These are exciting days at Oasis. ong with launching our new website we continue to expand. We continue to hold our small group retreats in addition to our Individual Focused Encounters and our proactive/preventative Health Check Workshops for Pastor/Spouses and Elder/Leaders and Spouses. Most recently we did a Marriage and Ministry Health Check Workshop with the pastoral staff at one church. We applaud the lead pastor who wants to make sure that his pastoral staff is healthy. We all agree that it is not rocket science…healthy pastors produce healthy churches and healthy missionary leaders produce healthy missionaries.
Many churches, mission agencies, and other ministries respond only when a crisis occurs. At Oasis we believe responding in a proactive way can prevent much of the negative fall out that occurs with leadership breakdown. Our goal is to connect regularly with leaders and help them deal with the challenges that come there way. The result is a preservation of ministry longevity for them and their ministries. Everyone benefits with proactive/preventative care. We will always need a place for ministry leaders to go when the experiences of leadership hit hard, but having a proactive/preventative arm is clearly a wise use of resources.
“I have been to many conferences and workshops that have been informational and inspirational, but Oasis was transformational.” Oasis Alumni
susan says:
January 12, 2015 at 10:58 pm
One of the reasons that OASIS Ministries has touched so many lives over the past sixteen years is the power of the narrative. We have heard over and over again, from participants, “We felt heard, we felt loved, we felt validated, as people.” This doesn’t mean that tough work was not done, that responsibility was not taken, that sorrows were not laid bare. It simply means that ‘hospitality of the heart’ occurred, where each person’s story was seen as a sacred journey, a place where God dwells.
The OASIS team believes that each human being that crosses our threshold needs to be honored and heard. St. Benedict once said, “I trust my heart into your soft hands and your velvet heart.” It is our desire to be those hands and heart, as we enter into the stories of one another. We believe that God is also listening to the cries of each of our hearts and we are tuning our ears to hear what He is saying to us.
Susan Anquist
OASIS Ministry Team