I preached my farewell sermon at La Gracia today on 1 Corinthians 13 and the gospel. We looked at 1 Cor 13 through the lense of the gospel, noting that the gospel equips us to love. For example, love is patient (a verb in Greek), and God has shown his patience with us (we looked at the parable in Mt 18 of the man who owed 10,000 talents and wouldn´t forgive the one who owed him 100 denarii... it uses the same verb as we see in 1 Cor 13).
As I pointed out this morning, 1 Cor 13 is beautiful but doesn´t tell us where we get the strength to put it into practice. But in the gospel (which Paul focuses on in chapter 1-2 and 15) we are freed to love.
I didn´t see what the attendence was, but it was the fullest the building has been in a long time. Pastor Daniel has a lot to learn, but I trust that God will bless him and the church.
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A group from one of José´s supporting churches is here, and they´ve been an inspiration. On Sunday we went to Zipaquirá to do street evangelism and pass out flyers to the new Baptist church that´s starting there. We went to the main plaza in the city and the group started singing. José preached a short five-minute message and we started to talk to people about Christ, using the Evangecube. Wow, people were really open and several people made professions of faith in Christ.
We did something similar but even better yesterday here in Chía. The team brought their huge Evangecube (www.e3resources.org), and they starting making free balloon animals for kids and painting faces. While the kids got their gifts, José preached the gospel using the huge Evangecube various times (I did it once). We estimate that 300 people heard the gospel in about 2 hours as we gave out 200 balloons and about 1,000 tracts. The amazing thing was how many people were interested in learning more. In fact one of the teachers in Lucas and Eliana´s daycare was really interested. We going to have her over to our house next week to share more with her.
My biggest regret: Why didn´t we do thing sooner? I would guess that at least two new people will come to church on Sunday because of our outreach. If we had done this every week, how many would have come to Christ by now? But no, instead we got wrapped up in church problems and missed many blessings. Oh well, in Cali!
I just finished one of my projects for the year (nothing like last-minute work, heh?). Please visit our new seminary website:
Seminario Bautista de Colombia
Por favor visíte nuestro nuevo sitio web del Seminario Bautista de Colombia.
I finished about two weeks ago the biography on Jonathan Edwards by Ian Murray. Excellent and very interesting! My new goal is to start reading more of Edwards, seeing as I share his name, he is John Piper´s inspiration (Piper says he´s trying to be a 21st Century Edwards), and his theology is challenging to me.
A new guy at church loaned me Edward´s Religious Affections in Spanish, so I´ve started reading it. I was at the biggest Christian book warehouse in Bogotá today and noticed a whole section by the same publisher, called Faro de Gracia. They are publishing helpful Reformed books in Spanish, especially for pastors. What a blessing to see more and more good materials in Spanish!
Today started early at about 4:30 a.m. as Marcos woke me up. I got up, made some coffee (yes, I love Colombia!), and opened my new Bible (la Biblia de las Américas) to Jeremiah 24, where God says, "My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart" (NIV). I was thinking about how today was such a crucial day for our church. We were going to vote on whether to accept Daniel as the new pastor. I didn´t think there was much chance humanly speaking because I had talked to a member last night about the vote, and he said he wasn´t going because he didn´t feel peace about the selection process; you gotta love boycotts of church business meetings.
Things didn´t look promising at church as we got everything ready. José and I had done the count, and apparently we had the potential to have a quorum, but everyone we were planning on had to show up. During the break between Sunday School and church I noticed Alvaro who had not been able to be at church for a month. Blanca showed up, who had been gravely ill for about two months. God was at work!
When we started the meeting we ended up with one more person than the quorum we needed. Of 37 members we had a total of 27 people to vote (we needed 70% of the members to have the meeting). We ended up voting for Daniel with 22 votes in favor, for a percentage 81% in favor!
We also approved three deacons and the rest of the administrative committee.
Later we went to Bogotá to see our friends Nic and Megan and their 3 new adopted kids! They now have five, and in my opinion they are heroes. I´ve mentioned their blog before... check it out -- Colombian Brewed
I´ve begun to work on the initial research to write an article on la malicia indígena, or native cunning. I´d seen other translations of the phrase in English, but they sounded terrible. For example, "Indian malice," which is very misleading because malice and malicia are not the same thing. I wrote about the concept a while back under the title Reading between the lines.
My hope is to get published in the Evangelical Missions Quarterly (EMQ), but obviously I have to write the article, and it has to be good enough. I honestly think that the idea for the article merits attention, but maybe not everyone else does.
I´m considering the title "The truth of the gospel in Colombia," with a focus on how the gospel should change many Colombian practices related to this "native cunning." Jorge Morales, speaking about la malicia indígena, says, "According to popular opinion, it´s a “combination of creativity, astuteness, prudence, and hypocrisy” which are “sufficient to make up for underdevelopment evident in education, poverty and abandonment by the State."
We´ve seen a number of ways in which the native cunning is made manifest in the ministry here. To note a few: manipulating, lying, taking advantage of others, mistrust, slandering, expressing a victim mentality. Now I know that these examples are not unique to Colombia, but what was new was the subtlety in which these sins are expressed. We´ve seen some masters at lying and giving false impressions. I´d never run into something similar in the U.S.
I want to focus in on how we should deal with these actions from a biblical point of view. What do you do when you have two people in your church fighting about the same issue and explaining the situation in completely opposite ways? (Say you´re going to cut their baby in half.) How can a missionary not get a completely negative attitude toward Colombian culture? (Have close Colombian friends.)
At any rate, you get the idea. If you have any ideas, let me know.
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.
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).