Archives for August 2009

“Vale la Pena” is a phrase that means something along the lines of “It’s worth it.”

When I think of some of the challenges that we face, I have to ask the question – is it worth it?

Is it Worth it?

Is it worth it, living by faith on surprise support in the mail box?

Is it worth it,  the embarrassment when our new friends are reflexively astonished when they discover that we don’t have a car, and then try to hide their astonishment?

Is it worth it, the sense of gratitude when people pity us and give us a ride or pay for our movie tickets?

Is it worth it, learning a second language and mess it up while trying to communicate God’s grace?

Is it worth it, walking away from a six-figure income to help Latin American pastors equip their church to do the work of evangelism?

Is it worth it, being eaten by mosquitoes, using outhouses, frigid cold showers, and sleeping in uncomfortable beds to help ignite small churches in Panama and help pastors reach poor people?

Is it worth a 14 hour frigid and uncomfortable bus trip to teach pastors for 3 hours on evangelism during a torrential downpour where I have to shout to be heard, and encourage them in their ministry?

Yes.

The grace of God has captured me.  It has transformed my life.

Going to Paso Canoas

24 hours after returning from Guatemala, I got on a bus and made the 7 hour trek to the border of Costa Rica.  Those buses are very cold with cranked air conditioners.  Trying to sleep is a near impossibility without assistance from Benadryl.

Not to mention the two “wake up the entire bus” stops on the way for a bathroom break and then a passport check out in the middle of nowhere.

As we get closer to the destination, beginning about 4am, this express bus starts dropping people off and picking people up, changing the pitch of the engine white noise and putting the lights on in the cabin.

When I arrive at the border, I’m wiped out.  We check into a hotel for the day at $10, a little tourist hotel that has no comparison to the US.  That price included a floor fan and a TV.  I don’t worry about the TV and fall asleep fast, my discomfort is of no import, just finally horizontal to sleep.

I wake up with splitting sinus headache.

Since we’ve walked into Costa Rica, I’m out of place not knowing where anything is, or even how to convert my currency to get a bottle of water.  My host is with me, so we find someT bottled water, have a little lunch, and then go to the church to give the class for the day.

I’m at the International Prayer Center in Paso Canoas, Costa Rica.

The church is in the process of remodeling.  Half the roof is missing, which becomes painfully obvious a few hours later during a torrential thunderstorm.  Here, most churches don’t go into debt to fund remodeling.  They just live with incomplete projects until they raise enough money to tackle the next part.

A class 13-14 people gather here on monthly basis for the mission institute that I teach for here in Panama.  They pray for my headache to be gone, which it does.  We meet in a little covered classroom off to the side of the sanctuary.  Gratefully, a floor fan is located for me so I that I can stay somewhat cool.

After some introductions, we walk through some discussion questions.

What is Evangelism?

“Go and speak the good news to those who haven’t heard.”

“Go and bring people to church, give them information about salvation.”

“Sow the seed of the love of Christ.”

Why is Evangelism Difficult?

These answers roll of the tongue pretty quickly.  When we move to challenges to evangelism – the answers roll out even faster.

What right do I have to call people to repentance?

They don’t listen to me.

I don’t know WHAT I can say?

What are the challenges in the church?

Notice I didn’t ask them about their church, but the church in general.  People are more apt to speak of their difficulties if it’s more collective.

People are comforatble with their own church.

Lack of knowledge and passion.

Lack of training.

Compartmentialized only to gifted evangelists.

Full Time evangelists don’t have enough economic support.

No cooperation with the Holy Spirit.

These things are a little harder to get out, but once they start talking, it flows well.

What is the fruit of evangelism?

I wanted to probe to see what is the goal for evangelism.  The answers were

Repentance

A prayer.

Genuine Repentance.

This intrigued me as non of the answers spoke of the beginning of a discipleship process or any kind of conection to the local church.  We covered this discussion for a while, and talked about the relational value of intentional small groups to help connect people.

