Servant Leaders - Joining our Lord's Work of Transforming the Military Society

Lieutenant General Bruce L. Fister, USAF (Ret.) Executive Director, Officers' Christian Fellowship

This edition of COMMAND magazine is intended to keep you, our members, familiar with all of your ministries in Officers' Christian Fellowship. It is designed to help you know and remember our people and to understand how each part of the OCF ministry contributes toward taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coastguardsmen and their families around the world.

The construct of your ministry follows the model of servant leadership as described by Jesus in Matthew 20:25-28. That is why your OCF Council and your Executive Director are at the bottom of the diagram; because we "Lead to Serve and Serve to Lead."

At the top of the diagram is you, the most important part of OCF. We are a lay-led ministry and you and your local fellowship are the primary means for exercising biblical leadership and taking the "good news" to our men and women in uniform and their families every day. It is through our local groups that we bring glory to our Lord through the study of His Word and Christian fellowship that encourages and equips us as "Christian Officers Exercising Biblical Leadership to Raise up a Godly Military."

Our local fellowships are encouraged and equipped by our Regional Staff. Our Coordinator of Local/Regional Ministries, along with his Regional Staff, are responsible for lay-leader training and encouragement and coordination of regional ministry activities. Our Regional Staff consists of staff couples in the northeast U.S., the southeast, the National Capital Region, the central U.S., and the Hawaii/Pacific Region.

The local fellowships are supported by Education Centers, our two Conference Centers, and our Communications/Publishing Ministry. There are staff couples at three major military training locations: Fort Leavenworth, Maxwell AFB, and Quantico. In addition OCF has staff couples at the U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Air Force Academy, and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Our ROTC ministry position is vacant but will be filled in the near future. Each of these ministries is designed to disciple, encourage and train cadets, midshipmen, officer candidates, and officers and their families to be part of a local fellowship following their commissioning or professional military training.

Your two conference centers, White Sulphur Springs in Pennsylvania and Spring Canyon in Colorado, are designed to provide spiritual refreshment to families and focused biblical and leadership training for young people. Our summer family camps and winter retreats offer an opportunity for a "vacation with a purpose" where families are spiritually refreshed and able to reenter their local fellowships with a new breath of excitement and encouragement.

Your Communications/Publishing Ministry not only circulates over 9,000 copies of COMMAND magazine 10 months each year, but distributes over 10,000 books and pamphlets each year. Your OCF web site, www.ocfusa.org, is also an extremely important part of our Communications/Publishing Ministry that brings you the latest in OCF activities, connects you with our conference centers, and serves as a repository of Christian information for use in your fellowships.

You and all parts of your OCF ministry are supported by your home office staff. They are responsible for administrative support, financial planning, record keeping, donor ministry, outreach planning and coordination, long-range planning, and our worldwide prayer ministry. I oversee all of your home office and OCF ministry activities through the wonderful staff that you will become reacquainted within this issue.

Your council of 21 elected representatives has a job second only in importance to yours in your local fellowship. Their job is to know God's will for OCF and to communicate it to me. Your OCF President, MG VanAntwerp, wonderfully describes their dedication and activities on page 15 in this edition of COMMAND.

From your council, through the staff, up to you and your local fellowship, this is a summary of how Officers' Christian Fellowship is designed to minister to the "whole military society." Ours is an exciting ministry crafted by God. Enjoy this edition of COMMAND.