Dentist Embraces to Fulltime Pastoring
Written by Dr Mike Kadera   
Monday, 22 June 2009

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GROWTH CURVE—The congregation in Villa Lobos, a Guatemala City suburb, started nearly five years ago with the help of longtime missionaries Dr. Mike and Sandy Kadera. They served in an auxiliary position while keeping up their other outreaches such as dental care and help for the Casa Bernabé orphanage until this year when they took on the task of presiding over the Villa Lobos pastoral team as senior pastors.
“Lord, I will do anything for you but pastor a church,” is what I said to the Lord when he called me to missions while I was studying dentistry at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. I never felt that the pastorate was a part of my call to serve the needy in a foreign land even though I considered being a pastor a high calling. I didn’t think I had the gifts required to be an effective pastor. On the other hand I could easily see myself as an evangelist and a dentist serving the poor.

God’s Way Is Best
    The Lord and I had an informal agreement—so I thought—that he could send me to Africa or anywhere else in the world but that being a church minister wouldn’t be a part of it.  
    I’ve learned since then that whenever you tell the Lord that you don’t want to do something you will usually end up having to do that very thing.  And that is exactly what my experience has been on the mission field.
    As I look back over more than 30 years of service in Guatemala, I can see how the Lord has prepared my wife, Sandy, and I for the pastoral ministry we now have with the Verbo Villa Lobos church on the southern outskirts of Guatemala City. I am the presiding elder and Sandy is in charge of praise and worship and women’s ministries.  

Pastoring Is Key
    This assignment is the culmination of years of preparation as we served the poor and needy by way of different social programs (dentistry, feeding programs, education, etc.). It became fairly clear from the beginning that pastoral care would always be a part of what we do.     
    First of all, many people’s spiritual needs are often far greater than their material needs, so Dr. Mike the dentist had to learn to double as Pastor Mike. .      Besides that, we have always been involved with home groups that require a lot of pastoral attention. At one point we helped plant and pastor a church for four years among impoverished families living along the railroad tracks in Guatemala City. All of these experiences helped to prepare us for Verbo Villa Lobos.
A New Congregation Is Born
     The church is in a dangerous neighborhood in the vicinity of a former squatters’ settlement.  Many families from the area faithfully made a somewhat difficult trip to Verbo Sur (our then home church), several miles away, for different meetings and activities. To better meet their needs Verbo Sur’s leadership decided to start a new outreach.
    We participated as members of the congregation’s founding team almost five years ago.     Sandy and I have had the privilege of working from the beginning with a pastoral team of Guatemalans that God has used to equip and train us. We could not be leading this church now if it hadn’t been for the many godly men and women that God has used to disciple us over the years.  
We Desire to Help the Needy
    That is what attracted us to Verbo in the first place: seeing the Body of Christ being faithfully cared for and discipled for the purpose of reaching the lost and helping them become fulfilled workers in God’s Kingdom (Matt. 28:19-20).  By God’s grace and mercy Sandy and I will be faithful to that vision as we continue to minister to and through the Body of Christ at Verbo Villa Lobos.