Missions School in Santiago

It was a very cool morning at 5am when I was picked up to begin the journey to Santiago Panama, approximately 3-4 hours to the west of Panama City.

The drive itself was relaxing.  Leaving the city while it was still dark, watching the morning dawn break into the skies, I found some of the stress I carried rolling off my shoulders.  Just getting out of the city was a stress relief that surprised me.

I focused down on mentally preparing myself to teach the 12 students expected to gather at the principal church for the Foursquare denomination in Santiago.  I had been asked to teach on the Role of the Holy Spirit in Evangelism, one of the most popular seminars I have.

The context in which I teach

Evangelism as understood here has been focused on the conversion event — getting the decision.  There is enormous, but unspoken pressure, to get a decision and get it now.

However, what my teaching brings is the awareness of the entire faith journey and all the moving parts in the evangelism story: the conversations, the sermons, the invitations to church, the drawing of the Holy Spirit.

I help people see the process of evangelism and have updated the teaching to help people think through their own process of coming to faith.

These 12 students

As class began, I listened to their stories.  Each one had an amazingly unique journey to faith.

One man was interested romantically in a girl.  She invited him to church.  Over several weeks of taking in sermons, he felt his need for Christ and one day accepted that invitation given at the end of every service.

Another woman had a teenage daughter going to church.  She watched the life transformation happen in her daughter.  That made her want to study the Bible herself.

So she invited some Jehovah Witnesses who showed up at just the right time.  But after a few bible studies with them, she was more confused than ever.

She asked a Christian neighbor (also a stay at home mom) to help her.  Over several weeks of informal conversations, bible study, and lots of coffee, her questions about God began to be answered.  Before even attending church, she responded to God’s offer of grace and became a Christian.

A third one visited church the day a foreign missionary came.  The preachers message hit right on target in her life and she surrendered her life to Christ that day.

12 different stories

I heard 12 different stories, 12 different journeys, 12 different spiritual needs, 12 different places of surrender, 12 different spiritual thirsts that drew people to start following Jesus.

They provided ample material to see the process of evangelism at work.  Not one of them came to faith after the fixed gospel presentation that they were all trying to use on other people.

This is part of the richness of God’s work.

What now?

This class of 12, along with another class in a outlying village, are coming together to launch a regionwide community ministry that will provide medical care, parenting development, family counseling, and other outreach activities.

This is exciting as it seems that several churches will cooperate to launch something.  This doesn’t happen often in Panama (based on talking with long term missionaries and lots of pastors), so this seems to be truly God’s working.

They see that my teaching will help them have more frequent conversations with people while they are doing their mission in the community.

Their next development meeting is in July and I look forward to hearing the outcomes and mission that they are working on.

Teaching this weekend in Santiago

Join us in prayer for this weekend’s teaching.

I’ll be traveling to Santiago Panama to give an evangelism training in a missions school.

It’s about 3-4 hours to to the west of the city.  Beautiful, but long drive.

Pray for safety, provision, and effectiveness.

We live in the upper right corner, and driving along to the Red A.

I’m not sure yet of the class make up, but I’ll be teaching on the role of the Holy Spirit in Evangelism.

Latest Minute for Mission Video

Here is the latest video that we are using for our minute for missions this summer.

If you’d like us to do a minute for mission at your church, we can record a video one for you, or even do a live one via skype if you have skype capabilities in your sanctuary.

The launch of a new church

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.

Making a difference

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.

Evangelism and Prayer

April has been a busy month of networking with pastors.

Because of the gift of a car last year, we’ve been able to get around the city with greater ease and meet with pastors.

I had lunch with one pastor that I’ve been getting to know for a few months.  In January, I gave a workshop at his church (Read: You’ve Given me Liberty)

He invited me to do another one this past week.

Evangelism and Prayer

One aspect of the work of evangelism is prayer.  Since evangelism is ultimately a spiritual work, prayer prepares the way.

Vida Abundante church is launching a few different evangelism campaigns this year, and the training supported that work –

• Their bread of life visitation ministry,
• The ministry truck from which they do street outreaches,
• as well as ongoing relational evangelism work.

Using some material from PRMI’s Prayer Ignite, plus my own material on evangelism, we spent about 1 hour in teaching about effective prayer and particularly how to pray for friends to come to faith.

We sent some deliberate time in building a prayer list to use in our regular devotional times.

I hope to be able to join them in some of their street outreaches this year and see how they are applying the training that pastor is letting me do.

Pedregal Bible Camp for Kids

Brenda recently helped a children’s minister run a Children’s Bible camp out near Pedregal. I was stretched to give two short talks to children aged 5-13. That stretched me. . . .

This camp was part of the ongoing partnership that is growing with the Foursquare church in Camitillo, and that relationship continues to strengthen.

Raquel, the children’s pastor, has been volunteering for over 12 years.   She knows nearly every family in her town, and knows nearly all the parents and their stories.

It’s not an easy labor of love.  These are high risk kids, and Raquel is aiming to grow them in their faith in Christ.  The crafts that they made here can be used to show their parents, a majority of whom are unchurched.

You can see the video about her church here:

• Childrens Ministry Workshop In Caimitillo

Stephanie Jones, a visitor from Richmond, served us as an awesome assistant in this work.

“Brenda led workshops at a Bible Camp for Children, where kids were making crafts to show their parents what they were learning.”

From Children’s Bible Camp, posted by Chris Walker on 3/19/2010 (64 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

The Blessings of Baptism

At the beginning of March 2010, our little house church performed adult baptism services in a mountain stream. I’m trying a new plug-in to see if I can display the Gallery of Images from Facebook. Praise God for these believers in Christ.

From Baptisms, posted by Chris Walker on 3/08/2010 (Showing 14 of 58 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher