Lost in Translation

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?

I've been in "emergency mode" for the past two weeks. By that I mean I´ve had to attend a ton of emergency meetings to try to fix some major things that blew up in the church. Here´s what happenned.

Two Sundays ago, I had an inkling that things weren't going to go perfectly. We were going to have a budget meeting with the church after the service. I had thoughts of budget meetings at Campus Baptist, where the budget is presented, three or four respectful questions are asked, and then it's approved.

Not so on that day. We spent 45 minutes just debating the approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. Obviously something was brewing. And Holly said that she saw Galatians 5:15 come alive, "But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!"

Towards the end of the meeting a group of people stood up and read a letter basically sharing their desire to say "chau" to the Colombian pastor.

Of course this type of thing sends major shudders through the whole church. There was group of people who met almost every night for a week or two. Other people see the unbiblical foundations of such a tactic. Last Sunday the tension was palpable in the service.

As a church we need to work through many details of this situation. People were offended verbally. The Bible was not followed. As the interim pastor I felt like resigning on the Monday after this happened. Now I see that God needs to work through this situation to purify His church.

I´ve been mostly working on an individual or family level with this problem, slowly unraveling the knots of problems that should have been handled biblically a long time ago.

We took our first trip out of Cundinamarca (the department in which Bogota lies), crossing the border into Boyaca on our way to the city of Tunja, which has a population estimated at about 124,000. The drive of two hours is breathtaking and a good challenge for our Renault 9 (forget about running it with natural gas, it wouldn't make it).

As we arrived at Tunja, we drove by instinct to the center plaza, where I left Holly and the kids to look for our hotel. As I walked across the plaza, a man walking parallel to me made eye contact and greeted me. We talked for about five minutes about how it is to live in Tunja. In Bogota that would hardly ever happen! I was experiencing culture shock. That first impression continued for the whole time we were in Tunja. A whole group of girls on a school trip approached us to ask where we were from. Several police officers offered to help me find our hotel... the list goes on, but I was impressed with the friendliness of the people.

As far as churches in Tunja... lots of Catholic churches and few, if any sound Bible-teaching churches. We saw four evangelical churches, but probably only one would be of sound doctrine. The people are very Catholic. Lots of young people poured out of the Sunday mass. Everyone I talked to said that they were Catholic and believed very strongly in the "Virgin."

The most interesting experience was visiting a monastery where the "Virgin" had supposedly appeared hundreds of years ago. A man was sitting on the steps, reading his prayer book. I approached him and struck up a conversation. It turns out that he has two major problems: his son is into drugs and he's involved in adultery with someone. He was there to ask the "Virgin" for help with these two areas. He was very willing to listen to what I had to say about the gospel, but it is so radically different from his background and experience. The mentality of looking to the "Virgin" for everything and the idea that we have to always be "confessed up" with the priest or we're up a crick clouded his understanding. It least I was able to share the gospel with him and leave a gospel of John with him.

This trip was part of a desire that God has placed on my heart to see how we can expand our church planting out of Bogota and the surrounding towns. It may only be a dream, but I'm going to be praying that God would give us wisdom and a deeper desire to reach all of this country for Christ.

In the post below you will see some photos from our trip in the following order...border of Boyaca, Tunja from the north, central plaza from our hotel window, the cathedral outside and inside, and the last two are of the monastery.

One thing Colombian pastors and students have told me is that most students who finish our program in Bogota have a lot of great Bible knowledge but lack ministry experience. I've been pondering the possibility of promoting a 1-2 year program for that type of student.

The program would involve some classes but would major in getting practical experience in a local church.

The idea has been fleshed out in an American context by Faith Baptist Church of Lafayette, IN, which is going to begin their program in 2007.

You can visit their site for more information:

Faith Bible Seminary