Lost in Translation

Being a first-term missionary can be an interesting role. Perhaps I overanalyze things at times and for that reason often feel a bit discouraged with the ministry. Thankfully I have friends like Jose and Scott who have lifted my spirits and helped me see things in perspective.

As a first-termer, you have so many preconceived ideas about the ministry in the country to which you are going. I don't have our ministry presentation set up on my computer now, but if I could watch it again I'm sure I would laugh at a lot of the things I said in it. This problem has to do with appearances/superficial understanding and the reality. Having only visited the country before on short-term trips, I didn't understand many things. It's the difference between an answer from a book and an answer from personal experience.

As Scott helped me see, the knowledge and understanding we have gained will be invaluable in our future ministry. We haven't seen the fruit in the ministry that we want to see, but that is because we are still building the foundation. A couple of the insights I've gained in a year and a half:

• Colombians are equal partners in the ministry, but in order to truly understand them I must give myself to them in friendship, spending time with them. If they are not my friends, they will not share difficult things with me. On the other hand, if they know that I love them, they will be willing to tell me almost anything that they are thinking. This has implications because missionaries often make mistakes in the ministry and need to hear about it.
• We must be honest. I've seen the temptation in missions to make the figures look good or exaggerate slightly, or place things slightly out of context so they look better. I am trying to reject this temptation on every level in our ministry.
  

I just realized that my blog could serve as a repository for sermon illustrations, saving them under the appropiate tag. Of course the beauty of a good story is that it can be morphed to illustrate various truths.

Yesterday afternoon I went to pick up a missionary family from the airport who had come in from Leticia. There were six in total and as I went to shut the back of the mission van one of the kid's head was in the way. I waited for him to move but because he was still close I didn't slam it shut.

As we were tooling along at around 70 km/h on the Avenida El Dorado (one of the nicest in Bogota to give visitors a good first impresion I'm sure) all was well. The family was happy. I was happy. My friend Wilder was sleeping because he had been up almost all night at a retreat out at camp.

I went to pull off the inner lanes into the outer lanes and heard a whoosh, looked back, and to my horror saw that the van door had conveniently opened and it looked as if several suitcases had flown out. I slammed on the brakes, ran at full speed to grab the suitcases. Thankfully the beautiful silver Mercedes right behind us had slammed on its brakes and the driver and his wife were laughing. I apologized profusely and ran back with the escapee in hand.

It turns out that only one suitcase flew out, and the family said that it was the most beat-up one they own. I learned that even if all looks good, it's always good to double check!

A friend from college, Barry Farlow, just let me know about a site that he helped develop called Pictorb. The site provides missionary pictures from across the globe, and he wanted to know if we would contribute some photos from Colombia.

The Colombian peso has gained more against the dollar in the last year than any other currency in the world. The graph below gives you an idea of how it's value has plummeted. Yesterday it ended in 1,877 pesos per dollar. This tendency reflects the greater confidence foreign investors have in Colombia. The security situation has dramatically improved and dollars are pouring into the country, driving its value down. Importers are happy and the exporters are upset.

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?
  

Last week I finished teaching my first seminary class here--General Epistles. The class went pretty well, although we weren't able to cover 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John or Jude.

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.

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?

Last Thursday I began my first course in the seminary here in Bogota--General Epistles. I have 35 students, and the class has been going well. It's definitely a challenge for me to teach from 7 to 9:30 p.m. in Spanish. The second night my brain felt scrambled by about 9 p.m. Since then I've decided to sleep in a little more so that I'm fresher at night.