Lost in Translation

I was feeling super discouraged by the church situation the other day, until I picked up The Peacemaker by Ken Sande and read the first chapter. It's amazing how God can use one chapter of a book to infuse a person with hope and change disaster into an opportunity.

Read the first chapter of the book in PDF format.

Also see the related websites: www.peacemaker.net and www.peacemakerchurch.net.

I'm almost done with a book that I received for Christmas, Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. I recommend it to you pastors out there. There basic premise is that less is more. Churches that focus on a simply explainable discipleship process grow better than program-driven churches that try to grow by bulking up the number of programs they add.

To see one of the author's websites, which offers some interesting ideas go to:
Eric Geiger.com

Here is Colombia you'll notice extremes. What is Colombian culture? That would depend to some extent where you are and with whom you walk. I've been wanting to post on this topic for a while.

It started with our visa process. Here I don't see foreigners very often. I've read that there are only 200,000 in the whole country of more than 40 million people. That has to be one of the lowest percentage of any country in the world. But we I went to the Ministry of Foreign Relations to solicit our visas the picture was different (not much of a surprise, right?). I spent the morning talking to a student from an African country whose name I can't recall. He is a theology student at a Catholic university here. Later I met a man whose parents are English and German and his wife's parents are Colombian and French, and she was born in the U.S. Talk about identity crisis in the family! The guy spoke five languages: German, French, English, Spanish, and Chinese. We talked about NGOs and his wife's work, etc. Most of the foreigners here probably live on a level significantly higher than the average Colombian.

The ambience of that office is quite different from where I was several day later. I went with a young man from our church to share the gospel with his family. In the south--way south--part of Bogotá. We were on three different buses for about 2 hours to get there. We arrived to be greeted in a house with two small rooms. The "living room" had half of the floor missing because either the concrete had collapsed or they had never finished it. The hostess offered me one of the three chairs in the house, after I used the bathroom that had a metal outhouse-type door and water all over the concrete, almost-dirt floor. They served me a simple snack of cooked plantain banana with a sweet jelly inside.

They say that Colombia is the happiest country in the world, or maybe second after some island in the Pacific. I would dare say that between these two experiences the second is more typical of this country.

This last week or two I've started using technology even more to my advantage. When I left seminary I knew that I would miss the library. But, thanks to the Internet, it's not so bad anymore. How so?

If I don't have a top-line commentary on the book I'm teaching or preaching, I check with Google Book Search or Amazon.com, which offers a Search Inside option on many books.

For an example of what you can do, I was able to read about Ephesians 4:9, 10 in about four of the best commentaries out there. That's a blessing for a missionary who doesn't have access to a seminary library!