Lost in Translation

Today we spent almost all day shopping for food for the missions team that is coming down tomorrow. 16 people are coming down from our sending church, Campus Baptist of Ames, Iowa. God has blessed with the preparation for the trip, as it looks like a good number of teens have signed up for the camp (70 had already signed the last time I checked), and more will surely sign up (we´re shooting for about 100-120). The team should Lord-willing get in tomorrow night at about 8:45 p.m., so we´ll be getting to Chía about 10:30-11 p.m. We´ll have an orientation day on Saturday, then church on Sunday, a camp prep day on Monday, the camp from Tuesday to Friday, a youth activity on Saturday, church on Sunday, a trip on Monday and then on Tuesday they´ll be heading off.

I also just wanted to plug the blog of Nic and Megan Olson: Colombian Brewed. They are a couple from one of our supporting churches in Minnesota, and already have adopted two Colombian babies. The amazing thing is that they are working towards adopting a sibling group of children between 0-10 years of age. We consider it a privilege to know Nic and Megan and pray that God would bless them richly in this new adventure.

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 started reading David Brainerd´s diary this week, which is included in the works of Jonathan Edwards. I was struck by his constant desire to be closer to the Lord. He definitely wasn´t perfect, as he speaks of constant bouts of discouragement and melancholy. The interesting thing was to think of how I´ve felt similarly many times, wondering what I´m doing in the ministry, and then coming back to the truth that it´s not about us. It´s about our Savior. The gospel message keeps us humbled and dependent on Christ.

On a related note, I started The Way to Joy discipleship material with one of my disciples, and I think that it´s helping me to expand my understanding of the gospel. Sometimes we think that the gospel is a series of three facts (death, burial and resurrection of Christ), which it is, but it´s more. Because the whole message of the Bible points towards Christ, and without that context a person won´t understand the gospel.

José and I have been talking about where our church members are at spiritually. We came up with a list of ministry competencies (what we want each disciple to understand and do), and now we´re developing a questionaire to evaluate where they´re at. It´s a little scary to begin thinking about this. For example, how many of our members shared the gospel with someone this week? Or, how many have a consistent devotional time each day? How many are giving faithfully on a regular basis? I think that simply asking the questions is going to help us as a church.

I thought that I´d mention two resources that may be of blessing or challenge:

Web site of Ron and Val Berrus (two of my heroes from ABWE). They have a ton of great discipleship, church-planting, and spiritual discipline resources.

Acts 29 network. This is something new for me, so I don´t understand all about this group, but the two messages I´ve listened to have been a real blessing and challenge. Have you heard of missional living? If not, check it out.

We were planning to spend most of our week in Barranquilla on our survey trip to the Colombian coast but ended up spending as much time in Santa Marta because after two days of work in Barranquilla we realized that it´s not the best place for us to start. We saw a directory of churches that listed around 800 churches in Barranquilla. Of these there are at least 35 Baptist churches. Granted most are Pentecostal now, but we decided that we don´t want to have to work in that type of environment, at least for our first church plant. In constrast, Santa Marta, a city of around 400,000 (or up to 600,000 in some estimates), has only one Baptist church. We weren´t able to talk to the pastor but asked if the pastora (lady pastor) was around. The girl told us that the pastora would be there later in the afternoon. Scott asked when their healings service was, and the girl said on Wednesdays at 7 p.m.

As you can see from this example, it´s really not that hard to figure out when a church isn´t fundamental here. That said, Santa Marta is now looking like our number one possibility for a future church plant. The three of us left enchanted with the place and the need for sound churches is evident. Please continue to pray with us!

NASA image of Barranquilla on the Magdalena River and Caribbean coast

I fly out this evening with Alfredo and Scott to Barranquilla on the Colombian coast. The goal is to do an investigative study of the churches and need in this city. We have set a goal of interviewing 63 pastors in this week, and I also plan to talk to a seminary director. We also want to understand the cost of living in Barranquilla.

Of the main cities on the coast, this one seems like the best possibility for future church planting because it is the most industrialized and doesn´t rely on tourism so much. Cartagena is busy during vacation times, but for more than half of the year the people don´t have work and that makes it more difficult to serve as a future hub for church planting. Barranquilla is also the most centrally-located city on the coast.

