Teaching Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Mission to the Americas

Calling Forth Missionaries

May 13, 2009 by ecoach 1 Comment

Preaching in Filadelphia On Mother’s Day Sunday, I was invited to preach at Centro Christiano de Filadelphia, a church in the Colon province. I was given a translator for this event.

I’ve seen the church on several occasions driving back and forth (when we rent a car). For a while, it didn’t have any walls – this year, it has finally enclosed the walls.

The sound system wasn’t working right, and the roar from torrential downpour slamming the steel roof presented some acoustical challenges. Outhouses in the back served as the facilites. The humidity level was 100, with very little breeze. Though the church had some fans hanging on the walls to create a breeze, it wasn’t enough to prevent me from having to use a handkerchief several times.

No complaints, just describing some of the setting.

The people of this congregation were very friendly. Ushers wore uniforms that set them apart from the crowd, creating a wonderful first impression. They guided us to our seat, and introduced me to the pastor and her husband.

The song set was loud, and the words were not projected at this time. As part of the church’s growth, I can see the setup where they will eventually have a data projector. The screen was a tarp strung with shoelaces to a frame made out of electrical conduit. Resourceful.

I was asked to preach on a missions calling. I was joined by a team from IPET, a group of the students that I’ve been teaching in Colon. They brought a drama, testimony and song as well.

Psalm 67:1-2 served as the foundational text:

“May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face shine upon us, that Your ways maybe known on earth, Your salvation among all the nations.”

God’s blessing is for a purpose == the proclamation of His name.

So often, as individual Christians, and as churches, we are so focused on seeking the Lord’s blessing, but we disconnect it from the purpose of blessing.

This was the leading for that Sunday. About 150-200 people in attendance.

Church of Philadephia The call you see pictured are for those who wanted to receive the filling of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the work of being witnesses. We had already spent some time in repentance for selfishly holding on to our blessings, and committing to the purpose of our blessings, the proclamation of God’s name.

In that moment, we also prayed for those who are discerning

a call to global missions internationally, or
a calling to be intercessors for missions.

Both are important work, and several people raised their hand to indicate a need for prayer in each category.

This work this Sunday was only a seed. IPET will likely stay in touch with those sensing a call to missions to help nurture that calling and provide some of the training to fulfill it.

A word of Thanks

Thanks to all of you who are praying for us here and choosing to support or work in Latin America. Moments like these are the fruit of your partnership with us here.

Teaching Events in May

May 8, 2009 by ecoach Leave a Comment

The season of networking in Panama is producing fruit. I’ve been doing some teaching and preaching in April and upcoming, here is the mix for May.

Schedule

May 9-10
Cross Cultural Missions Conference – Colón

May 18
IPET in Colón, Verbena Church – Evangelism

May 23
Celebration of Baptism

May 25
IPET in Colón – Worldview and Cross Cultural Missions

May 30/31
IPET in the Darién Province, Sermon on Sunday

Missions Congress

The Cross Cultural Missions Congress will be in the city of Colón, the place where the gospel had it’s beginnings in Panama and an area that has had a special blessing from God for spread of the gospel.

Immigrants from all over the world are have settled in Colón and many have risen to positions of influence and power. There is a growing Muslim presence and economic influence in the city, and one of the best schools in the eyes of many in Colón is the privately funded Arab College. Other people groups from India and China, as well as the West Indies and the Caribbean have settled there.

In the last four months, HIMF (Hermandad Iberoamericana de Misiones Fronterizas) has opened up four mission training schools in the province of Colón, with approximately 70 students in that province, made up of

Pastors
Cross Cultural Missionaries
Teachers
Support Workers

The missions academy is named “Panamanian Institute for Crosscultural Studies.“ The acronym in Spanish is IPET. HIMF is a Latin American sending agency who’s goal is to raise up missionaries from Latin America to other parts of the world.

The missions Congress is geared towards casting a vision for international missions – both abroad and at home – and recruiting another 80 students to join its classes and grow in its missions calling.

Gathered around the theme of Acts 1:8, we desire to cast a vision

For Global Missions as seen in Scripture
Help the people of God fulfill the Great Commission in their calling
Awaken, guide, and give God’s people tools to reach into other cultures
Recruit future students for further training in cross cultural missions at home and abroad.

I will be sharing the teaching responsibilities with pastors from Guatemala, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Panama. On Sunday, I will be preaching in a local church, with one of the outreach teams from IPET, casting a vision for missions and for the Global day of Prayer (May 31).

My particular theme is on the “Reaching my City for Christ.” I’ll be sharing some of the strategies I’ve learned while church planting in Richmond VA and here in the city of Panama.

Prayer

Here is how you can pray:

Safety in transportation. A new highway has opened up.
Provision – we will rent a car for the weekend. With fuel and food, our costs to participate will run about $150-$200. Pray that provision will come.
Clear Communication
That people would grasp the vision for missions.

