“Lord, Establish the Work of Our Hands” (Ps 90:17)

For the past 8 years, the Lord has given us the privilege of serving in Iglesia Bautista Gracia Soberana (Santo Domingo, Ecuador) where He has opened the door for training men for ministry, strengthening pastors already severing, planting churches, and helping Christians to better understand God’s Word and what it means to be a local church. We have witnessed God’s amazing work of extending His Kingdom through establishing pastoral training programs in various countries, new churches planted and others now in the process, older churches growing and maturing in their faith and practice, and new resources for pastors and all Christians translated into Spanish. God is doing an amazing work in Latin-America and in Ecuador specifically. 

One of the key ways that God has called us to help is through training men for ministry and church planting. This is happening through our local church’s pastoral training program called the Pastor School. It is a 2.5-year intensive that seeks to train men with a good testimony and initial signs of a call to ministry in the context of the local church. Students receive a rigorous academic curriculum as well as a deep and personal mentorship as they mature as Christians, husbands, fathers, church members, and preachers of God’s Word. Throughout the entire program, students are involved in local church service, missionary activities, preaching, teaching, and discipleship in the local church and its missions. 

Our program has already seen three students graduate. One of them is serving as the pastor of his home church that sent him to our program. The other two are being examined by our church to be sent out over the next couple of months as church planters to other areas of Ecuador where God is already raising up believers committed to walking together in submission to Christ in a local church.

We will receive 6-7 new students in March and will begin classes the first week of April. With these new students, we already are beginning with plans of seeing two new churches planted—one just north of the Colombia-Ecuador border and another about 2 hours from Santo Domingo in Pedernales. 

Project: Pastor School

Our program seeks to train men through academic courses as well as personal and pastoral discipleship in the context of service and life in the body of Christ. To better meet these objectives and to reduce costs long term for the ministry, the Lord has given us the opportunity to build apartments that will house up to 8 families, a place for our classes, study, and research, as well as a new church building for the local church. In this way, we will be able to optimize our time together and the students’ activity in the local church, as well as reduce costs. Instead of paying for rent in the city for 7 families, which will have a monthly cost of about $2,300, that money can be better invested in the long-term goals of the program as well as the other missionary and church-planting projects. This is an opportunity to use our time and money in a much more efficient way. We want to be good and faithful stewards of the resources that God has given—people, time, and money.

We want to accomplish this goal in three phases: 

Phase 1: Purchase the Land

Phase 1 consists of finishing the purchase of the property. We have already made an agreement with the seller and a down payment. The property has a total cost of $65,000, and we have until March 15th to finish the payment. 

Phase 2: Pastor School Construction 

Phase 2 consists of building two apartment buildings that will house a total of 8 student families, a classroom/study area, and a pastoral house/parsonage for my family since I will be teaching the classes four days a week. This has a budget of about $350,000 with a completion goal of March, 2023 to March, 2024. 

Phase 3: Church Building Construction

The final phase consists of building the church building and making the final changes to the parking lot and recreational area for the church. This has an initial budget of $325,000 with a completion goal of March, 2024 to August, 2025.

Below, you will see the most up-to-date floor plans as well as a digital rendering of the Pastor School housing facilities. 

Help Us Finish Phase 1

Our most urgent need is for your help with Phase 1—purchasing the land. As of today, January 17th, the Lord has already blessed us with over one quarter of our goal. We are thankful for the churches and individuals who have already committed to help. So, please consider joining us and our other supporters with a one-time gift or through becoming a monthly partner of our ministry so that we can work together to continue this incredible work of training men for ministry and planting churches in Ecuador and in other countries. If only 100 churches and/or individuals commit to give $500 we will meet what’s left of our goal for phase 1!

How Can You Give?

If you’d like to help, you can send a tax deductible offering to Grace Bible Church (P.O. Box 1586, Conway, AR 72033)—our sponsoring church—with “Project: Pastor School” on the memo line. You can also give a one-time or recurring offering online by clicking this link and selecting “Missions – Latin America” from the drop down box. You can also click this link to give through PayPal.
You can also help through committing to pray for this project personally and in your church. We know that the Lord will hear the prayers of His people.

Want More Information First? 

Say you want to help, but you have a few questions first or you want to know more about the ministry. There are four main ways you can get this information. 
First, check out or previous update that gives a little more detail about the desires behind this project. You can see it at this link. 
Second, you can check out our website for more information about us and the Pastor School. 
Third, contact me or we can set up a meeting through Zoom for you or your church.
Fourth, I am inviting all who are interested in our ministry and who want to know more to have a Zoom meeting with me. I know everyone has different schedules, so I want to provide two different opportunities. The first opportunity will be Monday, January 30th at 2:00pm CST. The second will be Tuesday, February 7th at 7:00pm CST. These meetings will be recorded for those who can’t attend. All those who attend will have the opportunity to ask questions about the ministry or the Project. Lord willing, we will have some of both former and future students in attendance so that you can meet them and hear their testimony. The meeting link is here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84134132271?pwd=NExjNWkzY3JsY1ZJc2xvSGdYcjd0UT09
I will send out a reminder as we get closer to time.