Lost in Translation

I just ran across a free online seminary, called Biblical Training. They offer courses for new believers, foundational courses, and upper-level courses.

Biblical Training

They also have a page of links to other online courses with other institutions.

Other online courses

I think that buying an iPod was one of the best things I´ve done to grow in wisdom. Since we got ours last year, I don´t know how many hours of good lectures and sermons I´ve listened to while I wash dishes or jog. It´s been a real blessing.

I've been impressed lately by the number of challenging books being translated into Spanish. The publishing house Editorial CLIE has begun a new series in which they are translating some of the best contemporary theology books from English. For example, commentaries by Gordon Fee, Douglas Moo, F.F. Bruce, Peter Davids, etc.

I read a book on discipleship from this series by Gegory Ogden and am working through his manual for discipleship. I wanted to include a quote from this second book that has spurred my thinking (obviously it will be my translation):

"We should decide what we want our ministry to be about. Do we want to receive short-lived applause and recognition or do we want to transmit a model to the few who will continue our labor once we are gone?" This question is excellent. Pastor Jose and I have decided to begin pouring more energy into some of our men with ministry potencial here. Who cares if we build a church of 500 if we can't leave it with trained leadership?

On the short-term side of things, this means that our ministry "quality" may suffer a little bit. I don't forsee anyone preaching better than Jose in the near future, but we need to start letting other men share the preaching so that they will grow. The same goes for the music, for the teaching, etc.

It's easy to criticize models that have been used in the past that haven't produced strong, biblically-minded leaders, but the question remains: What are we doing about it?