September 11, 2012

To all current and former LBI students, faculty and supporters:

The LINC Bible Institute (LBI) was founded in 2007 as a way to meet the needs of local missional churches seeking a new way to train leaders to be ministers in their congregations and missionaries in their community.

LBI has always believed in people and the power of God to enable them to be indispensable assets to carry out the Great Commission of Christ. To that end, LBI strived to offer quality courses for the sake of “glocal” mission here in Houston.

For the first three years Rev. Mark Junkans, Rev. David Kim and Rev. Charles Wokoma worked tirelessly towards that goal. Classes were held at Memorial Lutheran Church in Houston. Since 2010, I, Vicar Ken Chitwood, took up the mantle of leading LBI and re-launched courses in Spring 2011 at San Pedro Lutheran Church.

Since then, LBI trained 57 students through its courses, 85 individuals through workshops and seminars and enjoyed over 10,000 views from 140 countries on its online video pages.

Now, looking at our current needs and assessing how we can best prepare for the future, LBI is undergoing a complete re-design of its training structure. This re-design has brought some significant changes:

• LBI will no longer be hosting consistent, weekly, quarter-long classes at any residential facility such as San Pedro Lutheran Church, Memorial or elsewhere. We value our relationships with these churches and appreciate their partnership with us in the past, but feel as we move forward we must be more mobile and flexible to meet current ! training needs.

• “LBI” will effectively cease to exist. While LINC Houston will continue to offer training that excites, equips, empowers and encourages disciples of Christ to be missionaries and ministers in their community it will be completely different. There are myriad avenues for training that LINC will be offering through the NEW Glocal Mission Training Center (more on this below).

• I, Vicar Ken Chitwood, will no longer serve as LBI Director. Instead, Pastor David Kim (LINC Mission Director and Founder of Glocal Mission) will assume responsibility for overseeing, planning

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and administrating all of LINC’s glocal-missional training in partnership with mission churches, partner churches and their leaders.

• All requests for training, workshops, seminars, trips, experiences, seminars etc. should be directed to Pastor David Kim at davidkim@linchouston.org.

Here at LINC, we are excited about these changes. We believe that the Glocal Mission Training Center (www.glocalmission.org) is the best way to train followers of Christ, in Houston and beyond, for ministry today. Personally, I am excited to be a part of this transition. While I will no longer be serving as LBI Director, I will assist Pastor Kim with training and leading workshops, classes and seminars in our partner and mission churches.

As we move forward in vision, planning and unfolding the new training plan we will continue to be Christological, Gospel-centered, missional and ministerially multi-ethnic. We ask for your prayer, your ideas, your input and your financial support as we do so.

If you have any questions or comments, please direct them to Pastor David Kim (davidkim@linchouston.org).

Peace to you in Christ and thank you for your continued partnership in the Gospel.

In Him,

Ken ChitwoodVicar / Media & Communications Specialistken@linchouston.org832.795.3564Twitter - @kchitwood