Convo with Pastor Jack Belin-

Called to ministry at age of 5, remembers serving the lord from before than and on through his life, graduated from northeast bible institute in 1970, became a sr. pastor soon after that, was at the church for five years, and he left the church during a time of success. From there he moved to a church in the pochonos to a smaller congregation that was pretty conservative. During his time there the church moved from being conservative to charismatic. From this church he moved to Lebanon PA where he served for 9 years. This was his last sr. pastorate. During his time has a senior pastor he believed he matured a lot while he wasn’t quite sure he was maturing. His main goal was loving people for the purpose of loving them, not for making the church feel good about its self. He’s been told that during his time in Lebanon 87 percent of his congregation came to the church because of his invites of love that people in that area were not doing at that time. Another big form of ministry that he used at the church was in the hospitals. People regularly were in the emergency room and the nursery. In the emergency rooms people would help comfort families in need and in the nursery people would ask families for a picture of their new babies so that they could be prayed over. Another form of ministry that he had to get people in the church was celebrating all holidays. National teachers days, nurses day, armed services, police, fireman, EMT, celebration days were celebrated by the church so that those people got the honor they deserved. During this time of great success at the church out of nowhere he felt the call to Bolivia. This was a hard decision, he was in love with his church, he loved the community and where he was in life. But he heard the audible word of God and knew what he had to do. The call was confirmed by several people and his family went through some different routes and wound up in Bolivia! While there he encounters different complications with people groups and demographics, these are what he believes are his biggest challenges there. The problems they face there are not with people who hate Christians, like many areas of the world, but with the social unrest that is so prevalent in the area. Good quote to finish things up from him was this “the only way to change people who hate Jesus and hate you, is to truly love them”