Meet Chris and Leanne Harrington, Parkside’s Missionaries in Training
“It’s kind of funny that I’m a MIT,” laughs Chris Harrington, who is Parkside’s newest extension of the pastoral team as a Missionary in Training, a.k.a. MIT. “I’ve always considered myself a sender, not a goer, but two years ago, I started feeling a tug and a pull to get into ministry, and more specifically, missions.”
Chris joined Parkside Church’s team this September after a time of discerning his call to ministry. “I started meeting with Scott Kennedy about a year and a half ago to talk about ministry and what it’s all about. After meeting regularly with Scott, Jeff, and Alistair, we got to a point where we thought that the best thing to do was to come on staff as a Missionary in Training.”
Part of Parkside’s vision for Building into the Next Generation is to remain committed to our worldwide mission of seeing unbelieving people become committed followers of Jesus Christ. To support that vision, Parkside seeks to raise up multiple missionaries in the near future. Chris, along with his wife Leanne and their two young children, Mark and Lillia, are the first family to participate, while Bobby and Julie Puckett, who have served in China with partial support from Parkside, are slated to come on staff next year.
For the next three years, Chris, who formerly worked in supply chain logistics at Nestle, will work towards a master’s degree in divinity through Trinity Evangelical Divinity School’s extension program while also getting hands on ministry experience at Parkside. Among his duties, Chris now leads the TrueLife singles group, co-leads a midweek LIFE group with Sam Costiuc in Streetsboro, and assists with the Sunday morning class, Christianity Explored. Chris will also be in charge of missionary care which includes overseeing Parkside’s short-term missions trips, as well as being connected with missionaries who are currently in the field.
Chris and Leanne have already benefited from meeting with Parkside’s missionaries who have been home on furlough. “There’s a neat bond in talking to people who have the same calling,” notes Chris. “Just having the same vision of going overseas and their care in wanting to share their experiences with us, it’s been a unique bond.”
Leanne agrees. "A lot of the current missionaries started when their kids were our kids' ages, so hearing what difficulties they had, and what they've gone through, is a connection unlike anything else. It brings about a sense of excitement because they're talking about things that we'll be experiencing soon."
Chris and Leanne have a heart for Asia and specifically, Japan. "We're very big on filling need," explains Chris. "Japan is very unreached, according to the Joshua Project which tracks ethnic people groups with the least followers of Jesus Christ. With almost 128 million people, only 1.5% are professing Christians. When I consider it from an economic standpoint, I think about America being the largest economy in the world, and if we aren't sending missionaries to Japan, the third largest economy in the world, who is going to have the ability to send people there? If we send missionaries to Japan today, then someday Japan can send missionaries elsewhere. That's the investment."
