In 2018, Irwyn Ince began a new role as director of the Washington, D.C.-based Grace DC Network Institute for Cross-Cultural Mission (ICCM). He comes to ICCM after 10 years as a church planter and pastor at City of Hope PCA in Columbia, Maryland. Ince talked with byFaith about ICCM’s purpose and how he hopes God will use it.

What are your responsibilities as director of the Grace DC Institute for Cross-Cultural Mission?

ICCM is a church-based training and research entity dedicated to equipping current and future Christian leaders for cross-cultural ministry. My role is to provide vision and leadership to the Institute. I’ll also be involved in discipleship through teaching, training, mentoring, and researching matters pertaining to justice and reconciliation ministries.

<blockquote class=”alignright”><p>The leadership hopes that ICCM will meet the need for faithful, diverse Gospel community by becoming a center of gravity for forming Christian leaders who will engage churches and communities to this end</p></blockquote>.  

The ICCM is new. Why was it created?

From its beginning Grace DC has been committed to pursuing life as a church in and for Washington. Over the past two years, the pastors and elders began to pray about having a kingdom impact that extended beyond Washington, by discipling, developing, and launching healthy leaders. 

These desires began to take shape when the Grace DC pastors approached me about joining the Grace DC pastoral staff. After 10 years at City of Hope, I sensed that the time was right for me to move on, though I was not clear on where the Lord would lead me. I knew I wanted the opportunity to serve the broader denomination and church by helping to train men and women for cross-cultural ministry, but I also wanted to serve as a pastor in the context of a local church. The Lord’s providence was evident when the Grace DC leadership and I began talking and dreaming together. 

So, the leadership hopes that ICCM will meet the need for faithful, diverse Gospel community by becoming a center of gravity for forming Christian leaders who will engage churches and communities to this end.

What excites you most about this new position?

What excites me most of all is the potential for this ministry to have an impact on equipping current and future generations of men and women for the cross-cultural challenges of the day. Only God is able to do what we desire to accomplish through ICCM. It’s too grand and requires too much love. So I am ecstatic to watch God work through ICCM for His glory.

On a personal level, this call to serve as a pastor on the Grace DC Network staff and as director of ICCM is a perfect match to my sense of call at this time in my ministry life. I’m blessed to have a call that enables me to have an inward gaze, serving the local church, and an outward look, serving our denomination and the broader church. 

Also, I am delighted to work with such gifted pastors. I get to glean from them as a shepherd and receive their wisdom as we build this Institute.