Archive February 2007
Still in the clouds?
I said that I often do my best thinking at 35,000 while flying. Well, I landed late Monday night in Quito and went straight to the guest house where I am staying. I found myself gasping for breath, and then I remembered that Quito is over 9,300 feet high! It almost feels like I haven’t landed yet. I should have some wonderful thoughts here!
Yesterday, I didn’t have a chance to post an update. Sorry! We worked very hard from early in the morning straight through until late at night. This is a great group of people and I’ll tell you a little more later. We are 14 individuals representing 10 different mission agencies and we are discussing how we can work together better to advance God’s kingdom. It has been hard work, but very rewarding. I am posting this during a brief break Wednesday morning. We’ll keep working today and then I head for the airport about 0430 tomorrow morning to head home.
Airplane Reading
I’ve often been told that I have my head in the clouds, so maybe it’s no accident that I sometimes have my clearest thoughts at 35,000 feet while flying. It may also have something to do with no phone or interruptions. I’m not sure.
Anyway, I am in the Houston airport waiting to board my 6-hour flight to Quito, Ecuador. Let me share what I was reading on my flight here from Kansas City. While in Córdova, Argentina last month for CIMA 2007, I met a dear brother named Trev Gregory from the UK. For years Trev headed the European equivalent to Urbana. We hit it off immediately and he very kindly sent me a copy of his book Mission Now: Developing a Mission Lifestyle. It’s a good book and I will review it fully at a later time. But, I did want to share a unique feature of the book.
Many followers of Christ have been blessed and encouraged for over 100 years by the books and writings of Andrew Murray on prayer and spiritual life. Few know (I didn’t!) that Murray also wrote a powerful book on the need for every believer to be engaged in God’s global mission because it is the essence of our purpose and significance. He wrote the book on the occasion of a huge mission conference held in New York in 1900 with over 200,000 in attendance. He was invited to speak but could not attend because of a war that had just broken out in his native South Africa. Instead, he wrote a book, The Key to the Missionary Problem, as his way of participating.
Gregory has included an updated summary of Murray’s work in his own book. It’s amazing how little the world has changed in some ways, even though changes in other ways have been spectacular. Here’s a sample of what Murray had to say over 100 years ago.
“The problem of the theological seminary is this: not how to train an occasional individual for work in cross-cultural mission, but how to kindle a global mission passion in every person who passes through the school, that that person may thereby become an able minister of Christ.”
Hmmmmm. Every member a minister, every believer with a passion for God’s mission. Let’s see now — 207 in 2007. Each of the 207 with 10 prayer partners = 2070 actively engaged in God’s mission now. It’s February, and by God’s grace we are over the 207 with six months to go until September. What can we trust God for next year?
Latinos in global mission
A few years ago I asked God to help facilitate the sending of 1,000 missionaries from Latin America to other languages and cultures. That was simply a number that popped into my head, and I had no clue how that was going to play out. I just wanted to leverage whatever influence God has given me in the Spanish-speaking world for the cause of God’s global mission. I have been amazed how many doors God has opened to me to be a small part of what He is doing around the world. I haven’t yet totally learned how to keep a reasonably accurate count of that, or even how to properly keep you informed about what God is doing and how we can better work together in that endeavor. I’m thinking this blog can help me communicate with you. I do know that God has allowed me to play a small role in the lives of some folks in Latin America who are in the process of preparing to be sent out as missionaries, or who are already serving in that capacity.
This vision is certainly not mine alone; it is simply what God is doing right now. Today, the number of Latin American missionaries to other languages and cultures surpasses 8,000 and is rapidly growing.
Tomorrow, I have the privilege to go through another door. I leave in the morning for a brief but important meeting in Quito, Ecuador. Several key mission boards are convening in Quito to discuss how we can work together to get Latin American missionaries to the rest of the world and help support and care for them. As one of only two Spanish-speaking board members, I was asked to represent Christar in this meeting. We work primarily in places of creative access, those places where traditional missionaries are not allowed or effective. We believe that Latin Americans have a big role to play in reaching the least-reached, but we are still learning how to carry this out in practice.
I’ll arrive in Quito late tomorrow night, be in meetings all day Tuesday and Wednesday, and fly home Thursday. My friend Tony Vasquez, Christar and CAM missionary serving in Spain, will meet me there, and together we will represent Christar. I’ll do my best to keep you posted, but I’m not even sure if I’ll have Internet access while there. If not, I’ll try to keep track of what happens and maybe have to post a couple of days together when I get home. Pray for me.
Live, it’s Saturday night!
