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In this Newsletter, get the inside scoop on what is going on behind the scenes of Wellspring Group and our board, celebrate the life of a longtime friend and veteran Battle facilitator and get a glimpse of what God is doing in Pennsylvania through the Battle for the Heart.
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For several years I’ve had a growing longing to see God increase the breadth of our impact. It is very clear that God is changing the lives of people and organizations through Wellspring Group. We see growing impact through our partner churches in Birmingham, AL and Butler, PA and in increasing domestic and global opportunities, yet we long for more. So last summer I asked our board to enter into a strategic assessment process to prayerfully consider how we might significantly increase the transformational impact of Wellspring Group.
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n this process we have been encouraged and excited by the strengths and opportunities we are identifying. However, we keep facing two critical weaknesses:
- The lack of adequate organizational capacity to explore and take advantage of the opportunities before us
- The lack of a well developed funding plan to increase our organizational capacity
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Even before we started this process, I had a growing sense that for us to increase the breadth of our impact we needed a person with the capacity to take us there. By God’s grace I have led us to this place, but building an organization is not the highest and best use of my experience and gift mix. I long to release operational responsibility and give the rest of my life to communicating, coaching, and creating.
- Communicating the life changing truths of the Battle for Your Heart
- Coaching and equipping leaders to live and lead out of God’s love, truth and grace experienced in their whole hearts in biblical community.
- Creating transformational experiences for people and organizations
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To achieve this goal, we are seeking God to provide a Managing Director to work with us to significantly increase our transformational impact. We will post this position in the next few weeks. In the summer, we hope to move toward hiring a Marketing/Communications Director. We believe these positions are vital to fulfill God’s purposes for the ministry.
We have also retained a consulting firm to assess our current funding process and potentially work with us to develop an effective long range funding plan.
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I am incredibly grateful to God for an outstanding board of men and women who are working hard to steward the amazing resources God is entrusting to Wellspring Group. We will meet April 6-9 for our annual strategic planning retreat.
Please pray for a refreshing, encouraging time of fellowship for our board members and spouses and for God’s clear guidance as we prayerfully continue our assessment process. We look forward to communicating specific initiatives in the coming year and seeking your involvement to help us meet them. I look forward to walking with you into the fullness of God’s purposes for us in the coming years to his glory and the blessing of all those in our various domains.
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This weekend has been a peaceful stretch of my core being in the presence of God and community. With the grace of God, I'll move into my domain without some of my previous distortions
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God continues to tenderly remove the bandages covering my heart so that he can heal me and love me. I am learning that a healed heart is stronger than a protected heart.
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This weekend was affirming, enlightening, encouraging and life altering!
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The tool of the elevator is much more clear to me now. I feel that I am able to engage a person's heart more effectively and listen much closer to the desires of their heart.
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It was very powerful to see how men and women can engage each other in appropriate vulnerability. I have renewed hope and courage in engaging my team and husband.
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In 2003 as I prayed about what to name this ministry I chose Wellspring as it clearly identified the core of what I hoped we would become – a ministry about heart change overflowing from the inside out. I chose Group because I longed for us to reflect authentic community – to be a group of men and women who shared a core vision and mission. From October 2003 to now both of these elements have been vitally present.
Wellspring started with a group of men in Dothan, AL who longed to see God change us from the inside out through living in whole hearted authentic community with each other. My dear friend Don Barham was one of those men joined by Mike Woodham, Terry and Allen Mitchell, and Andy Gosselin. It was in those early days of discovering what it meant to pursue one another, to work through pain and conflict and to above all else to love one another deeply from the heart that the vision, mission, and values of Wellspring Group were formed.
Don loved his lake home and we spent a lot of time there building the relationships and the process that would become the Battle for Your Heart. God met me there in many times of prayer.
In 2008 Don began a battle with multiple myeloma. By God’s grace he experienced significant recovery and continued facilitating in retreats, practicing ophthalmology, being active in his church and enjoying his family at his lake home. Late last year he began struggling with various challenges and died January 30th.
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In his memorial service, I remembered his deep longing to know God’s love and to share that love with others. As all of us are, he was a profoundly broken man, but he was on a journey of knowing and sharing God’s perfect love. In 2013, through an old friend, Don got involved with a prison ministry about 45 minutes from his home. For over three years he drove to the prison weekly to share in his own words, “the simplicity of the gospel and that the Father loves them as they are, even in prison ‘after all I’ve done.’ Numerous guys have experienced salvation and others began to build a relationship with the only true Father they’ve ever known.” Through his medical practice, his involvement in various ministries and in Wellspring Group, he touched numerous lives. The attached picture is from one of his last Battle for Your Domain events during the facilitator celebration luncheon.
In 2004, Don joined our board and served for many years laying a foundation that is now touching men and women, churches and missions organizations around the globe.
Please join me in giving thanks for his life and contribution to the kingdom, particularly through Wellspring Group. Please pray for God’s ongoing comfort and blessings for his wife Betty; their daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Ben; their son, Matt, and his wife, Heather; and their six grandchildren. We are grateful for Matt and Heather’s significant involvement in Wellspring Group through the years as faithful facilitators. It was my privilege to walk with Don for over thirty years. He was my brother, partner in ministry, but most of all a friend who loved me well through the ups and downs of his life and mine. His deepest desire is being realized as he is now experiencing perfect love for all eternity.
- Larry Bolden
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2017 Battle for Your Heart Events
Men's Events
(Partner Event)
August 10-13 2017 - Columbiana, AL
(Wellspring Event)
September 14-17 2017 - Columbiana, AL
Contact Anisa for more info
(Partner Event)
September 21-24, 2017 - Bolivar, PA
Register by June 1, 2017
Contact Anisa for more info
Women's Event
August 24-27, 2017 - Columbiana, AL
(Partner Event)
October 5-8, 2017 - Bolivar, PA
Register by July 1, 2017
2017 Battle for Your Domain Events
Sept. 29 - Oct. 1, 2017 - Columbiana, AL
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Begin thinking now about whether you would like to start forming a team for the September 2018 BYM event. The BYM is open to husbands and wives who have both completed the individual Battle process; teams of 3-4 couples battle together.
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