ONLINE DPW PESTA (Strategic Training) – SUMATRA
Praise the Lord as the DPW Sumatra successfully conducted its online PESTA (Strategic Training) last Friday the 8th of May at 13.00-16.30 with over 130 leaders in attendance; 109 of which were from L0 & L1 and 21 of which were iCare selected leaders from L2.
You couldn’t tell that it wasn’t an in-person event because the interest and enthusiasm was phenomenal with representatives from nearly all cities on the island. Most of the churches in Sumatra joined the event. There are a total of 41 churches throughout Sumatra: 13 local, 15 satellite churches, and 13 TPI.
Ps Herdy Hutabarat started off the event while Ps Erna Iskandar welcomed the event’s main speaker, namely Ps Jimmy Oentoro (Chair of IFGF Global). Accompanying him were both Ps Ando Gunawan and Ps Ricky Gunawan (IFGF Jakarta Pastoral Team).
Ps Jimmy introduced IFGF Life’s cultural structure for the future which are Discipleship Culture – Grow Culture – Ministry Culture – PIOM (People Is Our Mission) through Art (A), Business (B), Church (C), Digital Media (D), Education (E), Family (F), Government (G) and also stressed the importance of building a healthy life in family, service, and business, through a healthy foundation as stated in Job 14:7-9 and Genesis 1:11-12. After encouraging all churches to build communities, bringing up specifically the iCare community, Ps Ando Gunawan proceeded to provide his talk on the principle of “Identify, Instruct, Impact, and Intern”. These principles are to guide leaders to continue their works by serving others so as to raise as many leaders as possible with intention and planning.
Ps Ricky Gunawan followed up with his session, titled Walk with One: Eat, Pray & Love, providing evangelism tips while hitting home the point that no one is exempt from having the opportunity to be proactive and creative in building relationships with other members and building a collective desire to introduce more people to Jesus.
In the second session, Ps Sam Hartanto (IFGF Global General Secretary) gave his talk on “The 6 things communicated to iCare Leaders during Covid-19”:
- Let them know that you are praying for them
a) Be involved with God’s Work in their life
b) Help them to focus on Jesus
c) We share their burdens
d) We are also transformed - To reach out if they have a need
- To be honest, if anxiety is overtaking them
- To stay on mission
- That our hope isn’t in this life only
- That God is building something special
PESTA Participants felt blessed and even more equipped than before. The Q&A and online group photo session was then followed by a half hour discussion on internal matters in the Sumatra region. Ps Erna encouraged all leaders to pay closer attention to their members during this pandemic and stated her intentions to provide online training for the Online Equipment department.
Lastly, Ps Indra shared financial management tips specifically regarding balancing helping those in need with the IFGF CARE FOR COVID-19 movement and concurrently providing for your local members as well. Ps Indra Effendi closed the event in prayer.
