Next Step: Taking the Gospel to Your LOCAL Leaders

Dr. Dan DeShong, the retired business owner who joined forces with Capitol Ministries to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to local elected leaders, held the first CivicReach® training seminar last week with great success.”It was beyond our expectations,” Dr. DeShong said. “The men we recruited were enthusiastic about the mission, inspired by the biblical mandate behind it, and motivated by the training we provided.”

A total of 15 Ministry Leader candidates completed the March 25 day-long training taught by Ralph Drollinger, President and Founder of Capitol Ministries.

Many of the Ministry Leaders will pair up as teams to create ministries to local political leaders in Sacramento-area government offices.

“By God’s grace, and the wonderful, passionate leadership of Dan DeShong, our Lord has raised up new Ministry Leaders for eight cities and county governments!” Drollinger said. “”This is so exciting and we praise Him for this development!”

“I ask that our supporters please continue to pray for the planting of these new ministries.”

The training was held at River City Christian, the Sacramento, CA church where Dr. DeShong is a member, and the first church to officially become involved in CivicReach®.

Before the training, Dr. DeShong asked the men to research online the biographies of their city and county commissioners and the political issues in their communities. They were also asked to visit City Hall and the county government offices and to become familiar with staff who serve the elected officials.

Capitol Ministries created CivicReach® to partner with neighborhood churches to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to local elected and appointed political leaders in the city halls and county governments of America.

The exemplar CivicReach® ministries that are being created in Sacramento will eventually be replicated across the United States, Drollinger said.

Dr. DeShong, who in January was named Director of CivicReach®for greater Sacramento, arranged for the training to be professionally recorded so that a series of videos may be created and used to train Ministry Leader candidates in other locations. Eventually the video series will be available for download from Capitol Ministries’ website, capmin.org.

Dr. DeShong is now planning to meet with the leaders of other Sacramento-area churches and invite them to participate in creating CivicReach® ministries.

“I will be telling church leaders that we all have to start being better citizens,” Dr. DeShong said.

“Our churches are in communities and they are surrounded by city councils, but for the most part, we don’t know who our elected officials are, we don’t know what they believe and they don’t know what we believe.

“I’ll be asking them to become involved, to find the very best evangelists in their congregation and send them to us for Ministry Leader training because we all should be reaching the people who are making decisions for our lives, our children, and our communities.

“We don’t have to be scared of the separation of Church and State anymore. That’s been settled. We are okay with that legally, scripturally, and morally.”

Drollinger, who has extensively researched and written on the issue, explained that going into the halls of government to make disciples of Jesus Christ is not a violation of the separation of Church and State.

“God has made the Church and the State institutionally separate, but not influentially separate,” Drollinger said.

“In forming CivicReach® ministries in local government, we are in no way suggesting America should become a theocratic nation. Capitol Ministries and CivicReach® leaders wholeheartedly believe in institutional separation, but not influential separation,” Drollinger said.

“Biblically, the roles of the two institutions are vastly different. The State was created to punish evildoers and the Church was designed by God to manufacture righteous disciples that the State is dependent upon for its existence. Without them, it will implode.”