The Young Men of Our Original 12
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Front row left to right: Roberto Radilla, Hugo Andrade, Amalio Garcia, Eusebio (Chebo) Jaimes, Gregorio Rendón. Back row left to right: Severiano Orosco, Diego Onofre.When God put it on my heart to form my 12 back in 1981, I had no concept me just working with a of a group of young men and my wife just with women. I didn't see the brilliance of that method until it was revealed to Pastor Cesar Castellanos in 2002.
Yet I was working, what I understood to be, a vision of the 12, a discipleship training school that was not a parachurch organization [such as those fine missonary organization such as: YWAM or OM], but rather an organic part and natural function of the local church. God began to show me, among other revelations about true discipleship, that true leadership is not my ability to do the work of "seven" men... however willing I might be to do so... but was rather the ability to train up "seven" men to do the work!
So I bagan to seek out a call out those I saw most qualified for three intense discipleship training. I wanted to multiply my spiritual DNA (my spiritual burdens, visions, passions and knowledge) in them and in that way effectively multiply my ability to spread the work of God. These 12 disciples actually lived with us in the Discipleship Training Center for three years.
As I stated, we had 12 principal disciples from our Tecpan church, which I considered to be the mother church of all those we had planted in Mexico. But we had some marvelous young people that had been saved in our other works that I would bring in during various times of the year for times of discipleship training and personal ministry. We would then send them back home to continue to work in their home churches.
Upon graduation, the ones I considered to be the most able and willing to continue their ministerial preparation, Gina and I scholarshipped to study in a formal Bible school. These we called our first graduates. In the local church, this took nothing away from those who did not go on to Bible school, but could open wider doors of ministry for those that did.
posted by Prince and Gina Parker @ 10:25 AM,
