Who?
Grace to you.
My name is Rob Casey. Julie and I have been married for fourteen years and have adopted two children, Wil and Ella. Our little family is amazing, beautiful, and precious to me. There has been no better place of learning for me than in making my aim to be the best husband and father possible to my three treasures. Oh, and I have a dog named Honey.
I’ve been on a journey since 2004 to understand what it means to really follow the person of Jesus Christ, and I share what I am learning in the conversations made available to me in any given context.
We keep seeing that God is always revealing a bigger reality, called His Kingdom, than we thought was possible the day before. Currently, the opportunity for those conversations is opening up to various cultures, customs, contexts, and countries. These environments are incredibly vast places of learning more about the vastness of His love and the effectiveness of His reaching Spirit. Even though these dialogues and experiences may be vastly different than what we grew up seeing in the American Bible Belt, they are a delight to the soul, for they awaken a sense of urgency, creativity, and a continuous precipice of discovering God, which was a dead concept to me ten years ago.
 What a Journey!Our Dear Friends and Family, March 30, 2013
What an amazing time these last few months have been for our family! The path the Lord has led us on has been one we did not foresee, but that has been full of excitement, joy, trepidation, and of seeking Him fully. Here are the highlights: The last few months of 2012: As our time at FBC Ore City came to a close, we sensed the Lord might be leading us toward a different role in ministry. However, our deep concern and passion remained for discipleship and for reaching the next generation. Prayerfully and with counsel, we began moving in the direction of youth discipleship and evangelism, with a hearts’ cry to the Lord that He would eventually open wide a door for effective ministry for us. We stepped out of the boat and took those first faltering steps of itinerant ministry and living more and more on faith. He led us to move to Julie’s hometown of Sherman, TX, where we quickly became a part of a warm and loving church. January 2013: As Rob continued to seek trusted counsel, he was presented with several opportunities, one of which was to serve as the Associate of Bryan Doyle, who is the Strategy/Field Leader for the UK with Greater Europe Mission (GEM). Rob served in Ireland in 2009 under him. Also, Bryan was Julie’s parent’s Missions Pastor at FBC McKinney and was very instrumental in their call to serve in Sierra Leone, West Africa. We had not heard of GEM until then, but did the research and found that their heartbeat was the same as ours: discipleship. After seeking the Lord further, and also the counsel of trusted brothers/sisters in Christ, including our pastors, we submitted our initial paperwork to apply with GEM as missionaries, believing this was truly the wide open door for effective ministry we had been praying for.
March 2013: Since Rob had already been working alongside Bryan since the last part of January, he was able to step right into his role upon returning home. He and Bryan have been working together to set up the GEM UK Dallas office (located in McKinney, TX), and have already traveled to the UK (10th-18th), to introduce Rob to church-planters and disciple-makers there that GEM is partnering with. (For insights from this trip, more about our mission, and to subscribe to our newsletter go to Rob’s blog at http://robcasey.org/blog.) |
February 2013: In mid-February, GEM officially invited us to attend Candidate Orientation and Commissioning at their IHQ in CO (22nd -27th). Many of you prayed for us and helped us that week, and we thank you! What an amazing time that was, as we made our way through interviews, training, and ultimately, our commissioning to fill the much-needed role of Associate Strategy/Field Leader for the UK.
