We’ve been working along side a pastor from Venezuela, here to raise a church.  Readers of this blog have been following our journey for two years, though I’ve not strung the posts together to tell the whole story.

This church plant is called a parachute drop.  We’ve “dropped in” from the outside, observing the culture, dreaming about God’s plan for us, and building our social networks from scratch.

We are working with immigrants from another country who moved here to work among fellow immigrants and locals.

We are in a high density urban zone neighborhood of 65,000 people that has 7 churches, of which 6 are under 100 in size.

Notice how many people that suggests do not attend church on Sunday (statistics here are hard to come by, particularly those that commute out of their neighborhood to other churches).

Even if we could reach 1%, that’s still 650 people.

The story so far:

We’ve had a few false starts, but have finally built a core group of about 13 families that has been meeting weekly in pastor’s apartment.  We’ve been gathering for fellowship, fun, and some teaching.    This core group has become our social network and emotional support system.

Along the way, we’ve had baptisms of new believers, and lots of active discipling.  We are in a sense, training the future leaders of his congregation.  We’ve given ourselves away in servant projects, retreats, and meeting each others needs as the Lord provides.

Funding at 40% of budget

We are doing this with no funding other than missionary support and tent making.

For example, I sell my ebooks on church hospitality at my other website and get some income speaking at other churches.40   Your partnership with financial help through PRMI enables us to serve here as well.

Our current reality is that pledged support each month and expected product sales is only at 40% of our need.

We’ve still got a lot of fundraising and new product development to do.

Most Recent Growth

That core group of mostly new Christians met for over a year in an apartment.

We stepped out in faith after one year and rented a hotel room for a Sunday.

We paid for 30 people ($500 to rent).

75 people attended the first gathering a few weeks ago, way beyond our expectations.

We’ve received almost enough provision to rent the hotel room again for our next service which will be June 20.

Your partnership matters

We keep praying that we’ll make an impact where we live, planting a church that plants churches.

It’s not easy work by any means.  We’ve walked through seasons of stress like we never had before.  But in the end, is it worth it?  By all means.

Your partnership not only helps us in this church plant, but is helping us train other pastors and leaders throughout Panama and Latin America.

As we step into the summer, would you consider making a gift or joining our team on a monthly basis?

Sample ideas:

• $500 provides rental of a hotel room for one service.
• $500 provides an airline ticket to give training in another country.
• $250 provides training for a church in a evening meeting.
• $700 provides health insurance for one month for our family.
• $100 provides a month’s access to virtual training for pastors around the world via the internet.

Action

Dowload the Donor Response form to print out and mail to PRMI, or work through the steps of donating on line.

I’m working on a simple paypal button from PRMI, but for now, you’ll have to use ACS.

Two Sundays ago, Buenas Nuevas Panama took a Sunday to serve a local church in a servant evangelism project.

We went out to a community near the airport, one that is known to be a dangerous and violent place, often drug related or gang violence.

In fact, recent government statistics released yesterday indicate one homicide for every 10 hours.

The church we served meets on the back patio of the pastor’s house.

The tin roof provides a little shade from the hot sun, as people gather around to heard the word of God proclaimed.

You can see the iron bars on the doors and windows.  This is common on every house I’ve seen in Latin America.

Like wise, this structure is still being renovated as the Lord provides the cash for the pastor to make renovations.  They do not qualify for any kind of loan, nor are the offering sufficient.  The pastor is an iron worker and has some work selling cast iron furniture frames.

Recently, there has been a huge crisis in garbage collection in this city, and the result is, this community reeks of rotten garbage.  If you’ve been to a landfill, you know the smell.

Poor areas like this do not get the attention that the rich areas do. The rich areas have their garbage picked up daily!

After the service, the distribution begins inside a living room that measures only 8 ft by 12 feet, nearly 25% of the 2 bedroom house.

Changing lives

If you have participated in servant evangelism projects like this, you know the profound blessings and wonder that you feel as people express their appreciation for what you have just given them.

• Toys for children.
• Shoes for men, women, and children
• Clothing.
• Cold medicine.

That day as I stood in the back (in the hot sun) listening to the pastor remind people of God’s call on their life, and the simple beauty of the gospel, I was overwhelmed with the sense of

• struggles that pastors have in this country
• the urgency the gospel
• the simplicity and beauty of the work of Jesus
• our calling to serve and give ourselves away here.

It was hard to fight the tears.

I watched the drama called “Praying for you” set to a hip hop beat like this one, that highlighted a mother praying for her wayward children who were invovled in gangs.  This was their reality in this little church.

We were but a little light in a sea of chaos, crime, and gangs.

We hope to continue to give ourselves away in this community.

As Buenas Nuevas Panama launches this weekend, we hope to establish a church that has service to the poor as one of its DNA.

It is truly more blessed to give than to receive.