Lost in Translation

I haven't been blogging faithfully (can you say "nada") because I've been logging some quality hours on our church website for Colombia. You can check out the result here:

Impacto Bíblico

By the way, the site runs on Wordpress and the Thesis theme. My experience with Wordpress makes me want to change this blog over, but we'll see if and when that happens.

We went this week on a trip to Neiva (6 hours to the southwest of Bogotá) to rest and also investigate the possibility of church planting there. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and the heat actually for me wasn´t as bad as everyone says. Holly said it was hot, but in comparison to a humid Iowa July day it wasn´t bad. We were able to travel to a desert about 45 minutes northeast of Neiva which was really interesting. We also traveled to a dam about an hour to the south of Neiva. As always it was fascinating to see how different the geography of the country is. It reminded me of Arizona in some ways.

As far as church planting, the city has a need, but we found that the location is not central enough for branching out to other cities. We talked to one Baptist pastor who is serving faithfully.

We were planning to spend most of our week in Barranquilla on our survey trip to the Colombian coast but ended up spending as much time in Santa Marta because after two days of work in Barranquilla we realized that it´s not the best place for us to start. We saw a directory of churches that listed around 800 churches in Barranquilla. Of these there are at least 35 Baptist churches. Granted most are Pentecostal now, but we decided that we don´t want to have to work in that type of environment, at least for our first church plant. In constrast, Santa Marta, a city of around 400,000 (or up to 600,000 in some estimates), has only one Baptist church. We weren´t able to talk to the pastor but asked if the pastora (lady pastor) was around. The girl told us that the pastora would be there later in the afternoon. Scott asked when their healings service was, and the girl said on Wednesdays at 7 p.m.

As you can see from this example, it´s really not that hard to figure out when a church isn´t fundamental here. That said, Santa Marta is now looking like our number one possibility for a future church plant. The three of us left enchanted with the place and the need for sound churches is evident. Please continue to pray with us!

NASA image of Barranquilla on the Magdalena River and Caribbean coast

I fly out this evening with Alfredo and Scott to Barranquilla on the Colombian coast. The goal is to do an investigative study of the churches and need in this city. We have set a goal of interviewing 63 pastors in this week, and I also plan to talk to a seminary director. We also want to understand the cost of living in Barranquilla.

Of the main cities on the coast, this one seems like the best possibility for future church planting because it is the most industrialized and doesn´t rely on tourism so much. Cartagena is busy during vacation times, but for more than half of the year the people don´t have work and that makes it more difficult to serve as a future hub for church planting. Barranquilla is also the most centrally-located city on the coast.

I´m looking forward to the trip and praying that God will give us direction for future ministry. The time without José in Chía has helped me see that serving as a pastor alone is not my calling. I struggle on the pastoral side of things, as far as visitation and running after sheep that have strayed. Our pastoral intern Wilder has more gifts in that area, which is a blessing, but it also makes me feel bad when he asks "Have you called so-and-so?" and I haven´t. Obviously I need to grow in this area, but at the same time I know that some people are gifted for it and others are not.

I sometimes ask the Lord what I´m doing here as I seem to struggle to find the role for which I am gifted. For example, I´ve had a real burden for evangelism and reaching out to our neighbors, but it´s often difficult to work that area of the ministry while guiding the church, preparing messages and lessons, and preparing for an upcoming seminary class I´ll be teaching in a two weeks. I sometimes wonder how good I am at balancing things. I can balance things to "maintain" the ministry, but it´s hard for me to help it grow when I have several ministry roles to fulfill. For that reason I like these trips to other parts because I can focus in on one thing and do it well.

Please pray for my trip and God bless!

I´ve been kicking around a question lately. Thinking about this country of Colombia, where should we go as missionaries? For example, I´ve heard that God is moving in Cali, a city of over 2 million people. But there are churches in Cali, obviously with a need for more. Is our goal to expand the work of our mission? Or of Baptists? Or should we focus on pueblos in which there are no gospel witness?

As I mentioned in a previous post Manizales seems to have a need for more churches. I wrote to a pastor who works in that city asking about the need. He said that there is more need in the pueblos of that department, especially in one called Ríosucio ("Dirty river"). This pueblo has an estimated population of 48,000 and is known for its festival dedicated to the devil. The whole town prepares itself for this festival held every two years. According to this pastor there are hardly any churches in the town.

