Reflections from Nicaragua

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.