Pastor Ron's Health and Ministry
Pastor Ron has discovered he is able to maintain 7 separate groups with three to seven relationships in each. Therefore, his ministry groups in More than Recovery (MtR) are: Western North America, Eastern North America, Eastern Europe, and South Africa. Each of the MtR groups is how Ron continues as pastor and serves as executive director of NewHeart Expressions.
Ron’s home Church – the Community of Grace (where he attends Mission Under Grace and Outside the Walls) serve as his fifth group, providing him with Christian fellowship, spiritual nourishment, and a place to serve and heal. Community of Grace offers and provides Ron a local fellowship without being a part of leadership. Both Mission Under Grace and Outside the Walls hold Pastor Ron up in his desire to liberate many with the Grace of the Gospel and disciple men while walking with them one by one (via the internet and telephone) into freedom in Christ. Ron’s sixth group connection is Exchanged Life Ministries here in Aurora Colorado, where Ron attends Grace Life Counseling Advanced Training with a dozen other trainees, whom the doctor has labeled as Ron’s “community.”
Pastor Ron identifies his wife and children as the seventh group; this group is accompanied by resource persons to assist him in carrying out his responsibilities to his family. It is important that a group is set aside for his family to provide the cognitive health and function he needs for them. Seven is not what is left over, but is chosen because seven is Pastor Ron’s favorite number. (Seven reflects God’s perfection and completeness, as the Hebrew language has both numerical and symbolic meanings.) Ron believes his wife completes him and each child is a blessing of his and Ginger’s relationship. Pastor Ron requests your continued prayers for his family!
On December 6th the doctors made the decision to declare Ron as permanently disabled from viable and reasonable vocation. Pastor Ron’s ministry with NHE has been labeled a-vocational. If you can find such a word in the dictionary you will discover it means – hobby. Ron screams within his depths, that this ministry is far more than a hobby! NHE is about life and death issues; it is about walking into the trenches and helping men find their way out, in discovering Jesus as their real LIFE!
The indirect blessing of this decision is that Ron may be able to draw SSI. We strongly use the word “MAYBE”. Government, especially with SSI is very slow in making their decisions. However, we are prayerful this will begin within the first quarter of 07. Ron is being scheduled for a judge’s hearing and we pray for wisdom, quickness, and favor for him in the court and from this judge. This will assist Ron financially. Pray with us!
Folks, regardless of this disability assistance for Ron, there remain the financial obligations of NewHeart Expressions. NHE still makes available, three times each year, the POWER of Purity Conference and Workshop and is now launching the More than Recovery Internet Study. As 2007 develops and Pastor Ron’s health permits, Ron’s heartfelt desire is to embark upon the Colfax Initiative to win many held captive in the depression, anger, crime, fear, sexual brokenness, and many other destructive habits our nation and world are trapped in. The Colfax Initiative involves taking the Exchanged Life message to the captives on the streets in ways they can understand it. For example: Pastor Ron has asked ministers what grace is or what does grace look like? Certainly, they may give correct answers, but not answers ‘street people’ understand. What is grace? ‘What God does that I cannot do!’ When Pastor Ron uses this definition with men and women on the streets, guess what? ‘They get it!’ Pray as Ron writes and rewrites the Exchanged Life Truths so that men, women, and teens on the streets, in the prisons, and among the Church understand; always trusting that the Holy Spirit would open many eyes to see and understand the Life of Jesus.
