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Miami Valley Mission: City Reaching and City Transformation in Ohio
Added: (Mon Apr 24 2006)
Reaching and transformation of city by the reaching and transformation of the individuals living therein lies at heart of Miami Valley, Ohio, ministry.
Soft-spoken, thoughtful and passionate - and all at the same time - the Reverend Dr. Bud Ford has been involved in city reaching and city transformation efforts for the past twelve years.
With a PhD from Ohio University, Dr. Ford has been integrally involved with education for many years. A public high school social studies teacher for four years, front line public high school principal for sixteen years, and a Christian school superintendent for seven years, Ford has an intimate understanding of changing lives on a foundational level.
It is with this heart that Dr. Ford, president of the Miami Valley Mission in Western and Southwestern Ohio, has also sought to effect Godly spiritual change by facilitating pastors' groups, leading outreaches, organizing pastors' summits, leading community wide task forces, chairing community committees, and participating in numerous city reaching schools, seminars and conferences.
Transformation: The Missing Piece
Ford�s new book, entitled Transformation: The Missing Piece, chronicles the amazing spiritual transformation of the Ohio�s Marion Correctional Institution. Ford and other Christians made a concerted, focused effort to reach out to the prison population at Marion using the Biblical principles Ford outlines in his book, and the results speak for themselves.
In essence, Transformation: The Missing Piece is a four-part message to today�s church. In Part 1, Ford tells the story of reaching the prison population at MCI. In Part 2, he speaks with tremendous spiritual understanding about the patterns that God has established in the tabernacle and in the book of Ephesians about entering the presence of God, and about God�s pattern for faith. In Part 3, Dr. Ford details importance issues - including group growth and dynamics - in facilitating city reaching and city transformation through these Biblical principles. And, in Part 4, Ford shares his vision of the state of today�s church, where it now stands, and where it must next go.
Personal Transformation Equals Community Transformation
�Listen to some of the messages Dr. Bud delivers,� says David Bryant, author of Christ Is All: A Joyful Manifesto on the Supremacy of God�s Son, and other books. ��The missing piece is that Christ is all and in all, and we must submit to that truth in our entire being and in our deeds, and we must be desperately in love with Him. We are the city�and we are the community. If we desire community transformation, we, by definition, must desire transformation of ourselves.��
�Dr. Ford is speaking my heart,� Bryant says, �when he says that �If we are not desperately in love with Jesus Christ and if we are not in His presence, the strategies, plans and efforts [we put forth] will be coming from our own strength and we will fail - or at best have only human results - and we cannot expect to have supernatural, God results.��
Striking A Godly Balance In Our Lives
Dr. Ford says that Transformation: The Missing Piece is about being in God�s presence first, and learning to stay there, before He sends us to do His work. �When you combine learning to be in His presence with what we already know about developing the strategies for doing His work,� says Ford, �we get the complete picture for transforming our cities.�
Ford believes that believers must learn to live in a balance - and that that balance must be maintained over time - between being in His presence (and all that that entails) and being sent to work by Him. �This is what has been missing in America, this is the reason we have no transformed cities, �he shares. �God has provided a model for us in America so we can see what [transformation] looks like, and what is required of us, for bringing [it about]. That model of transformation is seen in a men�s state prison in Ohio.�
Transformation, One Person At A Time
At his website, http://www.transformationthemissingpiece.com/, Dr. Ford also is facilitating an outreach called 12 For Jesus. �I talk to some people who at first think that 12 For Jesus is a discipleship program, but it�s not,� says Ford. �It�s a way of life.� 12 For Jesus is a simple lifestyle approach that requires 12 minutes a day for 12 months and a weekly gathering to make 12 new disciples for Christ Jesus.
Ford�s confidence in this approach is written on his face when he shares that �I was pawing the ground to make disciples after just a couple months of making 12 For Jesus a part of my everyday life.� He is now involved with taking 12 For Jesus to the next level in Ohio�s Miami Valley through personally discipling people and helping others to do so through information provided at his website.
Barney Field is founder and executive director of the El Paso For Jesus ministry and developer of 12 For Jesus. Field has stated that - in the years since the 1992 inception of El Paso For Jesus� 12-facet ministry, which includes the use of 12 For Jesus - El Paso has gone from one of the most dangerous cities in the nation to one of the safest, has become one of the nation�s leaders in the reduction of divorces, and that pastors and youth ministers there have united in unprecedented ways to win El Paso for Jesus.
Effectual Doors
Dr. Ford and his wife Marilyn attend a local 153 House Churches Network church in his hometown of Sidney, Ohio. Minister Ben Hunt, senior pastor of the 153 House Churches Network and the Ford�s pastor, says that he isn�t one bit surprised by the �effectual doors that have been opening up before Bud and his wife Marilyn.� �Although he is a very gifted facilitator in group settings, he is just as apt to sit down with one person and share his heart about Christ,� says pastor Hunt. �He is willing to serve God wherever, whenever and however.�
Hunt says that he remembers Dr. Ford sharing that God had called him to be a servant to the church like Hegai the eunuch had served Esther. �He shared about how Hegai was called to prepare the bride to be married to the king,� says Hunt, �much like God�s people - the bride of Christ - are being prepared to be married to Him. That�s what God had told Bud He was calling him to do - wherever he was and with whomever he was - he was to be a servant to help prepare the Bride to be married to the King.�
�From a very intimate perspective, I�ve seen Dr. Ford living out this calling,� pastor Hunt concludes. �Whether it�s in a church or a library or a local park or a gym, he being a living example of the things about which he speaks and writes. I know that the truths Dr. Ford shares in Transformation: The Missing Piece are Godly and practical, because I see him seek to practice them every day, and I see the fruit of them in his life.�
God Be Glorified
�After twenty years of attempting to transform cities in America with just minimal success, we need to acknowledge that what we have been doing has had something missing,� says Dr. Bud Ford. �It has not worked well.� Ford believes that there is wisdom in Transformation: The Missing Piece and that the book touches the nerve of what has been missing in our efforts at reaching cities.
�My prayer is that God will be glorified by this work,� he says, �and that it will fall into the hands of those God has been preparing to receive its message.�
You can find out more about the Miami Valley Mission, the book Transformation: The Missing Piece, and 12 For Jesus by visiting Dr. Ford�s website at http://www.transformationthemissingpiece.com/.