Meet Emily

56 single ladies this semester have put themselves under the sole study of God’s Word. Many of these 56 ladies are looking forward to serving cross-culturally and to serve in the local church.

Emily is one of those ladies.

I have the privilege of working closely with Emily. She is serving the Student Life Department and the student body by holding the position of RA in one of the single ladies’ dorms. Emily and I have now logged hours together filled with encouragement, challenge, and laughter.

I asked her if she’d be comfortable answering a couple questions for you all and she readily agreed. So, here’s a little piece of Emily’s heart and mind:

C: What are your future ministry goals?

E: In the future I would like to continue on with New Tribes Mission. There is so much need in this world, and ministry is needed everywhere, but there are still many people groups out there that don’t have even one word of the Bible in their language. I would love to be a part of the work to reach unreached people groups, in whatever capacity that may be. I would like to actually be in a tribe, but if not, I’m completely open to support work, both overseas and in the States. There are so many different aspects to tribal church planting that I’d be happy to fit in anywhere, just as long as I’m helping in some way.

C: How has your time at NTBI prepared you in your desire to be involved in cross-cultural ministry?

E: The first way my time here at NTBI prepared me was to make me realize that I needed a better foundation in the Bible before I could even consider undertaking cross-cultural ministry. It has taught me how little I actually knew and how much I still needed to grow. I can’t expect to effectively minister among anyone, much less in a cross-cultural context, if I don’t thoroughly know what I believe.  Now that I’m graduating in December I have come to realize that I still have so much to learn and I still have a lot of growing to do. To say that I didn’t learn anything during my time here would be false, I have learned SO much, but I’ve just come to understand that I will always be learning and that I will always have more growing to do. I am not perfected yet, and I needed to learn that.

Now that I am beginning to understand my insufficiencies, I have a great hunger for the Word that I have never had before. I have been shown that I am needy and that I lack understanding. I have also been shown that the only place to go for true knowledge is the Word. The Word is something that I now crave and cling to for life. I think that is something that is essential if one is to do cross-cultural ministry. If I’m going to go to a foreign country, be immersed in a foreign culture and spend 2-4 years learning a difficult language I better be utterly convinced of the message I’m bringing, and cling to it daily to keep my sanity. Really there is so much more that I could talk about, I feel like I’m a completely different person now, but I feel that there was no greater lesson that NTBI could have taught me than to show me my need for the Word and the continual study of it.