So, where is there more need? In a city of 2 million or a town of 48,000? I think that God directs different kinds of people to different kinds of ministry. Please pray that God would lead us... the honest truth is that I am very restless here in Bogotá. (Note: photo from luis perez on www.flickr.com)

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.

As we left Cartagena, Scott, Alfredo and I agreed that we would write down some of the lessons we learned. Here is what sticks in my mind:

1) We could work together with a team of 3 or 4 couples in a city, and we could plant 3 churches at a time, rotating with a series of messages. For example, I prepare a 4 week series on salvation and then preach it in the three churches. That way we could spend a lot more time on evangelism and not so much on sermon prep.

2) We need to focus specifically on evangelism of men. We noticed that we were able to share the gospel with more women in Cartagena, but the key to a strong church is male leadership. We would have to compensate for the cultural tendency that men aren´t as interested in spiritual things.

3) A good bulletin each week would help with a church plant.

4) You can start a church in many different places. We did the study in a hotel. Why not start a church in one?

5) Even if we don´t have musical talent we could use CDs for the music until we were able to train musicians.

6) Mass evangelism with a team of people would well in some parts of Colombia (it appeared that it does in Cartagena).

7)Barranquilla is a possible ministry location. It´s the biggest city on the Colombian coast.

8) The focus of a new church plant should focus on strengthening areas that are weak in the culture. For example I talked to one pastor who said that in Cartagena they focus a lot of energy on teaching the importance of work because the culture tends towards laziness and unemployment.

These are some of the lessons I learned... some are more important than others, but I wanted to record a few of my thoughts.

We just arrived last night after our annual vacation... this time we ventured out on our longest bus ride to date of about 8 hours. The crazy thing is how close the cities and towns look on the map and then to see that those 100 km take 3 hours because it's non-stop switch-backs. Actually the bus drivers are more like professional race-car drivers than normal people.

El eje cafetero is the second biggest tourist attraction in Colombia after the Caribbean coast. I personally liked it even better than the coast because the weather was perfect (and always is), the people were very friendly (and their Spanish is easier to understand than on the coast), and the land is the most fertile country I have ever seen.

We stayed on a finca (a farm property converted to hotel) in Armenia, the capital city of the smallest department in Colombia, el Quindio. An earthquake back in 1999 destroyed much of the city, and ironically led to the resurgence of the municipality. I would say that Armenia is much more orderly than Bogota, although it's hard to compare a city of 300,000 with a city of 7 million.

As I mentioned, we were impressed with the friendliness of the people. Actually I have to say that we experienced that in every part of Colombia except in Bogota and the surrounding towns. We were able to able to share the gospel with our guide, and she was very open to listen and wants to receive some Christian literature that we are going to send her. She told us that we should consider starting churches in el Quindio because she send that there are hardly any Christian churches around except the ones that she considers fanatical (e.g. charismatic).

If we could leave tomorrow to go plant new churches in Armenia, I wouldn't think twice about doing it. But things aren't so easy to just go off and do. At least we are getting to know and love this country much more with each new experience.

Missionaries face difficult dilemmas. One of the hardest is knowing when it's time to move on to a different ministry, or if it's better to stay on strengthening the ministry in which you are serving. I mention this because the Lord continues to burden me for other parts of Colombia. We had a meeting with the men of our field team to talk about our church planting strategy and other possible locations for ministry in Colombia. Talk about exciting to think about!

We could go to the coffee region of Colombia in the west-central part of the country. Everyone I talk to says there is a huge need there. Armenia has 315,000 people; Manizales 357,000; Ibague 421,000; and Pereira 521,000. They hardly have any sound churches. The majority of the supposedly "evangelical" churches have drifted into charismatic practices, have women pastors, etc.

On the other hand, it's not like we can just take off and leave. Important ministries remain in the Bogota area. We need to make sure the seminary has qualified teachers, and that the camp continues to function.

I've advocated that we need to lift up our eyes and look on the fields... and then send a new team out to one of these needy areas. Of course there will be challenges to continue strengthening the ministries here in Bogota, but I think that God will bless our faith and planning if we purpose to branch out. If we don't look outward, I'm a little concerned about what could happen in the future. The words of Paul still challenge us: "And so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man's foundation" (Rom. 15:20).