Through Mike and Jan Bennett, God is opening doors to hearts of professionals in Venezuela. “The Lord has truly used our secular backgrounds to prepare us for mission work,” Mike said.

Mike was an attorney in Nashville, Tenn., for 24 years, specializing in health law. Jan was an intensive care unit nurse.

Mike tells the story of their call to missions and how God is using their vocational skills to reach out to a group of people before untouched by the gospel:

Blessed for a reason

In 1980 we realized that we were blessed by God and should use some of our time and resources to extend the reign of God on earth.

We began to make short-term volunteer trips, first to Grenada to teach evangelism explosion, then to Panama, Jamaica and, later, Venezuela. In Venezuela we went on separate trips, my wife to do medical clinics and I to do evangelistic follow-up after the clinics.

Little by little the Lord convinced us that we should be doing this type of work on a full-time basis.

From the poor to the professionals

We were commissioned in November of 1997. We thought that we were going to be working with the poor. I would do discipleship and my wife would continue to do medical projects, but when we arrived, the Lord open a door for us to minister to professionals.

There had been little evangelistic work among professionals. People thought that ministry to these people would be too difficult to start, but our professional backgrounds have given us many openings into the professional community.

We were given an audience that pastors would have never been given. Now I am serving as strategy leader for the four professional teams that we have in Venezuela.

How they do it

God is blessing the work as we identify the felt needs of the professional -- financial stability, family stability, self-esteem and self-control.

We seek to address these topics from a Christian perspective and show them that the Bible has relevance to their everyday lives. It is much the same thing that my wife and I were doing with our patients and clients in the United States, but here the professionals are hearing the gospel for the first time.

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