Lost in Translation

I´ve been really busy lately, but just wanted to share a couple of thoughts. First, praise God that a young woman (Liliana) made a profession of faith after last Sunday´s service. It´s interesting that I have been reading a book (The Deliberate Church) that showed me a lack in my pulpit ministry. The author uses various passages (Luke 24:27; 1 Cor. 2:1-5) to argue that we should always present the main point of a passage but should also share the gospel and its implications every time we preach. I was convicted and made a special point of that on Sunday, and God blessed!

On another note, I´ve started blogging a commentary on 2 Timothy in Spanish. I figure that I should be part of the solution for the lack of good materials on the Internet in Spanish. When I´m done with the commentary, I´ll order the posts in the order of the book. You can see my intent at Blogging 2 Timoteo.

Google Earth now has some pictures of Colombia, although you can only see the northern part of Bogota, which happens to include the neighborhood in which we live. The only thing that stands out to me about seeing our neighborhood from the air is the number of parks within three blocks of our house.

Interestingly enough, the amount of green space in Bogota has been a debated issue. In the north of the city, there is plenty of green space, but in the south there aren´t as many parks or green areas.

Just a quick post to plug the book that we are using for discipleship in Chia. As a Sunday school class we have been going through it, and I also have been leading a discipleship with Javier from our church, and I'm also in the study with Pastor Jose. In other words, I have had some good contact with this book.

The most exciting day was yesterday as Javier and I studied lesson 4, which deals with the "way of man" in contrast with the "way of God." The lesson has a wonderful chart contrasting different ways of dealing with personal problems (Freudian approach, behaviorist approach, New Age approach, spiritist approach, and a biblical approach). The lights came on for Javier as we studied this chapter. "You mean I don't have to worry about the curses from my grandparents... You mean when I focus on my self-esteem that's actually sin?" He left with several burdens lifted from his shoulders because of a faulty understanding of Christian growth.

I would encourage you to check out this book in English. I can only vouch for the Spanish version, but I'm sure they're the same. If you want to grow spiritually, grab some discipline and get ready to grow!

Self-confrontation: a Manual for In-depth Discipleship.

I don´t know why, but I continue to be fascinated by technology. Now, what does technology have to do with missionary work? I would say a lot. For one thing, we can reach many with technology. I just finished reading a bit of a blog by a missionary here in Colombia, and he mentioned that he had 13 students in class and over 600 outside of class who access his website of resources in Spanish (Recursos Teologicos).

At least one pastor here in Bogota has asked me about good theological resources in Spanish online. It remains a great need. In English I can recommend many sites, but in Spanish only a handful. For what it's worth I offer the beginning of my work towards putting many resources together. At this point my work is only on my del.icio.us page, but I would like to convert that into a full-blown website in the future.

On a similar note, I've recently started using Google Notebook, which is a handy way to save all of your links, research online, etc. I'm still pondering the ways these technologies can be used in my ministry. At the very least, I'm not losing a lot of good links that I run across on a regular basis.