Saturday night at the Adams’ house is normally very tame and lame. Cheryl is putting finishing touches on her Sunday school lesson for four-year-olds or doing some such thing, and I am usually studying a little ahead, catching up on correspondence and reviewing for tomorrow’s sermon.
Our youngest grandkids are spending the night. Kiersten is seven, Joseph is four. Both have red hair. That’s all you need to know. (See their dad’s blog comments on this subject here) All bets are off.
6:00 The smell of pizza wafts through house, overtaxing the ventilation system and threating to set off the fire alarms. On the surround sound, cosmic booms from Star Wars shake the house and alarm neighbors. A four-year-old Jedi warrior sits on the couch intently focused on saving the universe from the Clones. A seven-year-old demonstrates why she is already over-qualified to be the activities director for a cruise ship. (See her mom’s blog comments here)
“Spin me around again, Papa!”
“No, that’s enough. You’re heavy. I think I pulled something in my back.”
“You spun Joe two times.”
“Okay. Okay”
7:30 Bedtime. “You’re going to sleep in MY bed????? You’re kidding!!! That means I have to carry you little munchkins to the other room once you’re asleep.” giggle, giggle, giggle.
9:00 I carry the seven-year-old to the other room. She hangs draped over my shoulder like a duffel bag packed for a tour of Iraq. The second trip is for her brother, Yedi arms and legs shooting out in all directions in the half-crazed panic of an interrupted dream of a duel with Darth Vader. The dogs follows at my heels excitedly.
10:00 I sense motion to my right. A red-headed girl smiles and says, “Grandpa, do you remember when you carried me into the purple room? You really woke me up, but I played like I was asleep. Now, I can’t go to sleep because Joe is kicking me.
10:15. “Papa, Joe is still kicking me and I can’t sleep.
10:25. You guessed it.
10:45 The dog bails out and sits yelping to get into the adult bedroom, giving credibility to the red-headed girl’s complaints.
11:00 She’s back. “Grandpa, I just can’t get to sleep.”
Okay. Come here. Crawl into my bed, but you’d better stay in the middle, because I want a place to sleep when I come in and I’m not carrying you back into the purple room again.
These are good times. I’ll be ready to preach tomorrow. Forgive the circles under the eyes. 
The new Spanish reality
I love to visit Spain. It’s a beautiful country and rich with history. When I lived in Latin America years ago, I was always curious as to what Spain was really like. Under General Franco it was a very closed country, and those of us in Latin America had a the impression that Spaniards looked down on us as speaking inferior Spanish and being still a little crude and savage here in the Americas.
My first visit to Spain was in the mid 80’s, not long after Franco died in 1975 and Spain became a constitutional monarchy under Juan Carlos de Borbón. Change was already in the air. I even found that I got along famously with the Spaniards! What a country!
One thing had not changed. Spain remained highly resistant to any form of evangelical Christianity. Franco conserved Spain’s Roman Catholic traditions with a fervor that seemed at times not far removed from the days of the Inquisition.
In the post-Franco years, Spain has become increasingly secular and the youth increasingly apathetic or even skeptical of the church. The Spanish worldview has become more like that of Spain’s neighbors in Western Europe. Yet, Spain remains the Western European country without a Reformation, and Spanish hearts are still resistant to evangelical Christianity. One of my favorite statistics to express the situation in Spain is that there is more caffeine in most decaffeinated coffee than there are evangelical believers in Spain. In the country of 40 million there are approximately 150,000 evangelicals and many of them are gypsies.
Now, Spain is awakening to a new reality, one from a most unlikely source. Over the past couple of decades a trickle of Latin American immigrants has become a raging flood. Over a million Latin Americans have arrived, matching the arrival of about the same number of Muslim immigrants. The Latin American group, though, is somewhat like an evangelical Trojan horse, because an amazing 300,000 of them profess to be evangelicals! That’s twice the number of Spanish evangelicals. Among them are over 1,000 evangelical pastors, many working in construction, hotels, restaurants, etc.
My friend Tony Vazquez recently wrote about meeting an Ecuadorian pastor sent to minister to the thousands of Ecuadorians in Madrid. In a recent soccer match in Madrid between the Ecuadorian National squad and the famous Real Madrid, there were more Ecuadorians in the stands than Spaniards! Tony attends a church near the large Atocha rail station with 900,000 passengers each day. Tony’s church now has more than 20 nationalities, unheard of not that many years ago. Latin American evangelicals are already having an impact on Spanish society, and Spanish churches are recognizing the need for a new strategy to take advantage of this amazing opportunity that God is giving to them, not only to reach other Spaniards with the Gospel, but connecting with ministry in Africa and the rest of Europe. What a great opportunity for all of us to work and pray together!
Atocha Station