Twice a year, the pastors of the Gulf States Conference gather to learn, grow, fellowship, find inspiration, and energize their ministries. The first meeting of 2024 took place February 21-22, 2024, and was led by Josh Murillo, Gulf States vice president for ministerial.
During the two days together, pastors were inspired by guest speaker Roger Hernandez, Southern Union ministerial and evangelism director. Hernandez challenged the attendees, saying, “I think it’s important to know the times that we are living in. It would be unwise to act as if everything was normal, everything was the same, we have no challenges.
“I think a good pastor will be intentional about finding out what the demographics say, what the surveys say, and what the Bible says, and put it all together and have a strategy and a clear direction on where to go,” he continued.
David Donaldson, associate pastor at the Huntsville, Ala., Church, appreciated the time together and the importance of the meetings: “I believe this is extremely important not only for the individual pastors but also for the membership of local churches and the Conference. The experience that I’ve had has been very informative and to a great extent inspirational. I had a very good time.”
Highlighting the opportunity, Murillo stated, “It’s such a joy to have our pastors over at the Conference office. And you know, the purpose of these meetings is to provide the right training and the information that they need.
“We’ve been talking about their benefits. We talked about leadership. We’re talking about goals. We’re talking about ideas. We want to dream big. We want to work together. We want to network, and we want to inspire our pastors to go back to their churches and continue serving. They’ve been doing it.
“We’re very proud of them. We’re grateful to have them serving in our territory. So, these meetings are just pure oxygen coming to their lives and are helping them to grow as we grow together.”
Agnes Lucas, pastor, who was in attendance at the two-day retreat, shared his appreciation for the weekend, saying, “It’s a pleasure to be here because it’s good to gather together with other pastors to listen to their experience, and also learn how to improve my service — how to improve my ministry with my churches.
“I’m sure that I’m going to take good things from this meeting. And also, I’m going to put into practice a lot of things that I have heard here so far.”
Gulf States invites everyone to continue to pray for Conference pastors and their ministries to the local churches.
Gulf States | June 2024
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