Jeff Adams

Thanks for your prayers. I made it to Cordoba with no complications. In fact, we had a great tail wind and the 11 plus hour trip from Houston to Buenos Aires was an hour less. That gave me plenty of time to change airports here. Think switching from JFK to Newark or LaGuardia in New York City. Same deal. So, a little after 1:00pm I walked out of the baggage claim in Cordoba to find my ride waiting.

What’s happening here? I was invited to minister to the staff of Christian youth organization that is based in Cordoba and has ministry throughout the southern cone of South America. Last year I was one of the speakers for the first ever Urbana type event in this part of the world (Urbana is held in the USA every third year as a major mission event aimed at college students). This week their full time staff is meeting and they have asked me to deal with the issue of multicultural teams. This team is composed of Latin Americans from several of the southern cone countries, primarily Argentina and Chile with representatives in Peru, Paraguay, and Bolivia. They also have staff from Germany. Switzerland and other European countries. That’s a lot of culture and languages floating around!

On Thursday, we head to a retreat center about an hour and a half from here up in the mountains. There, we are expecting around 120 other staff and volunteers from these same southern cone countries. There are also a number of short term European missionaries here. One young lady from Austria is here representing her particular Austrian mission board. She is in charge of short term missions. So, it’s a great opportunity to work in a living laboratory! I spoke for two one hour sessions this evening and I think it was well-received.

In the first session I spoke on the Macedonian Call from Acts 16. Do you remember how Paul and his team had two doors shut as they tried to visit churches? They had to sit down and go before the Lord for guidance. That’s when Paul had his famous vision of the Macedonian man calling for him to come over and help. The team crossed over into Europe as a result and the world was irreversibly changed.

Here’s the funny thing — Paul saw a Macedonian man in the vision, but there was no man waiting for them when they arrived. A woman was waiting for them! Her name was Lydia. I have often wondered if Paul would have gone if it was a woman he saw in the vision. God really stretched him. The application was how God doesn’t reveal his whole plan all at once. He leads us a step at a time and many of those steps are a real stretch, as in this case.

In the second session I talked about the Bible that lies on the other side of systematic theology and how we often see only the doctrinal details of the New Testament and fail to see the bigger historical and cultural context. Using Romans as an example I discussed how we (correctly) see Romans as a great doctrinal foundation of the Christian faith. When Paul wrote the book, though, he was not thinking of establishing some great doctrinal discourse. He was upset because the church in Rome was culturally fragmented to the degree they couldn’t even meet together. Paul wanted to go to Spain with the Gospel and needed the base of operations in Rome to facilitate his journey. In essence, the book is a manual on multicultural relationships, as is a great part of the New Testament.

The leader, founder and chief visionary of this group is Thomas Vögelin who is a Swiss missionary married to a German. They have four great teen aged kids and I am having a blast getting to stay in their home. These are wonderful people! I met Thomas a few years ago in a conference in Madrid, Spain and that is where he invited me to come to their first event last year. This week they will also be doing the initial planning for their next major event in 2010. You can check it out at www.elcec.org.

Well, it’s late and I’ve only had a couple of hours sleep since Sunday night. Those long flights are the ones where you wish you could beg, borrow or steal an upgrade. I was fortunate enough to have an empty seat next to me and that made it a bit easier to get a short cat nap. I didn’t know whether I would be able to hook up to the net tonight, but it did work out. I’ll try to post something tomorrow and let you know what’s happening.