Joel & Linda serve with World Team, a church planting mission.  They provide pastoral care for their workers living in limited access countries.  They have been with WT since 1991.  They have two grown children and two grandchildren.

Passion: To see the Gospel presented to those that have never had the privilege to hear it!

Joel & Linda provide Pastoral Care and Coaching to workers in countries that are closed to traditional missionary work

Ministry: Living and working in a cross cultural setting brings a lot of stress to daily living.  Especially living and working in countries that are suspicious of you and with governments that are seeking to eliminate the threat of other “radical” groups.  This all adds up to great pressure for families and marriages along with struggles in the host culture.  Attrition is high for workers in settings like these.

Joel and Linda’s role is to come alongside these workers by maintaining contact, visiting, providing encouragement, and assisting them through tough times emotionally, spiritually and physically.  They will also coach and mentor the workers in these regions to better cope and grow in strategies that enable them to better live and minister from a healthy standpoint.  Their goal is to reduce attrition of workers and see the Gospel penetrate lives of those that have never heard.  It takes considerable time to build relationships, thus workers remaining on the field is a high priority!

Joel trained as an engineer and worked in the petroleum industry for several years.  He then retooled with theological education and served on the leadership team of a church for 10 years.  Joel & Linda also served four years with a mission focused on church-planting in India until joining World Team in 1991.  Then they served World Team in Canada for four years in operations and church planting among Filipinos before serving five years as Director of Member Care (pastoral care) of US missionaries until 2000.  For the next eight years they helped establish World Team’s new church planting ministry to limited access countries.  Now they continue that ministry in this new role.

Joel and Linda are based in Manila and serve about 20 workers spread across a large geographical area.   They will visit workers two times a year for extended periods to maintain contact and shepherd them in these limited access nations where they live.