Teaching with the lizards

April 21, 2009 by ecoach 2 Comments

I (Chris) have begun teaching a new 3 week course (9 hours) with about 30 students in the The missions academy, “Panamanian Institute for Transcultural Studies.” The acronym in Spanish is IPET.

It’s in the city of Colon, about 45 miles north of where we live, over on the Atlantic coast.

The teaching environment

Colon is not a safe place.

The tourist book reads “If you have no business over there, do not go. If you go, expect to be mugged.” Last night, when I asked to walk down the street (about 6 houses) to get a soda, I was taken by car, not allowed to walk by myself. While I do not fear for my personal safety, the locals know that I’m a prime target and they keep me safe.

It’s tropical, humid, and the church I’m teaching in is not using air conditioning. Open windows permit the occasional breeze to come through.

The sanctuary lighting is intentionally set low so that the data projector can cast the slides up on the wall. The combination of heat, humidity, and low light after the end of a long work day means that my teaching has to fight fatigue and sleepiness.

The teaching

IPET is the schooling arm of a Latin American sending agency who’s goal is to raise up missionaries from Latin America to other parts of the world. The academy runs in multiple sites in Panama, currently over 10 are running in various areas of the county.

Students in this course are paying monthly for 18 months of study, 3 class hours a week plus short term mission outreaches in partnership with local churches. Many are in training specifically to reach other people groups, so it’s more than personal evangelism.

I’m teaching 3 weeks (9 hours) on personal evangelism:

Motivations for Evangelism
The Role of the Holy Spirit in Evangelism
The example of Phillip.

This is the foundational teaching on evangelism for all my courses on personal evangelism and is the foundational material for PRMI’s evangelism Dunamis. One of my students last week said:

I tell you, I believe that God gives tools to the church. Chris is a tool that our church needs to use. I had 9 hours of his teaching and benefited so much from it that my approach to evangelism has been transformed. We need to learn from him.

I’m honored by his statement.

Teaching with the Lizards

greenlizard The classroom has open windows to allow the occasional breeze to stir the air.

One can hear the noises in the street, the chirping and callings of night insects.

But the open windows allow these little green lizards to get in. They are common in Panama — we’ve seen them in our house on a regular basis. (Imagine grabbing a shampoo bottle only to see a lizard staring at you).

Last night was the first night that I saw these lizards visiting the class. I found humor as they chased each other on the walls while I’m teaching on the love of God and how to share it with others.

One or two would occasionally run across my teaching images being projected on the cement wall behind me.

I find them funny and distracting, but the class doesn’t seem to notice — a worldview issue.

The fruit of teaching

It is clear that the doors to teaching here are beginning to open. During the drive home with the director, it was clear that he has more in store for me in IPET and in the missions organization itself.

We came with a dream of tapping into a network of trainers, and it is appearing to unfold in a different way that we expected. The level of our teaching events is going to increase considerably over the next few months and that is an answer to prayer.

Students in these classes come from a multitude of churches. Already the director is beginning to field phone calls from pastors whose members were in my class. Pastors are beginning to take note and as the Lord permits, we’ll be able to respond.

We’ll need your partnership in prayer and support to help us reach these churches and members with a passion to share the good news.

Consider joining our monthly support team. You can do so online or by US Mail.

http://www.missiontotheamericas.org/support-our-mission-work-in-latin-america/

Teaching Future Missionaries from Panama

April 6, 2009 by ecoach Leave a Comment

In April, I’ve been asked to teach 2 three week courses at two different locations for HIMF — Hermandad Iberoamericana de Misiones Fronterizas, beginning this Wednesday April 1.

I am teaching in a missions academy called “Panamanian Institute for Transcultural Studies” It is the schooling arm of HIMF, who’s goal is to raise up missionaries from Latin America to other parts of the world.

The academy runs in multiple sites in Panama with more in the planning stages. The goal is preparing for long term missions work abroad among unreached peoples.

My first class has students all from panama. A majority are sensing a call to Muslim areas of Afghanistan, eastern Europe and north Africa.

Some are still exploring their call, others are preparing for work with immigrants here.

Classes are in Spanish, so I’m teaching my evangelism material in Spanish.

Reflections from Nicaragua

December 26, 2007 by ecoach 3 Comments

I recently returned from the mountains of Nicaragua teaching on ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit at two different locations with two different groups. I praise God that we returned healthy, stayed safe, and had minimal travel delays.

At both locations, our team presented on worldview, who is the Holy Spirit, the four works of the Holy Spirit, how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and then how to listen to the voice of God.

This material is the basis of Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International’s Ignite Project. We had the teaching slides translated into Spanish, and had more material than we could cover in our limited time.

This material has been translated into several other languages and used around the world, but this is really the first major initiative to enter Latin America.

