Until The Nets Are Full: Who are Denton Bible Church and Serve International?

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All dressed up for mom and dad's Sunday School class social.

Greetings supporters, friends, and prayer warriors!

What a blessing it is to serve alongside each of you here on the field in Appalachia. Things sure are getting exciting in the ministry here lately and we can’t wait to share with you all the things in store as they unfold over the next several months.

One of the things that we believe is a critically important part of our ministry is clearly communicating with each of you about our ministry: what we do and why we do what we do. We truly desire for you to understand why we believe God led us here to minister and know what we are laboring on week to week. So, to help with this, over the next several weeks, we are going to pose a “Shrader Ministry Question of the Week” about our ministry and then answer it for you. We believe this will be helpful in that first, it may answer questions you currently have about our ministry but just have never asked, and second, it will help you communicate our ministry clearly to others who may ask you.

Also as a part of this, we would welcome you to email us any questions that you have currently about our ministry in any capacity and we will make every effort to include it in this segment of our blog post.

So you will know if your question is going to be answered, here are the questions we will address over the next two months:

1. Who are Denton Bible Church and Serve International?

2. Church planting or church revitalization?

3. Why is the Appalachian Mountains one of Serve’s International outreach locations?

4. Why are you ministering through Denton Bible Church/Serve and not the IMB or another ministry?

5. How are Serve and Mountain Vision Ministries related?

6. Should missionaries raise their own financial support?

7. Why did you choose Appalachia/East Tennessee?

8. Why are you doing benevolence ministry and what does it look like?

9. How do benevolence ministry and leadership training fit together?

Again, if you have any additional questions you would like have answered, simply email us at danielshrader26@yahoo.com and we will try to include them. We hope this will be refreshing for all of you that support our ministry in reminding you of our vision, purpose, and why we are here.

So, without further delay, our first “Shrader Ministry Question of the Week”:

Who is Denton Bible Church?

· Denton Bible Church is a non-denominational church located in Denton, TX, just northwest of Dallas. The church was started in 1976 by Pastor Mel Sumrall and is currently under the leadership of Pastor Tommy Nelson. Denton Bible Church is a very mission minded church. You can read more about the history of the church here: http://dentonbible.org/about-us/history-of-dbc/. Denton Bible is a church whose foundation of faith and practice is built on the Bible as the inspired word of God. To read more about what Denton Bible believes go here: http://dentonbible.org/about-us/what-we-believe/.

What is Serve International?

· Serve is the outreach arm of Denton Bible Church. Serve exists to glorify God by cultivating, equipping, and mobilizing Christian leaders worldwide. We believe the most strategic way to impact a culture is through its churches. Therefore we strive to serve local churches by strengthening their leaders so that they can more effectively accomplish what Christ has called them to do, make disciples. Serve seeks to foster consistent, intimate, and dynamic spiritual lives in Christian leaders worldwide through incarnational discipleship relationships. Therefore Serve mobilizes long-term missionaries who learn the local language and culture in order to establish credibility and cultivate relationships required to minister effectively in cultural contexts other than our own. This is accomplished through equipping leaders in the U.S. through our Missionary Training Institute and worldwide through various leadership tools, including Bible Training Center for Pastors.

· Serve’s Training Program is called “MTI” which stands for Missions Training Institute. The purpose of MTI is to prepare Serve missionaries for service in vocational ministry both domestically and internationally. Serve candidates complete three trimesters of classroom training over 12 months in MTI at Denton Bible Church. Some of the class content they cover includes Old and New Testament Survey and Cultural Anthropology just to name a couple. When a student graduates from the MTI program they usually either choose to join a Serve team established in the US or another country, or to go to work in international outreach ministry in another context. Daniel graduated from MTI in December 2006 before we were married before going on to receive his Master of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Serve has teams in Argentina, India, Kenya, Mexico, Romania, Spain, Western Europe, Central Europe, and us, the Appalachian Mountains. To read more about Serve International and the MTI program go here: http://www.serve-intl.com/home/

Now I can almost hear all of your brains asking: “Well if Serve is an international outreach ministry of DBC, why, amidst all of those foreign countries, are the Appalachian Mountains included?” GOOD QUESTION!! There is a good answer that we’ll get to shortly, but next week we want to set up the answer to that question by discussing church revitalization and church planting. Have a blessed week!

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Here it is in pictures.

We had a group of high school students from Boca Raton Christian School in FL come serve with us at the storehouse. They were a good group and accomplished quite a bit in a short time!

The guys loaded all the scrap metal we had collected to haul to the recycle center.

The recycle center won't take buckets with lids on them, so these guys are opening them up.

Altogether we had...a lot!

Some of the guys also helped wallpaper the ceiling in the barn to keep the birds from pooping on our furniture. It worked!

A group of ladies helped sort, fold, and label clothes to be given away.

Lily's first Easter Egg hunt!

She got some eggs, and she was very excited to open them!

Lily likes to ride the horsey at the park.

She also loves to go down the slide!

Notice the big grin!

This is right before she landed in the dirt and got dirt in her eye. Dad couldn't quite catch her fast enough. The transition from euphoria to sadness was almost instantaneous. The things I put this child through for a photo op.