Real life events are often the best catalyst for personal and ministry evaluation. I can remember numerous times in ministry where one circumstance or another drove us back to the Bible so as to better understand God´s take on a situation and to obtain wisdom and guidance in how to proceed, how to live, and/or how to minister. Well life is shaking us up again, but this time from an unexpected source.
Many are familiar with the health challenges that precipitated our return from Mexico now over three years ago. (Where does the time go?) Although it was our intent to stay in Mexico for the long-term, God had other plans. He allowed me to experience severe and repeated heart problems culminating in triple bypass surgery and then six months later a failed bypass to boot. It was then that our Mission Agency in cooperation with our sending church called us home. Their analysis: My health situation was too precarious; the Mexico City environment was not health friendly; the ministry situation was too pressured; and my family was too traumatized by it all. Well now I am rambling, but I promise to return to the theme of this post. Through our return God, again using the wise council of our sending church and BMM leadership, led us to Editorial Bautista Independiente where we are charged with the task of producing a Theological Curriculum for Hispanic Bible Schools and Pastoral Training Institutions. While we reside in the United States, our ministry extends throughout the Spanish-speaking world as these theological materials are now being used amongst Hispanics here in the United States, throughout Latin America, and even in Spain.
On frequent occasions we are questioned as to the relationship between our ministry at EBI and missions in general. Now here is what I meant previously by being “shaken up from unexpected sources” for in the three years since our return from Mexico we have lost over 25% of our support. Granted many fundamental Baptist churches are struggling both in their evangelistic outreach and in internal ministry so much so that church attendance, church finance, and ultimately missionary support are drastically affected. However, much of our loss is due to missionary considerations. In other words, our present ministry of developing theological training materials for EBI, the spanish literature division of Baptist Mid Missions, is not considered sufficiently missionary.
This begs the question, what is true missionary activity? Over the course of the next few blogs I hope to evaluate this question in the light of biblical, demographic, and ministerial evidence. So, how does the Bible define missions? How does the explosive growth of Christianity within the Global South affect our understanding of missions? As the national church matures does our role change? Is there ever a time when our mission is completed regionally? These are just a few of the issues which we hope to tackle. Does this interest you? Then I invite you to join the conversation.
