Lost in Translation

I'll be facilitating the first online course ever offered by our seminary in Bogotá through the Horizon International Schools (ABWE's distance education entity). I'm pretty excited as the course looks very well-designed. It's on the panorama of the NT. I'm looking to only have ten students as this is the pilot course we're offering. The course runs for 15 weeks, starting on September 1st.

http://moodle.horizonintl.org/
Look at the link below that says, "Español - Bogotá" (haga clic en el vínculo de abajo que dice "Español - Bogotá").

Voy a dirigir el primer curso por internet que nuestro seminario en Bogotá ofrece. El curso empieza el 1 de septiembre y va por 15 semanas. Si quiere inscribirse, por favor comuníquese con Claudia en la Denominación Bautista en Bogotá.

Aquí está la descripción del curso:

Por siglos la Biblia ha demandado los mejores esfuerzos de los que la estudian. Es nuestro privilegio unirnos a la legión de estos eruditos, conforme iniciamos un estudio sistemático sobre la literatura del Nuevo Testamento, la cual relata la historia de Cristo y sus apóstoles. Si nos entregamos a la tarea de todo corazón, cosecharemos beneficios eternos al adquirir una comprensión de la obra de Dios en el pasado y el presente. Cada libro del Nuevo Testamento, sin excepción, testifica de Jesucristo. Por lo tanto, queremos que nuestro estudio tenga como resultado una relación personal más profunda con el Cristo resucitado. Como Pablo, queremos "conocerle" (Filipenses 3: 10). En la medida en que lo conozcamos mejor, seremos enriquecidos personalmente y nuestras vidas harán un impacto cada vez mayor para Dios.

We had a great week of camp at Bass Lake Camp in Winnebago, MN. Thanks for your prayers! I was noticing that being in your home culture makes things easier for communication. I could say "aunt" with the MN pronunciation and no one would look at me funny.

I've also been thinking about cultural adaptation and location. I could work in any part of Colombia and adapt. I'm a missionary to Colombia. But I don't know if I could work anywhere in the U.S. because it's my country and I've developed ideas and prejudices about certain regions. Or to put it more positively, I would really struggle with certain regions. I would constantly be fighting the culture. I've recently heard of several pastors who've had this problem. You can't expect to move from the South to Iowa or Minnesota and not have a bit of culture shock. Things are just different.

This is another reason that cross-cultural missionaries are needed. Many times the "locals" are blinded to the needs or unwilling to meet them. Take the example of hispanic ministry here in the U.S. How many churches are reaching out to them? For many it's a stretch that they're not willing to make. I was excited to hear that First Baptist in Austin, MN has started an outreach to hispanics and now has over 50 in attendence on Sundays!

May the Lord stretch us all to reach people with the gospel... even if they're from a different culture.

We'll be at Bass Lake Senior high camp next week. Please pray for the following four sessions that I'll be leading (Tuesday to Friday).

Class outline – 4 class sessions

• The gospel should be the center of life and ministry.
• The cross is the key to peace with God and growth in God.
• Colombia is a beautiful country with a great need for the gospel.
• Missionaries are normal people who’ve been called to share the gospel in another culture.

Here are some prayer requests for the students:

• That they will feel more profoundly their sinfulness.
• That they will feel overwhelmed by the grace of God in the gospel.
• That they will feel more interest for Colombia and her people.
• That they will feel that if God calls them to missions, they will gladly surrender themselves to him.

I didn't want to forget where this tool is located on the web... It's fantastic for getting a color scheme that impacts. I've just been thinking about designing a church website, so I was looking at some color schemes. Oh, it's also a fun toy.

Color scheme designer

I was talking to Holly about the changes we made to our website. One thing I'd dropped was the prayer blog, mostly because I wasn't disciplined enough to update it regularly. But prayer is indispensable for our ministry. We're going to be on the front lines of church planting and leadership training. Satan does not like that! So, from now on I will post our prayer requests here on my blog and on our homepage there will also be a link to the "prayer" category.

Prayer requests for July:
1) We're traveling out to ABWE for our board meetings this Thursday.

2) We'll be at Bass Lake Camp from July 20-24. Please pray that God would work mightily in the teens' lives. I have four sessions to teach them, and the topic is "Cross-centered missionary ministry in Colombia." Pray that they would understand the gospel and all of its implications for our lives. Pray that teens would be saved and called to missions.

3) We are praying that the last $260 of monthly support needed would come in. Pray that the new churches considering our ministry would have the economic capacity to take us on as missionaries.

4) Spiritual growth in our lives. Prayer for chances to share the good news of Jesus with more people. Pray for our personal walk with God and as a family.

Think Smart: A Neurologist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance

I skimmed this book on brain health and learned some interesting things. I've always felt that missionaries, pastors, and seminary professors need to take care of themselves. As we seek to share God's Word, we must devote much energy towards studying.

A lesser emphasized point is that we must spend time taking care of our bodies (which directly affects our brain and thus our ability to think well). For biblical proof, note that Paul says that God is "for the body" (1 Cor. 6:13) and that our body is the "temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 6:19). Obviously our body can become a god to us if we overemphasize it, but we must not neglect its care either.

Here are a few points about our brains that were new for me:

• Our bad cholesterol level affects every aspect of our health, including the ability of our brain to function well. This is an important point for me to read, as the doctor said that I need to lower my bad cholesterol levels.
  