I´m looking forward to the trip and praying that God will give us direction for future ministry. The time without José in Chía has helped me see that serving as a pastor alone is not my calling. I struggle on the pastoral side of things, as far as visitation and running after sheep that have strayed. Our pastoral intern Wilder has more gifts in that area, which is a blessing, but it also makes me feel bad when he asks "Have you called so-and-so?" and I haven´t. Obviously I need to grow in this area, but at the same time I know that some people are gifted for it and others are not.

I sometimes ask the Lord what I´m doing here as I seem to struggle to find the role for which I am gifted. For example, I´ve had a real burden for evangelism and reaching out to our neighbors, but it´s often difficult to work that area of the ministry while guiding the church, preparing messages and lessons, and preparing for an upcoming seminary class I´ll be teaching in a two weeks. I sometimes wonder how good I am at balancing things. I can balance things to "maintain" the ministry, but it´s hard for me to help it grow when I have several ministry roles to fulfill. For that reason I like these trips to other parts because I can focus in on one thing and do it well.

Please pray for my trip and God bless!

I was just directed to some good courses in Spanish that use the Moodle platform that we will be using for ABWE´s distance education. I was invited to take one of the courses, but I think that I will see if I can enroll our pastoral intern, Wilder, in the course.

Desarrollo Cristiano Bíblico

Proverbs 6:6-8 (NKJV) "Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, And gathers her food in the harvest."

I´ve been preaching a series of messages on Proverbs and have been meditating on the them every morning. This morning I read the proverb above and thought, "Wow, that´s a perfect description of a good missionary." Being on the mission field I hardly have anyone who directs what I do each day. You pastors know how that is too. On one hand it´s liberating and on the other hand frightening. The question that constantly haughts me is, "Am I doing what´s most important as a missionary?"

I definitely think that "doing ministry" is not the place of a missionary. But it´s so easy to fall into that trap. I "do the ministry" when I preach, teach, counsel, etc. without thinking about training anyone to do the same. As the old addage says, "Teach them to fish. Don´t just give them a fish."

On a practical level our church started this week with Wilder as our ministry intern. The church is going to be paying him for a year to study and work with us. This Sunday he´s going to be preaching his first sermon. In spite of a lot of failures on my part as a missionary, I don´t think that we can lose with this idea because after a year Wilder will be more equipped then he is now. He´ll have learned a lot, and he´ll be able to avoid many pitfalls that José and I have fallen into.

Last week we were in Girardot, Colombia (about 2 1/2 hours down the mountain) for the conference we have with all of the ABWE Spanish-speaking missionaries every four years. It was a great week. In my opinion the highlight was the Good Soil evangelism training that we received. ABWE has already published "The Way to Joy" discipleship book, which is for new Christians, and they are beta testing the "Story of Hope" evangelistic study. To access, go to CEIM Resources

I highly recommend these resources. The evangelistic study is especially good, as it covers the 40 most important events in the Bible so the person can capture the big picture, and also includes the Bridge to Life, which includes the six essential concepts someone needs to grasp to be saved (God, Man, Sin, Death, Christ, Cross, Faith, Life).

What really struck me is how I´ve often short-circuited the process of evangelism, skipping over key concepts or not explaining the story line of the Bible. In our culture here, you may get "decisiones" but the person may not have truly understood the message of hope.

The course was especially timely since I´m going to be teaching an evangelism course at church next week.

We´re moved in to our new house in Chía, which is a great blessing. The house is a little smaller than the one we had in Bogotá, but has some nice features. It has a big patio out back with a grill, so maybe we can have people over for a grill-out. The house also has hot water, but I´m not sure how great that will be when the electric bill comes. The neighbors have been great... in one week we´ve noticed the difference in culture from Bogotá to a smaller pueblo (okay, 100,000 people isn´t that small). The neighbors actually have a minute to chat, and we´ve been able to talk to a number of them.

One negative is that the phone line was cut because the bill wasn´t paid on time, so we don´t have a telephone nor Internet. Sorry for the lack of communication.

We´ll be in a conference next week also, so we probably won´t feel totally settled for a while.

On the church front things have been going pretty well. We´re looking at the possibility of working with Wilder, a young man from our church, full-time in the ministry. We proposed the idea to the members on Sunday and will vote on the idea next Sunday. He would be like a pastoral intern for a year, working with us in every aspect of the ministry.