Teaching Archives - Mission to the Americas

Fantastic Fruit of Pastors Training

November 24, 2011 by ecoach Leave a Comment

I received this email from one of the students from the pastor’s class in Central Venezuela in October.

Hola pastor chris recibe un gran abrazo de parte de alex y amarilys y Ondas de Paz, te cuento que luego del entrenamiento que nos distes en la iglesia, salimos a evangelizar en algunos sectores de Cabudare y alcanzamos 42 personas nuevas para el Señor, pero luego de esto se han añadido más y actualmente tenemos 75 personas en consolidación, es decir, afirmandolos como creyentes y seguidores de Jesucristo!!! Estamos agradecidos por su ayuda!!! Dios continue bendiciendo su ministerio… más adelante le estaremos informando que ha sucedido con estas personas. – Pastor A. Camacho

Roughly, this reads:

Hello Chris, receive a great hug on the part of Alex y Amarilys and Waves of Peace UMC. I want to tell you that after the training you gave us at the church, we went out to evangelize in some sectors of Cabudare. We reached 42 new people for the Lord, and after this, we’ve added more. In reality, we have 75 new people connecting to our church as believers and followers of Jesus. Thank you for your help!!!! May God continue to bless your ministry . . . later on we’ll tell you more about what happened with these people.

It’s not often I get a word of results after a teaching class. I’m grateful that the Lord has used our family ministry in Latin America to make a difference in churches.

Ministry with Dominican Republic Young Life

April 20, 2011 by ecoach 3 Comments

On the final day of the Leadership Camp for 159 Young Life leaders in the Dominican Republic, we heard quotes liked these.

“Your visit was a huge blessing. Your teaching has helped me to understand more about the Holy Spirit.”

“Thank you, that teaching was awesome and gave me some clarity to some things I have experienced.”

Young Life Leaders give themselves away in ministry. Once a year, they get to be fed and trained in at their annual leadership camp at Pico Escondido, Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic.

The camp is tucked away up a rutted dirt road on a green mountainside, about 1 hour outside the city of Santiago. Cool refreshing breezes were on order each camp day and the lack of rainstorms meant lots of outdoor time. The camp itself is under development with more dormitory buildings coming online later this summer.

Jarabacoa is a small destination town (pictured on the plain below from the camp). People from the city come out to this valley for their summer vacation homes.

Year round residents have motorcycles to get around. Dodging motorcycles and mopeds while navigating narrow windy streets is an art form, as they seemed more numerous than ants in a colony.

Nicodemus visits

Our particular class had close to 50 students, those who had been in leadership with Young Life for more than 3 years.

In John 3, Nicodemus visits Jesus at night for 1-1 conversation away from the peering eyes of his leadership team.

He had deeply personal questions for Jesus.

Away from other people, he visits Jesus aside for personal Q&A.

After the second class on Who is the Holy Spirit, many Young Life leaders started seeking us out 1-1 for their Nicodemus visits.

Who is the Holy Spirit?
I had this experience. Was the Holy Spirit working in me?
When I came up out of the waters of baptism, I was so excited I started praying in tongues. Was that the Holy Spirit?
Does I have to display a certain manifestation to prove that I have been filled with the Spirit?
This happened to me, what was it?
When I’m alone, I sometimes pray in tongues. Is that normal?

I’m convinced that more personal ministry happened as a result of these 1-1 conversations rather than in class time. Some of these led to personal prayer times and personal ministry as we poured ourselves into these leaders.

What is clear among these leaders is a thirst to know more.

More about the Holy Spirit
More about how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit
More about how to pray in the Spirit
More about how to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit.

First trip might lead to second visits

What is normally a 20 hour course was condensed into 5 hours spread over 4 days. While that gave our team a lot of down time, that down time began to fill up with the Nicodemus visits and conversations.

The thirst to know more, and follow up conversations indicate a desire to keep learning more. Next month, we’ll have those kinds of conversations that may lead to future team visits.

As of this writing, I have raised about half of the $1500 needed to cover the time and travel for this trip.

If you want to make a project gift on line, use the PayPal button and send me your receipt by email with a note that it was for the Dominican Republic trip.

Prepping A Church for Door to Door Evangelism

February 3, 2011 by ecoach 1 Comment

A Foursquare church on invited me out last weekend to prepare their team to go door to door. Because of some miscommunication, I didn’t realize that this was my expected purpose. I was invited to give my workshop on personal evangelism.