• Our short term memories are stored in the frontal lobes of our brain. We need to develop this part by intentionally trying to hold different things in our memory at the same time (work it a little), and by trying to remember things that we should know (Google doesn't help here).
  
• Memory experts use the part of the brain that deals with spatial relationships to remember things. For example, a man who could recite about 10,000 digits of pi saw all of the numbers in a landscape of colors and sounds. Now, I can't do that, but I have tried to view the Bible as a spatial entity. For example, I almost see Romans as a cathedral in my mind. People sometimes wonder how I can remember passages so well and that's how I do it. I don't just think of a the numbers of a Bible reference, but think about the book like a building and note where I'm at in the building.
  
• Working on memorization or on a certain skill is only effective up to a certain point on any given day. Your brain needs a night of rest to cement the memorization or the new skill. In other words, writing your whole sermon on Saturday night is not the best way to recall your study on Sunday.
  
• People who have an advanced degree (or extensive informal study) are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease (or at least it staves it off). Along a related note, watching TV is one of the worst things we can do for our brains. In contrast, reading a book or writing or even playing video games can help us develop our God-given mental capacities.
  

I was thinking yesterday about how we should spend our time on furlough. I thought about how I should be doing everything that I might want to do next year but won't have time because we'll be in the midst of a new church plant.

One goal was to redesign our website and blogs. You can see the results. Let me know what you think.

The Boyds to Colombia
Holly's blog

I finished reading a free ebook on my Kindle last week called World Wide Rave, which the author offered free for a number of days on Kindle. What an interesting book! His basic idea is that you need to write something and offer it for free on Internet. If a ton of people start downloading it and talking about it, you'll soon be known as an authority on the subject. Then you can charge big bucks to speak at conferences, etc. Although his focus is different than mine, you can learn a lot about how today's culture works and how to spread your ideas better.

All that to say that he recommended negative titles in blogs. So you'll notice the word NOT in the title, which according to the author will drive more people to this post.

Here are a few reasons not to use a Kindle reading device (see my previous post on the Kindle to hear my initial reaction):

1) You don't want to read great Christian classics for free.
I had wanted to get Calvin's Institutes for a long time. The price tag was stopping me. Now I have it on my Kindle and I can read it lying down (try that with the print edition!). To access lots of free Christian classics, go to the Christian Classics Ethereal Library and download the book in PDF (unfortunately it can't be scanned images of the pages). Download the free Mobipocket eBook Creator and convert the PDF to an ebook. Then just dump the SRC file into your Documents folder on the Kindle and you've got a free Christian classic. But if you want to pay for all of those free classics or not read them, don't get a Kindle!

2) You don't want to get a feel for new/interesting/important books for free.
How many of you have read The Shack? Neither have I, but I have read the first chapter for free on my Kindle. You can always download the first chapter for free from the Kindle store. If I see a book that listed in "Books of Note," I'll often download the free content just to get a feel for the book. Or if I am reading in one book and it mentions another one that interests me, I'll just download the first chapter for future reference. But if you don't want to be up on anything new for free, don't get a Kindle!

3) You don't want to be able to take advantage of downtime on the spur of the moment.
Yesterday we were traveling back from Illinois and it dawned on me that I had some time to do some reading in the car, but I didn't have the book I wanted. I talked to Holly about buying it and went onto the Kindle Store and bought it within about 2 minutes. In our trip back I read about four chapters of my new book on apologetics. But if you don't want to be able to stock your library in a few minutes with a new book, don't get a Kindle!

Well, it's kind of fun to be negative, isn't it?

I've mentioned various cross-centered books before, but I received a book for free that is frankly one of the best books I've read on the Christian life. It's entitled The Bookends of the Christian Life by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington.

The book explains practically how the righteousness of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit need to be the two bookends of our Christian life--in other words everything in our lives must be channeled through these two aspects of the Christian walk and rely on them.

The book helps us answer the following questions (taken from their material):
* How can I overcome persistent guilt?
* How can I deal with the pressure to measure up?
* Where can I find the motivation it takes to grow?
* How can I live the Christian life with both my head and my heart?
* How can I be sure God loves me?
* How can I change in an authentic and lasting way?


I'm not done with the book yet, but I've already been encouraged and challenged by a number of points in the book, especially when the authors talk about the gospel enemy of persistent guilt. For each topic they ask a series of practical questions to see how you're doing. The section on persistent guilt spoke to my heart as I tend to beat myself over the head with my failures and shortcomings.

The authors also have a website that includes study guides. I would recommend this book for every Christian, for small groups, for church-wide reading, etc.

My only question is, "When is it coming out in Spanish?"

(Photos of Santa Marta from vcardenas' on flickr.com)

Well, it looks like Operation Cali has been put on hold. I talked to José two days ago, and his family will not be able to accompany us to Cali for various reasons. I told him not to worry about it because God is sovereign and we have other options.

We are not committed to a Plan B yet, but right now our most likely option would be to join the Carters and the Medinas on the Colombian coast. In fact, Alfredo called me today to encourage me and talk a little about the possibility of working on the coast. I've gone with Alfredo and Scott on three investigative trips around Colombia and have always had a blast with them, not to mention been spiritually encouraged and challenged.

Our most likely starting point for working on the coast would be Santa Marta. If that's the case, I'm sure we'll have more "work teams" that want to come down to help us.

Note: I'm blogging from a Mac... We bought the kids a used iMac G5. It's nice.