Lost in Translation

We´re in the praying, planning, and brainstorming stage for future ministry here in Colombia. My wife jokes that I change my mind every other day... "We´re going to Cali." "No, we´re going to Tunja." And so on.

But I have a possibly more objective way to help plan where a missionary team could go in Colombia. I found the national registry of all of the religious entities (90% are "Christian" churches) that have legal status in the country. These entities include some denominations that have different forms of government, for which there is only one name and address listed (For example Casa sobre la Roca has only one address listed but I know they have churches in 20 cities in Colombia). But, all things being equal this registry should give us an idea of how many independent, legally-recognized churches are in each city.

Here are my findings of the three most needy cities based on this calculation:

Manizales -- population 385,000; Religious entities -- 5 (1 per 77,069 people)
Pasto -- pop. 393,000; Rel. ent. -- 7 (1 per 56,240)
Sincelejo -- pop. 247,000; Rel. ent. -- 5 (1 per 49,441)

Now let´s compare Bogotá: population: 7.05 million -- Rel. ent. 468 (1 per 15,064)

As you can see the need is far greater statistically in the first three cities. Not to mention that you can easily take a bus in Bogotá from anywhere and attend a fundamental church.

At any rate, we´ll see what comes of this. On a human level I would love to live in Manizales, wouldn´t mind Pasto, but Sincelejo would be a stretch. Obviously the human factor doesn´t influence me too much though.

The next step would be to take survey trips to see things up close.