We want our lives to make a positive difference. Helping others to live lives that are meaningful and focused on God and others...that gets us excited. We’re convinced that those who glorify and enjoy God – above or below society’s radar – are the ones who, slowly but surely, are building Christ’s kingdom on earth as it will be in Heaven.

But for the last few years we’ve been trying to discern how, where, and with whom to do this. A critical piece of this puzzle has fallen into place, as you can see by the following excerpts from emails:

Dear Tim and Annette,

...It is my privilege as Senior Director of Personnel to inform you that you are reassigned to the International Ministry Team (*IMT) This is effective as of today…. We can discuss your future geographical assignments at another time….

Again, let me express on behalf of OC our excitement for your assignment and our gratitude to the Lord for His clear direction.

Praying for you as you continue to follow the Lord in obedience to His leading,

Bill Keyes, Sr. Director of Personnel, OC International

*Since you’ve probably never heard of the IMT before and since it’s a bit of an enigma even within our organization, we want to bring you up to speed by letting you peek at our email conversations on the subject (edited for easier reading):

Hi Tim and Annette,

Some months ago I talked with the V.P. of Personnel about the possibility of inviting you to consider being assigned as members of the International Ministry Team (IMT) because of the expansion of your ministry with its worldwide impact among youth. As you may know the IMT is the only team whose members are not co-located due to the nature of their project specific, short-term leadership training ministries.

At our team retreat in March [2006] our members discussed the nature of your ministry among youth. There was unanimous conclusion that we should contact you and explore the possibility of a closer interaction with you. Bob, working with development of youth and camp leaders in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union, was especially enthusiastic about the possibilities of combining his work with your expanding ministry. Please consider this an invitation for possible assignment to the IMT.

Many blessings,   Daryl P., Director IMT

Daryl...

Annette and I are honored that the IMT unanimously decided that we should be contacted. We would like to talk further about the IMT and what it would mean for us to be part of it.

For Christ and His Kingdom......... Tim and Annette

Tim, it was good to talk with you yesterday.

In keeping with our conversations, I wanted to get back with you to provide a bit of an overview about the IMT. The IMT is the only permanent OC team [as opposed to short-term “impact” teams] with a worldwide ministry platform [other permanent teams are defined primarily by geographic or people group focus].

The vision of the IMT is to serve as a global catalyst for discipling all nations using non-competitive, strategic and innovative approaches designed to make breakthrough contributions whether alongside other OC teams or entering new frontiers.

There are many unique characteristics about this one-of-a-kind team. It is structured around semi-annual, week-long team retreats for encouragement and accountability.

It was interesting this summer to hear the IMT explained at the OC internship as a team which doesn't recruit members because only those who qualify by experience and gifting are assigned to this team…

In later correspondence one of the IMT team
members described the team this way...

Annette and I at our first meeting with the IMT (March '07)

The IMT people are self starters… We tend to think a bit outside the box…While most of us have ministry that goes beyond the normal range of OC contacts we try to make ourselves available to field and area teams for ministry assistance and consultation. One of our chief attributes is mobility and flexibility.

Right now this change doesn’t affect our ministry projects, we’ll continue to coordinate the Spanish youth ministry website – which is growing daily (we provide well over 20,000 pages of materials and published 64 new resources in the last two months) – we continue to be in touch with and support youth leaders around Latin America nearly every day and we’re preparing for our contribution to the upcoming youth workers conventions in Chile, Guatemala and Argentina. But the IMT provides us the opportunity to learn from experienced colleagues and a platform from which we can mentor leaders in a deeper way.

As to where we will be living…that will be revealed in a future comunique :-)