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Pastors’ and Leaders’ Continuing Education Conference 2009 |
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 More than 100 pastors and church leaders from Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua gathered at the Villa Gracia Retreat Center in Tegucigalpa last week for the sixth annual continuing education conference of the Honduras Evangelical Holiness Church. The five day conference provided leadership training on topics including spiritual gifts, financial management, mass media and Community Health Evangelism (CHE). After engaging in sessions, interacting with other church leaders and discussing topics in small groups, the attendees gained a new understanding of effective leadership methods they can use in their congregations.Miguel Pastor, pastor in La Concepcíon, Olancho, gained a new understanding of the importance of family as a result of the conference. “As pastors we are taught to take care of our congregation and we forget about our family,” said Pastor. “The church is in your home and this is where you should start.” Pastor plans to incorporate the concept of family into his congregation. In a church composed of many single mothers, Pastor wants to bring a sense of family union into the church. “I’m going home with a new desire to work with single mothers, to bring a family feeling into the church,” he said. |
 Pastor was not the only leader to leave the conference with ideas on improving his church congregation. Pastor Efraín Nuñez, who ministers in Punta Gorda, Roatan, gained new knowledge on the use of spiritual gifts within the church. After taking a short quiz, Nuñez discovered his own spiritual gifts of teaching, evangelism, service and hospitality. “I found I had gifts I didn’t know I had,” he said. He plans on using this quiz in his church to help his congregation understand what spiritual gifts they possess. “I want to teach the church and put into practice all that I’ve learned,” he said.Daniel Ventura, missionary and member of the Restauracíon congregation in Tegucigalpa also found the session on spiritual gifts helpful. “So often we know what our gifts are and use them, but we don’t depend of God,” he said. “We depend on ourselves because we are self-sufficient when we really need to depend on the Lord.” |
 The conference was not only useful to pastors, but also to their wives. Jenny de Martinez fulfills her role as a pastor’s wife in the church in Comayagua. Her goal is to strengthen leadership training in her own church, using some of the tactics she learned at the conference. “I want to help teach people so they can in turn train others,” she said. De Martinez found the session on community outreach helpful because of the strong focus of community evangelism in her congregation. “We recently started working in a poor community with a medical team,” she said. “We’re asking God where we should start because there are so many needs in the community.” Even though the need seems overwhelming, de Martinez has a new attitude about her role in her community. She is anticipating that her new vision will in turn help her congregation to have an excitement about investing in their community. |
