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Jarvis Ward leads “People Employing Available Resources to Strengthen Our Neighborhoods.”
Part 2
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Connecting Believers
Several years ago Jarvis Ward was invited to a gathering of Christian leaders in his home area of Jackson, MS. He was the only Black present in a group concerned about reaching their region for Jesus Christ. With Jackson’s population equally divided between black and white, Jarvis recalls that a Presbyterian pastor observed that if they were to impact the whole city, they must include “faces that were not white!”
Good!
(The account of this important story “warms my heart!” It happened in my native Mississippi in the city where I grew up … at 504 Road of Remembrance in west Jackson. In brief radio I tell of my teen years attending Youth for Christ rallies on Saturday nights (Billy Graham was a YFC founder). That is where the Lord saved me! To hear the account: “Harold Hendrick: my return to the spot where, 60 years ago, I asked Jesus Christ to save me. He did! “ … click on … http://haroldhendrick.com/content/view/424/5/.
That gathering led to Jarvis Ward becoming the first Director and CEO of Mission Mississippi, a significant and impacting ministry honoring Jesus and advancing Biblical unity (John 17:21-24) and racial harmony.
In the flow of his ministry, Jarvis connected with the Mission America Coalition (www.missionamerica.org and www.cityreaching.com). Soon after, I was in a Mission America gathering in a St. Louis airport hotel where Jarvis asked a group of us friends to pray. He sought God’s will in regard to the possibility of his serving on Mission America’s national staff.
God’s answer was in the affirmative.
For the next 17 years, under the leadership of Mission America’s CEO, Dr. Paul Cedar, Jarvis traveled the whole country, ever networking, encouraging, and providing support for a category of God’s servants loosely classified as “Cityreachers.” Cityreachers are those who “network” with other of God’s family in their region across racial, denominational, cultural, social and economic “lines.”
They have a vision for praying and caring for … and sharing the Gospel of Jesus with others throughout their entire region. They are “connectors” within the body of Christ, realizing that the very nature of their service ultimately involves many followers of Jesus connecting, where “everybody is somebody,” that each one is a meaningful part of the body of Christ.
It is an important role, yet still early in being recognized by believers as being the important ministry role that it is.
Seventeen impacting years later, Jarvis has been called into a new ministry based right there in his home area of Pearl, Mississippi. It has a major focus on locally applying the Mission America vision prayer… care… and share.
Jarvis Ward is now the CEO and President of the Pearson Foundation — “People Employing Available Resources to Strengthen Our Neighborhoods.” A website is pending, but, to learn more, go to www.facebook.com/PEARSON39208 .
May God bless and use Jarvis Ward, man of God!