I’ve taught some of the material in Latin America before, but it was piecemeal. This time, we are developing a strategy to share this material further and with more frequency as we see the need is so great.

As pictures become available, I’ll post links here.

Nehemiah Center – Managua Dec 13-14

The Nehemiah Center is a center of several different ministries working together for the transformation of Nicaragua.

It is based in Managua (see Wikipedia’s article with photos). Several international ministries have pooled together to coordinate their work and save overhead by sharing office space and support staff.

You can read about all their ministries at the Nehemiah Centers “About Us” page.

The Nehemiah Center takes its name from the example of Nehemiah in the Old Testament, who was called to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem after they had been broken down. In a similar way, the “walls” of Nicaragua have been broken down by a series of natural disasters, wars, and other events. The Nehemiah Center exists to rebuild those walls by equipping the country’s leaders in a variety of sectors with a biblical worldview, the foundation necessary to nurture the future growth of this country and its people.

We had lots of time for small group discussion, and since we had the entire teaching time, we used it liberally for discussion, q&A and allowed plenty of time for the staff to wrestle with the material that we were presenting.

Vida Joven– Jinotega Dec 17-21

We had the privilege of being with nearly 200 Young Life leaders from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico. We had a daily class with about 40 leaders in particular, and they served as the ministry team for the nights that we had the larger group. We taught on the work of the Holy Spirit and the gifts, and then how to minister as a team to people asking for prayer.

We saw physical healing (for example, one pastor received a healing in his right hip from a car accident nearly 40 years ago – the Lord revealed the pain as a word of knowledge). We saw a lot of emotional healing and several demons were dealt with. Many rested in the Spirit.

The highlight of the trip for me was watching the local staff grab a vision for team based prayer ministry and the confidence they had in being equipped. It’s not that the “American team” led ministry, as much as we delegated it away to the local leaders.

Esperanza Coffee

On the way back , we visited and toured the coffee processing facility of Esperanza Coffee. By God’s grace, our friend and president of Esperanza, Javier, happened to be there. I had emailed Javier that we were coming to Nicaragua, but I was never sure if he got the word, so his being there at the same time we dropped in, was merely coincidence.

I first met Javier in 1998, and have stayed in touch since then. Esperanza gives so much back to social missions in Nicaragua from building schools, water projects, job training, and rehab centers. It is a Christian business with a missions heart.

Javier took us to his coffee shop in Managua and we talked about lots of ideas to develop this teaching ministry in the future.

I have enjoyed his coffee many times in my home, and you can order your own coffee direct from their offices in California. Their order page is a little out of date, but you can still order fresh coffee. We sampled it as part of the tour and if I could give it an award I would. It has won awards in the past.

Future developments:

Biblical Worldview

What became clear to us during our time that much of our material answers questions that are being asked in North America. To develop the material better, we’ll need to spend time listening to what questions are being asked in Latin America and using that to reshape our material.

For example, North Americans tend to have a secular world view (world view images from Discipling the Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures by Darrow Miller). God does not “do work” in the world. Events have a natural cause and effect. Some have a biblical world view where God “does work” in the world, prayer is effective.

Latin America tends to have an animistic worldview, which sees human life trapped in a cycle of being controlled by spirits. For example, people refuse to live in the old section of Managua that was flattened by a pre-Christmas earthquake in 1972 because that part of town is inhabited by evil spirits. Here in Panama, we see infants with charm bracelets on their wrists to “ward off evil spirits.”

This teaching material is greatly needed in Nicaragua, and from my observations, in Latin America in general. It’s solid, bible based, and very well anchored in Scripture and the Reformed tradition. (Tongues is one evidence of the spirit, not the only evidence as in traditional Pentecostal theology).

Ministry Style

It also has a ministry style that is team based, and respectful of the person being prayed for. This is and can be a contrast to many of the potentially abusive ministry styles that I have encountered in Latin America.

Our style of prayer is

Permission based – we ask permission first before laying on of hands or anointing with oil.
Quiet — we pray in a normal voice without the need to shout or dramatic emphasis on keywords.
If we feel a leading of God in prayer, we share it by saying “I think the Lord may be showing me” or couching it in more tentative language than “The Lord Says” because we realize we might be wrong.

The feedback we received was that our prayer times seemed orderly, less wracked with emotionalism, and very gentle. Even our ministry leaders were grateful at the gentleness of the times of ministry. It was a new style they had not encountered.

Potential Plans:

We’ve been invited to return to Vida Joven to share more on inner healing and prayer. It’s one thing to have a 20 minute ministry session to deal with matters of forgiveness and have great encounters with God, but another thing to take the time to actually work through inner healing and freedom into discipleship. The need is great, and we’ve been asked to revisit next year specifically to train leaders in healing ministry.

There are other possibilities that may open up, but they are still dreams and possibilities. Nothing in firm, so I can’t yet share them.

Thanks for praying for us.