I taught the entire 3 hours in Spanish, and promptly took a 3 hour nap when it was all done!

Coming alongside ministries

After the workshop was over, they took to the streets into a new residential subdivision that has come up near their church.

Door to door campaigns are common for this church, it is one of their most effective evangelism styles and I learned that part of my purpose was to come alongside and motivate them for the adventure.

If I could do this over again, I’d gear my workshop more in that direction. I focused a little too much on evangelism as a life style.

But, in spite of the misplaced focus, the Lord can and did use the workshop. The organizer mentioned that 53 people attended the workshop. Here is what she said after the event.

“We often want evangelism reduced to a formula we can put into a book and follow it like a recipe. But what you’ve helped us to see is that evangelism is a process, and that it’s a process that each one of worked through ourselves in coming to faith.

This helps us to realize that when we go door to door, we need to be patient with people who are not yet ready to receive, and be receptive to noticing those who are. We need to be listening to the Spiritual Thirst.”

Now I wasn’t able to actually go along with them to do the campaign and help them debrief the experience, but I hope that I’ll be able to return in a few weeks and hear how it went.

Learned more in 1 hour than in year

December 16, 2010 by ecoach 1 Comment

Several months ago, I led a discussion for a house church on the topic of personal evangelism.

I heard 8 different stories of how people came to faith in Jesus.

An invitation to church
A message at a camp / conference center.
A mystical encounter with God
Restless in the soul that prompted more discussion.

Key events came through contact with family members, with friends, and with random strangers.

For many, the initial encounter then led to a series of events over a year that helped each one surrender their life to the Lord.

I was impressed with the

Diversity of stories.
Diversity of means.
Diversity of gospel explanations.
Diversity of responses.

Evangelism is participating in a journey

After hearing all the stories, the group members saw the uniqueness of their journeys to Christ.

I went on to share about the process of evangelism, some of the most foundational teaching in our ministry.

It helps people see that we can’t rush or compact the conversion process down to a fixed 3 minute script over John 3:16, 3 questions and prayer.

In fact, no one in the group that night came to faith because of a fixed gospel presentation.

I learned more in that 1 hour

That was June. Here in December, I ran into one of those church members and he shared with me what that 1 hour had meant to him.

Prior to the workshop, he had been feeling guilty that his scripted presentations were not working. As a result, there was much personal condemnation.

However, that discussion that night over the process of evangelism brought him personal liberty from condemnation.

The clarity he got from the teaching that night helped him to see how he can play a role in the process of evangelism and that freed him from that sense of personal guilt that he was ineffective.

“I want to thank you for sharing that night. I can’t tell you how much it has helped me and brought back the joy to sharing my faith. I learned more in that 1 hour than I had in previous years of learning in evangelism. Your teaching was a huge blessing to me.”

I received a lot of encouragement from his words. He sought me out in a crowded room to share with me the impact of that night that happened 6 months ago.

As a teacher / trainer, measuring the fruit of workshops is hard until someone comes back to say thanks.

Growing La Fuente Church in Matagapla

December 14, 2010 by ecoach Leave a Comment

Matagalpa is a city about 2 hours to the interior of the country from Managua, the capital, and is tucked in a mountainous valley in central Nicaragua.

In January 2011, I’ll be joining a team from PRMI to give a conference the weekend of the 7-10, focused on Praying in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Pastor Raul will be our host.

Since we are in town for an event with Vida Joven (see Developing Leaders in Latin America), we were invited to have an additional conference in the city with La Fuente church.

La Fuente church has hosted our team for the last two years when we come to town to work with Vida Joven. I can’t wait to hear how the church has grown and how they have been practicing cooperating with the Holy Spirit to do the work of the ministry there in Matagalpa.

While the charismatic leaning congregation is familiar with experiencing the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the Ignite conference series we are doing with PRMI give them great systematic teaching. In our past visits many folks found it personally refreshing.

We’ll focus specifically on prayer in the power of the Holy Spirit, looking at topics like healing and intercession, learning to listen to God, revival, and praying with vision and power.

Help us get there.

Your gifts to our ministry enable us to do this kind of work.

Gifts given through this website will provide for our support for this and other projects.

Click the Paypal donate button below to help us provide ministry for leaders throughout Latin America.

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