Lost in Translation

I´ve recently run across three other missionary websites of people working in Colombia. It´s interesting to see different perspectives from other parts of the country.

The Washburns in Medellín
The Morelands in Pereira
David Ford in Medellín

In a previous post (Future possibilities) I talked about statistical need in Colombia. Well, after corresponding with another missionary who lives in Pereira and thinking about it, the national registry of churches doesn´t have as much bearing on the situation as I´d thought. For one thing, many churches aren´t registered. For another thing many churches are under the coverage of a church in a different city.

So how can we get more reliable statistics? I found a national church directory of Colombia that seems to offer a better idea. Granted that not every church is listed, and unfortunately a few of the buttons in their website don´t work, so I can´t get numbers for several cities I want (Bogotá, Barranquilla, and Tunja).

All things considered, I came up with some interesting results. Based on a comparison with the number of churches listed, here are the most needy cities per person:

Florencia -- 146,249 people, 3 churches listed, 48,750 people per church listed
Buenaventura -- 339,096 people, 8 churches listed, 42,387 people per church listed
Valledupar -- 372,096 people, 16 churches listed, 23,256 people per church listed
Montería -- 393,179 people, 19 churches listed, 20,694 people per church listed
Medellín (metro area)-- 3,092,355 people, 150 churches, 20,615 per church listed

My biggest surprise was to see Medellín in this list and not see Cali, but Cali has 233 churches listed and fewer people than Medellín.

Now, all this is nice, but it´s only an estimate. What would an indepth study look like? Well, surprisely I found exactly that kind of study done for Medellín. You can find it at a site called prolades.com, in the document La pluralidad religiosa en Medellín. I only wish they´d done a study of all the major cities in Colombia, but the ground work would look very similar to what Profesor Mora has come up with for Medellín.

Uff... (as we say in Spanish), I´ve been out of the communication loop to some extent because I was at kids´camp last week. I would like to get caught up with everything this coming week (prayer letter, finances, correspondence, etc.), but I´m not so sure that will happen.

For the time being I´ll post the Alonso´s prayer letter, which gives you a basic idea about what´s been happening with the ministry here. We´ve seen some real blessings as of late. We´re also looking at renting a house in Chía in the next few weeks. We saw one that we liked today, and I have an appointment to talk to the owner tomorrow. It happens to be in Ponylandia, a residential community you can read about in the Alonso´s prayer letter.

Alonso´s December prayer letter

Something that I don´t like about the ministry is that you make friends/disciples and then either you have to leave or they do. This happened today with two people who are special to our family. Ricardo Andrés has been a good friend of mine, and I was discipling him for a while. His family moved from Chía to Bogotá, and he has decided that another church more close would be better for his family. He was my apprentice in our small group ministry, so it´s a loss on that front too.

Lorena is another person who has become a friend of our family. I met her in Cartagena, and she accepted Christ. We have been discipling her by e-mail, and she has visited us in our home a number of times while she´s been in Bogotá. She spent all day with us today, going to church, eating lunch, looking at a possible house and then being stuck 2 hours in a traffic jam on the way into Bogotá (another reason why moving to Chía will be a big blessing!). She leaves tomorrow for Cartagena, and we will miss her. It´s amazing how someone can become a family friend (Lucas and Elie love her) in so short of time. Please pray for her spiritual life and especially that God would give her wisdom to seek her fulfillment in Him and His principles.

All this to say that I feel a little sad today. On the other hand I trust that the Lord will work in this two young people´s lives.

I´ve been kicking around a question lately. Thinking about this country of Colombia, where should we go as missionaries? For example, I´ve heard that God is moving in Cali, a city of over 2 million people. But there are churches in Cali, obviously with a need for more. Is our goal to expand the work of our mission? Or of Baptists? Or should we focus on pueblos in which there are no gospel witness?

As I mentioned in a previous post Manizales seems to have a need for more churches. I wrote to a pastor who works in that city asking about the need. He said that there is more need in the pueblos of that department, especially in one called Ríosucio ("Dirty river"). This pueblo has an estimated population of 48,000 and is known for its festival dedicated to the devil. The whole town prepares itself for this festival held every two years. According to this pastor there are hardly any churches in the town.

So, where is there more need? In a city of 2 million or a town of 48,000? I think that God directs different kinds of people to different kinds of ministry. Please pray that God would lead us... the honest truth is that I am very restless here in Bogotá. (Note: photo from luis perez on www.flickr.com)

If you want to visit our church, here is our new invitation card. We´re looking forward to printing 10,000 of these to begin to invite as much of Chía as possible. I would also like this image to show up in Google when someone types in "mapa de Chia" because there really are hardly any maps out there of the city.

We´re in the praying, planning, and brainstorming stage for future ministry here in Colombia. My wife jokes that I change my mind every other day... "We´re going to Cali." "No, we´re going to Tunja." And so on.

But I have a possibly more objective way to help plan where a missionary team could go in Colombia. I found the national registry of all of the religious entities (90% are "Christian" churches) that have legal status in the country. These entities include some denominations that have different forms of government, for which there is only one name and address listed (For example Casa sobre la Roca has only one address listed but I know they have churches in 20 cities in Colombia). But, all things being equal this registry should give us an idea of how many independent, legally-recognized churches are in each city.

Here are my findings of the three most needy cities based on this calculation:

Manizales -- population 385,000; Religious entities -- 5 (1 per 77,069 people)
Pasto -- pop. 393,000; Rel. ent. -- 7 (1 per 56,240)
Sincelejo -- pop. 247,000; Rel. ent. -- 5 (1 per 49,441)

Now let´s compare Bogotá: population: 7.05 million -- Rel. ent. 468 (1 per 15,064)

As you can see the need is far greater statistically in the first three cities. Not to mention that you can easily take a bus in Bogotá from anywhere and attend a fundamental church.

At any rate, we´ll see what comes of this. On a human level I would love to live in Manizales, wouldn´t mind Pasto, but Sincelejo would be a stretch. Obviously the human factor doesn´t influence me too much though.

The next step would be to take survey trips to see things up close.

The Alonsos posted their prayer letter which can give you their perspective of the ministry in Chía.

Alonso´s Prayer Letter

We´re all fine here in Bogotá, but an historic hailstorm fell on Saturday. We ended up with about 6 inches of hail in our patio. Here are a few pictures of the event...

I usually write about the ministry here, but I thought I´d mention my newest hobby. Lately I´ve been big into cooking, and I´ve been taking a short cooking class on Saturday mornings. Sometimes I get tired of Bogotá more than anything because of the difficulty to build relationships with people in a busy city where everyone has something to do. But I also realize that the capital has some neat things to offer, like this cooking class.

Each week we´ve made a full-course meal from a different culture. We started with Arabic food, then Cantonese, and last week was Peruvian food. Below is the Cantonese dessert we made (Flan de coco y rosas) which contains edible rose petals and rose water. It was to die for!