I described a feature of Latin American evangelism that I have observed – call for a decision, but no or little effort to connect to a church.  While everyone agreed with that observation, there wasn’t much more discussion about it.

What are the means of evangelism?

I was surprised by the answers of this group – it was all program driven and non-relational

By children

Tracts and door to door

Street Evangelism in the parks.

Leadership classes to train people in confrontational evangelism

Meeting social needs by medical clinics, food panties, tutoring.

In these answers, which are all good, what is missing is 1-1 relational evangelism in the course of ordinary life.

This answer caught be my surprise, and as I’ve been talking with many different pastors these last few months, I’m not off base in my observation – this suggests a need for personal evangelism training that is not a program, but a part of ordinary life – raising awareness of such opportunities.

The Lecture

Eventually, I moved into my lecture, but was drowned out by a slamming rainstorm that reverberated off the steel roof.  I had to shout to be heard, and felt my voice beginning to give out.  Though my headache had left, my strength was still not 100% having not slept well and just returned from 7 days in Guatemala.

We finished up, and discovered we had just missed the 6.30pm bus back to Panama City.  We had to wait around for the next available direct bus which put us back home at 5:00am, right where I had left at 10pm two nights before.  30 hours after my departure, I was back home.

Vale la pena

Was it worth a 30 hour round trip to teach a group of 13 church leaders, in Spanish, for just 3 hours, and spending $50 in expenses?

In terms of a use of time – likely not.  There are probably better ways.

But in terms of being available to these pastors and to motivate their work for the kingdom of God where they are – you bet.

I’ll be visiting them again 3 more times this year, and will seek to fill out the weekend with some additional preaching to use more time out there.

Yes, it’s worth it.  This is the center of our calling and that’s while we are pushing through the challenges we face.

Sunday

The Presbyterian Church of Guatemala invited us to speak at their pastors training camp later in the week.

But for reasons of cheaper airfare, we flew in on Saturday, and then I was given the opportunity to preach two services at Iglesia Central Presbyterian, in zone one, across from the equivient to Capital Hill and next to the President’s working offices.

[more of the experience below]

Approximately 500 people attended the two services.  I got to preach in Spanish.  It was recorded, so if you want one, please ask and I’ll send it to you.

Liturgy was followed from the bulletin, using a blend of hymns and contemporary Spanish worship songs.

This church had a new experience for me: the prayer time.  People were invited to the front to pray before the preaching of the word.  The pulpit is on a raised platform, which had kneelers in front of it.  This helped people come and kneel at the front.  The elders came to lay hands and pray for individuals.  I went up to spend some time praying, and two of the elders came by to pray for me.

I’m convinced that their prayers were guided by the Holy Spirit as they touched only on themes I was praying about.

The rest of the congregation did more singing during this time.

Greeting visitors was a calling them forth, having them stand up and share their names into a microphone.  The whole congregation then waved at each guest individually.  Ushers went and put a VISITOR sticker badge on them.  I felt honored, even though i don’t recommend this practice in North America.  With the exception of the badges, we experienced this type of greeting at the second church and at the conference we attended.

I was put on the spot to try translating greetings from Sam and Ben.  He did his best, but I’m sure it wasn’t the cleanest or purest Spanish.

Between services, we were wisked to Applebees for a typical breakfast and back for the second service where the process was repeated all over again.  For lunch we wanted some typical food, and taken to the Guate version of KFC.  We ate very well and then taken on back to the camp.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get to do much sight seeing in the historic areas around the church.

Missed Evangelism Opportunity

The church had a 3.00 pm evangelistic outreach, which we didn’t know about and thus didn’t work into the schedule.  I talked with the elder in charge of this outreach, and learned they do a tract distribution, and personal invitation to a special service.  They’ve had several conversions this year, and are celebrating some baptisms and the Lord’s supper.

