A Word to the Local Church

Influencers Global Ministries is growing and spreading into new cities, states and countries.  This once obscure ministry, which seemed “under the radar screen,” is now becoming more known.  And as we are feeling led to make a movie based on Rocky’s book, Journey to the Inner Chamber, our ministry and our message and our discipleship process will likely become largely known.  Nearly all of our constituents go to a local church, and many have talked to their pastors about our process, The Journey. 

This has led many pastors to check us out, to review our curriculum and to consider if they would want to use The Journey in their churches.  We love it when a pastor decides to go through The Journey, with men not from his church, where he can be a regular guy, and experience what God might want to say to him.  Many churches have embraced our process, and they have seen great fruit produced in their people as a result of going through it. 

Whereas this ministry started in the “marketplace”, it could be misunderstood by some pastors and churches that we are “outside” the church or in competition with the church.  Let me assure you that Influencers Global Ministries loves the local church, and we love pastors.  We appreciate the immense responsibility and intense pressure for a Shepherd of a church.  We understand the difficulty to make disciples of Christ in this increasingly secular, morally relative world.  We believe God has raised up Influencers Global Ministries to help the body of Christ and to help those pastors and churches who desire it.

So, if you are a pastor of a local church, we want you to know some important things about our ministry.

• We exist to serve God, and His only Son, Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of mankind, and is Savior to all who believe in Him and receive His gift of salvation.

• We believe God’s Word is inspired and breathed by God Himself. In everything we do, we point people to God’s Word as their North Star to guide them.  Helping people become “self-feeders” on God’s Word daily is one of our highest priorities.

• We are a 501c3 Non-profit corporation. We are not a replacement for the Local Church.  We respect and yield to the authority of the Local Church, and we believe God instituted the Local Church to organize and support Christ’s mission to make disciples of all nations.

• We realize there are denominational and doctrinal differences among the Local Church. It is not our purpose to change this when invited into a church, and our curriculum never enters into this discussion.  Our only mission to a church is to help their congregation know how deeply they are loved by Christ, and to be faithful and supportive of their church, and stewards of their spiritual gifts within their church.

• We are funded by men and women who have been helped by our ministry and who want to see us helping others, but we would never encourage this to be a replacement for their tithes to their local church.

• We believe in the Holy Spirit and the Spiritual Gifts and that a big part of “Abiding in Christ” is learning how the Holy Spirit will guide an individual, through God’s Word, into actions and areas of service for God’s purposes.

• We believe in Prayer. We see Jesus as our model of continual prayer, and we see Prayer as the fuel for our ministry.  We always want to be about the “Father’s business” and in His Will, rather than clever, gifted leaders who know best.  Prayer helps us always yield to His Will, not ours, as we pursue the tasks He puts in front of us.

• We believe in Community and in the power of people working in pairs, just like Jesus sending His early disciples out two by two, so we have protection, accountability, strength.

• We believe all believers are called by God to go and make disciples, but we believe you can’t make disciples if you are not a disciple. This is why we prefer that someone go through our Journey process before attempting to lead others through The Journey.

• We believe in “equipping” our leaders. We have created 6-Week Journey Guide Mentoring plan and are constantly working with our Regional leaders to properly train our Journey Guides.

• We are not teachers, but rather facilitators or Guides, believing the Teacher of our process is the Holy Spirit, using God’s Word and life challenges as His textbooks.

• Rocky has written several allegorical books to tell creative stories that will help explain deep Biblical principles in an easy-to-understand way.

• We don’t believe The Journey is the only way to make disciples or that it will be understood or accepted universally, but we are determined to “go where we are invited” by Him and faithfully use our process to help Christians become disciples and to give them a tool with which they can go make disciples.

If you are a local pastor who would like to know more about The Journey and Influencers Global Ministries, we would love to visit with you and even share our curriculum with you.  As I said earlier, we are working on making a movie, and as we have considered the prospect of millions of movie viewers coming out of the movie with a desire to know Christ more deeply, who may contact our ministry wanting to go through a Journey group, we know we are going to need the Local Church to help us in helping them.  We would love to have at least 1000 churches, all over the country, who are trained in The Journey, who could receive these seekers after the movie.  If you would like to be one of these churches, please let us know.

Thank you, pastors, for your obedience to the calling of our Lord and for all the sacrifices you make as live out your lives as a fragrant offering to Him. Bless you.