Phillip Rice

When it comes to knowing your personal call to ministry, solidify that you’re not self-called or parents-called or pastor-called, or anything else. When you know you are called, you go through the doors that God opens for you, and God gives us choices. When people ask me, “How do you know for sure this is where I’m supposed to go, and what I’m supposed to do?”

In 1976 the Baptist Missionary Association Bible College in the Philippines began training the first Filipino pastors. The college has gone through many changes, most recently achieving CHED (Commission of Higher Education) accreditation.  In addition to offering degrees in theology and pastoral leadership, the institution also provides training in religious education and music.

If it were as simple as distilling down the Great Commission to specific skill sets, certainly those would include actively sharing our faith, intentionally discipling believers, developing new leaders, and planting churches. This writer commonly calls these skills the “GC Skills”–the Great Commission skills. Granted, the GC does not explicitly say to plant churches; however, the entire New Testament screams to us that when the GC is fulfilled it results in new churches being planted.

The dictionary defines the word invest as “to expend money with the expectation of achieving a profit or material result by putting it into financial plans, shares, or property or by using it to develop a commercial venture; todevote one's time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result.”