Lost in Translation

It's interesting how events converge in our lives. I just got accepted to take my first master's level class from a group called Pro-META. It turns out that they use an open-source environment for distance education called Moodle. I had never heard of Moodle until this week, and lo and behold, a missionary with ABWE who is in charge of distance education with the mission came through Bogotá this weekend and explained what the future will look like for theological education around the ABWE world. Talk about exciting!

We will be using the Moodle environment to facilitate distance education. The classes are super-dynamic... so far they have one class done in Spanish, but they are working in eight different languages. With this system we will be able to offer quality theological education to people throughout Colombia. Imagine, we could be training pastors in many cities of Colombia at the same time, even while we are on furlough ministry. The ABWE school is called Horizon International Schools.

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).

Next Wednesday is the first night of our new small group ministry, Grupos Agape. I am very excited about this ministry. If you can believe it, the only experience I have in a small group of a church was in San Antonio, Texas back in 1995, where I attended a small group led by some students who had just gotten back from missions trip in Russia.

It was a great experience. Of course I felt lonely in San Antonio, and the group helped me feel like I had someone my age with whom to talk. I still remember something funny. One night the leader said, "Let's just say that the next 30 minutes is prayer. We're just going to chat, but we'll consider that it's prayer. Maybe we can intersperse (of course I'm sure that was the exact word he used) random thoughts for God." I still get a laugh out of that! It's almost as good as one of my roommates who said that he used the snooze button to measure how long he'd prayed in the morning (yikes, his prayer life was spectacular... from about 4:45 a.m. to about 6:45 a.m.).

At any rate, we're starting the small group ministry with two groups. Pastor Jose will lead one, and I'll lead the other. We'll both have an apprentice whom we'll prepare to lead a group in the future. The goal of this ministry is that we grew in fellowship with our brothers and sisters.

We've come up with a basic vision statement for the church along the same lines as the authors of Simple Church advocate. In other words, each purpose of your church has one ministry that corresponds to that purpose, or to put it in other words, your vision is your process. Our statement (roughly translated) would be: "Growing in commitment... to God in worship, to our brothers and sisters in fellowship, to the church in ministry, and to the world in evangelism." To God in worship corresponds to the Sunday services; to our brothers and sisters in fellowship to the small groups; to the church in ministry to ministry teams (which don't exist yet), and to the world in evangelism permeates every aspect of our church life.

The church conflict continues, and I keep learning. A concept that is very important to understand in Colombian culture is the malicia indigena. The word indigena is the word for "indigenous" or "native." Supposedly this ability comes from their Indian roots, but it's probably more from their Spanish heritage. It's a difficult concept to translate directly, so I'll try to explain the idea. The term refers to the ability (or vice) to see beyond the surface and judge the motives of another person, usually to avoid getting ripped off or to rip someone off. It's the ability to connect the dots in a situation in order to come out ahead or to tell what's really going on.

I asked my Colombian co-worker if it's ever a good thing. He said that it never is... but that sometimes we misname wisdom or precaution malicia indigena.

The malicia indigena can have terrible effects on a church. No matter what a person says, he or she can be misinterpreted under the guise of the malicia indigena. Lately I've heard comments, such as, "You just can't understand how so-and-so is manipulating because you are so pure and you don't have the malicia indigena."

How does this concept affect a reconciliation process? Wow, it can utterly derail it. "No... so-and-so doesn't want to reconcile, he just wants to manipulate." "When he asked for forgiveness he really didn't mean it." Or you ask someone, "Do you have proof of that?" "No, but I have the malicia indigena with which I can see through the smokescreen."

I've also learned some things about counseling. You have to directly ask people what they mean because they can easily use ambiguous words (obviously this happens in the U.S. too, but I think that it's more pronounced here). For example, "When you said that, did you mean A, B, or C?" This is an important lesson for me to learn so early in my missionary career here. I tend to take things at surface value (they reconciled), when in reality they carefully crafted their words to avoid confessing anything or to admit that "progress is impossible so why bother."

At any rate, I continue studying faithfully in the school of hard knocks.

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!

As you can imagine, the last few weeks have continued to be very full because of the difficulties at church. Thankfully things have gotten somewhat better in the last two weeks. I am particularly excited about the possibility to begin a men's discipleship group. This will probably start in January, since most people are very busy during December. I've already started the foundation of the discipleship program with one of our men.

The idea comes from Ron Berrus, who was with us here in Colombia last month. He was a pastor for many years and now serves at ABWE. He gave us a CD with all of his discipleship material (a wealth of wisdom and help) and shared with me how he runs a discipleship group.

The basis for the program is a spiritual inventory and ten accountability questions. I've been working on it for about two weeks now, and God has been blessing. I'll post the information here (Ron said it's not copyrighted).

Spiritual Disciplines Inventory

While there exists a danger of legalism, equating spirituality with list keeping or measuring ourselves by others, yet, we must make personal self-judgments regarding our pursuit of God. We must become men of God, men of the Word, men of prayer, men of discipline, growing, sharing our faith and helping others grow. We must become the spiritual leaders of our homes. We must know where we are as well as where we need to go.

Give a completely honest evaluation of your present practices (not plans or past history). Tell us what your present practice of the spiritual disciplines is really like.

1. Present practice of reading and studying God’s word (when, where, how long, how regularly)

2. Present practice of memorizing God’s Word (when, how, what verses in the last 3 months)

3. Present prayer life (when, where, how long, with whom, major prayer requests)

4. Present practice of using a spiritual journal (how often, method)

5. Present practice of leading family worship (if married)

6. Present practice of reading Christian books & magazines (when, how often, examples)

7. Present practice of giving to the Lord’s work (church, para-church, percentages)

8. Present practice sharing your faith (witness, tracts, home bible study – last month, year)

9. Making disciples (helping someone else grow intentionally)

Rate yourself regarding your current practice as a follower of Jesus Christ
(low) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (high)

Accountability Questions

1. Have you fulfilled your weekly growth plan objectives this week?

2. Have you taken time to minister to your family (wife, kids) this week?

3. Have you been with someone this week that could be considered inappropriate by anyone, or could have looked like you were using poor judgment this week?

4. Have you exposed yourself or been exposed to any explicit material this week?

5. Have you dwelled on thoughts that were not Phil. 4:8-9 thoughts this week?

6. Have you been completely above reproach in all of your financial dealings?

7. How have you handled temptations in the last week?

8. How can you be more Christ-like in your workplace?

9. How have you shared your faith with an unbeliever in the last week?

10. Have you just lied to us?