I just finished reading The Five Dysfunctinos of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. I would recommend the book, not for being profound but for clearly portraying something that I´ve seen happen here in Colombia. His book can be summarized in the pyramid illustration that he uses, which includes the following levels from the base on up: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to results.
For me the point that most interested me was the fear of conflict. According to the author, in a good team there should be healthy conflict. If there´s no conflict in meetings, that shows that something is wrong, probably that there is a lack of trust because people are afraid of what others will say. This lack of trust leads to a fear of conflict, and when people don´t express their thoughts openly, they don´t commit. When there´s no real committment there´s no accountability and without accountability we can all do what we want with inattention to results.
I recommend this book for executives, pastoral staffs, and missionary teams. I think that it crystalizes some neglected concepts about working as a team.
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We´ve been working on a number of different fronts to wrap up things here in Chía before we head back to the States on Feb. 9th. First, we need to leave the church with a national pastor and all of our ministries covered. God has answered prayers, and we have two candidates for pastor--Daniel and Pedro. I think that either one would be good, but we just worked up a plan today about how the church is going to be able to get to know them and finally choose their pastor. As far as our ministries, the goal is to step down in the middle of November from almost all of our responsabilities (Holly has the excuse of having a baby) and just guide and give feedback as necessary.
We´re also working on our plans for the following term. At this point we´re looking at working in Cali, a city of about 2.2 million people. We need to work through a myriad of details with the mission team here before this can happen, but God can work it all out.
The other project is our furlough. We need to prepare our new missionary presentation and set up meetings for 2009. In the midst of these different challenges, we know that God can work out all of the details for us.
We´ve been teaching a class on hermeneutics in church on Friday nights. It´s been a lot of fun. We just covered textual criticism and Bible versions in Spanish. José and I are hoping to upload the whole course to our church website in the future.
The course also reminded me of a professor whom I´ve never had but who has taught me a lot. Rodney Decker is a professor at Baptist Bible Seminary in Clarks Summit, PA. You can access his valuable website here. I also just ran across the faculty site for Thomas Schreiner, who is a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His commentary on Romans is my favorite for that book (and Romans is my strongest suit in commentaries).
Estoy trabajando en las notas para este viernes en el curso de Hermenéutica y encontré un recurso muy útil en español acerca de la crítica textual y otros asuntos del estudio bíblico. De hecho, es impresionante ver todo lo que este señor ha hecho en sus numerosos sitios web.
Criticismo bíblico
José subió la página de la Federación Bautista Fundamental Independiente a la que pertecemos para que la conozcan...
Bautistas en Colombia
José uploaded the webpage for the fellowship of Baptists churches with whom we fellowship so you can get to know them...
I just ran across two free resources on internet. First, the Peacemaker brochure is available as a free download on their website. If you haven´t heard of Peacemaker Ministries, you need to look at their materials because they are a real blessing for developing a culture of peace in the church. Their website is www.peacemaker.net. and you can access the brochure at Peacemaker materials in other languages
The other site is The Gospel Coalition which now has Themelios Journal online for free. I perused the issue online and read one good article on the definition of "mission," a topic that is of great importance. What is "mission"? For many it has become only the Missio Dei or the social mandate, but the author argues that "mission" should be defined by the Great Commission. Good stuff!
We went this week on a trip to Neiva (6 hours to the southwest of Bogotá) to rest and also investigate the possibility of church planting there. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and the heat actually for me wasn´t as bad as everyone says. Holly said it was hot, but in comparison to a humid Iowa July day it wasn´t bad. We were able to travel to a desert about 45 minutes northeast of Neiva which was really interesting. We also traveled to a dam about an hour to the south of Neiva. As always it was fascinating to see how different the geography of the country is. It reminded me of Arizona in some ways.
As far as church planting, the city has a need, but we found that the location is not central enough for branching out to other cities. We talked to one Baptist pastor who is serving faithfully. 
I haven´t had a chance to blog about anything because the team that was with us just left on Tuesday and we´ve been trying to catch up this week. Last week while we were with the group we heard the best news for Colombia we´ve heard in a while. Ingrid Betancourt, the three American hostages and 11 Colombians were rescued by the Colombian military from the FARC guerrillas. When we saw the announcement on TV, I was moved emotionally. The operation was a huge strike against terrorism in this country because the FARC lost their most important hostages and the way that the military tricked the guerrillas shows that they´re closer and closer to defeat.
We thoroughly enjoyed our time with the group from Campus Baptist Church. In fact, nothing went wrong on the trip. We didn´t have any troubles; everyone had a great time; we had about 65-70 kids total in our basketball camp and were able to teach them the eight essential truths about the gospel (God, man, sin, death, Christ, cross, faith, life) in relation to basketball. On Saturday, 23 kids came to a youth activity at our church and 10 made professions of faith in Christ. As I was meditating on the liberation of Ingrid, I thought about how she was a captive when she woke up on July 3, 2008. But later in the day she was rescued and free. This is exactly what happens when someone places their faith in Jesus Christ. They are rescued and set free!
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.