people, you can move much more effectively with them on your side rather than going at it alone. In Facebook land we call it a “Mutual Friend” but it starts as someone you don’t know. I think it could simply be called “networking.” I hope this doesn’t sound mercenary or manipulative because that is not my intention or my heart. Rather, I think it is a basic fact of human relationships that is hard wired into our God-given nature. If my friend introduces someone to me, it can provide an enormous foundational level of trust that would take weeks or months to build on my own. This is the “Person of Peace” concept, that is essential to our work here and elsewhere as we travel. Over the course of the trip, I met a number of people who could end up being powerful “persons of peace” - both in Greenville, and in Louisville.

A closing thought that has been on my heart over the last couple of months; In the coming weeks, I intend to start a five part blog series. The target of the post is not to you - the general readers, but rather I desire to gear it towards our people. I hope the tone of it is pastoral. The first part will be on the Authority of Scripture, and the following posts will be an examination of several passages of Scripture, with application to matters brought up in this post and several of my recent sermons. The matter of authority is important because it is the foundation for everything that is to follow.

Ministry specific update: Tomorrow’s sermon is on hospitality (1 Peter 4:9). I’m struggling with how to preach Christ from this passage - considering the vast majority of the people in attendance are unbelievers. In a perfect world, I would have written the message long ago, and would be reviewing it right now, but this is not that world.