Lost in Translation

I preached my farewell sermon at La Gracia today on 1 Corinthians 13 and the gospel. We looked at 1 Cor 13 through the lense of the gospel, noting that the gospel equips us to love. For example, love is patient (a verb in Greek), and God has shown his patience with us (we looked at the parable in Mt 18 of the man who owed 10,000 talents and wouldn´t forgive the one who owed him 100 denarii... it uses the same verb as we see in 1 Cor 13).

As I pointed out this morning, 1 Cor 13 is beautiful but doesn´t tell us where we get the strength to put it into practice. But in the gospel (which Paul focuses on in chapter 1-2 and 15) we are freed to love.

I didn´t see what the attendence was, but it was the fullest the building has been in a long time. Pastor Daniel has a lot to learn, but I trust that God will bless him and the church.

I was asked to preach at the 2nd annual missionary conference here in Bogota last Saturday. The pastors have now named the mission agency SIBAN, which stands for SIervos Bautistas A las Naciones (Baptist servants to the Nations). The preaching went very well, and the message reflected many insights that I have gleaned from pastors here. I'll just mentions my main points so you get the idea (the outline was nicer looking in Spanish).

Following the Compass of Paul's Strategy
Romans 15

The missions strategy of Paul consists of three tasks that we should emulate:

I. Understand the mission: vv. 7-13

• We must understand that God wants to see unity that leads to more people glorifying Him.
• Our goal is not to be comfortable, nor a social club, nor to brag about our sound doctrine but to reach more people for the glory of God.
  

• We see that Paul relied on the work of the Holy Spirit in people's lives.
  
• He fulfilled his ministry because he left strong, reproducing churches in the major cities.
• On a personal level, every pastor and missionary should be reproducing himself.
• On a practical level... Are we doing all of the preaching and teaching because we're the best at it? We need to think about who we will leave in our place and think long-range.
• We also need a reproducible model in Colombia for how we plant new churches.
  

• We're at a crucial point in the history of missions here in Colombia.
• Where do we go from here?
  
• There's a lot to do in Bogota, but what about the rest of the country?
• We does God want us to go next?