Sunday Evening

We were returned to the camp where we could rest for a few mintues before running off to a church, El Buen Pastor in Amatitlan.  A smaller church, about 150.  They were having their missions conference.  Daniel, our host at the camp is an elder.

We met their pastor, discovered they hadn’t arranged for a translator, so I preached again in Spanish. They were also gracious enough to move some flowers away from the pulpit so that I wouldn’t have an allergic reaction.

This time I really felt like a kairos moment was occuring, but I didn’t have the autority from the pastor to have an altar call.  They don’t do that there at that church.  Had I checked in with the pastor ahead of time, I would have likely continued with it, but that didn’t work.

The preaching of the Word.

All three sermons were on having a personal devotional time and the richness of having a regular, daily time with God to gain wisdom for living.

Many people commented on the power of the sermon.  Those who said more than the cursory God bless you at the exit told me of how that sermon hit the spot.  Most affirmed my ability to preach in Spanish.  I know that GOd can use the scripture, even if I’m not always gramattically correct.

I remember seeing different social classes all worshipping together.  Shaking hands with people from nearly all age groups.  Dressed to the 9s and as campesinos who don’t have much.  People saying things like “That sermon meant a lot to me”  “This was a good reminder to me that I need to get back into the word.”\

God’s generous protection and provision

After evening church, we were taken again to Pollo Campero, the Guate version of KFC.  A nice meal with Daniel and his wife. We told all sorts of preacher jokes, with me serving as a translator.

Some jokes didn’t translate without an explanation of the pun, and I had to deal with some really hard words going to Spanish, but we laughed alot.

While we were eating, the fuse box in the car under the passenger seat caught fire and the car couldn’t start.  (Below is not our car, but a visual representation of the fire damage).

We thanked God that our fire driven breakdown occurred

• In a well lit and crowded parking lot
• In a parking lot with 24 hour security
• While we were inside the restaurant and not in the car
• That we were close to the camp for easy pick-up
• That the fire didn’t spread to the cabin of the car.

Daniel made arrangements for us to be picked up.  On the way home, our driver on the way home said this town is very dangerous to walk in as a stranger. While we felt no danger, we were not ever allowed to be alone outside the camp.  We heard stories of bus driver assassinations (about 2 a day, down from 5 a day), and read lots of state department warnings about the violent crime rate.  We noticed that our hosts were taking to us to well developed and secure places to eat and kept us away from places that wouldn’t be wise to be in as a foreigner.

We passed the rest of the evening in prayer — wondering about spiritual warfare.

• Power problems coming in and out at the camp,
• Camera batteries running out,
• Supplies being left in our home countries
• Car fuse box shorting out.
• Even during one of our prayer meetings, the lights went out.

Daniel mentioned later that the power problems were a new issue that hadn’t happened before.  Having learned that the camp had been a Mayan sacrifical ground, we took some authority and asked the Lord to clear a space for us to work in and for his spirit to move.  Conincidentially, the lights came back on.  We asked our intercessors to be praying along those lines, not wanting to deal with any spiritual warfare locally.

Monday: Antiguo Gautemala.

A day of tourism.  Daniel took us to the old city, established in the 1500s if not sooner, but destroyed by earthquake and a resulting flood.  We walked around, and it reminded me much of Cuszco Peru.

Visited ruins of the central church, had a great lunch of typical food, and we spent some time talking with Daniel about his view on the state of the church.

Had our picture taken with some local women dressed in typical garb, and simply passed the day.  We continued telling jokes and generally building a relationship.

Praying for the conference.

We spent time as a team praying for God’s will to be done, praying for the camp, continuing to pray that God would create an open space for His spirit to work.

Our intercessors were guiding us to pray about thinking on our feet and seeing spiritual reality.  We kept asking God to show us how to think on our feet, and how to network with people.  Knowing that some of our teaching material would be new, we kept praying for receptivity and open minds.

See Also:

• Presbyterian Pastors Conference
• Sunday Preaching at Central Presbyterian
• Travelling to Guatemala