Archives for March 2012

Come over here and help us!

March 27, 2012 by ecoach Leave a Comment

Because of the long term leadership development impact we have had in Nicaragua, the national Director of Young Life in the Dominican Republic has asked me to come with a small team from PRMI to provide training over there.

Last year, we participated in the Dominican Republic training camp in Jarabacoa.

Young Life’s ministry is to help share the gospel with kids. Their leaders work in some of the toughest barrios, among the urban poor, and often in conditions that most North Americans don’t ever see. We get to come along side these ministries to help them reach their goals.

They want to double their reach by 2015.

Listen in as Rafa give that invitation:

Again, I am not sure how to have removed the wind noise from the recording, but at least you can hear the translation

“I have seen God use them in a great manner here in Nicaragua, and I want God to use the team in the Dominican Republic as well.”

Read the prior report on the Dominican Republic trip:

Another DR Leader writes:

Our volunteers and leaders are very well trained on how to do direct ministry but have not yet been trained well in the person of the Holy Spirit.

The reality of our young people today is that they have a poor concept of who the Holy Spirit is and how He works.

We think that having Chris here will be a great blessing and the spirit of God will be with him to instruct us. We hope to learn as much as we can from Chris and use it to expand the Kingdom of God.

Help me Fulfill this call:

We’ll definitely need your support to give this training to over these leaders of Young Life in the DR.

We will be focusing on about 40-45 of them for the teaching time.

I’ll need your support to cover the airline ticket. Tickets are approaching $600.

Donate through Paypal, and let me know by email that it was for the DR trip. Anything over and above will be used for ongoing ministry expenses.

We want to reach more young adults for Christ!

March 18, 2012 by ecoach Leave a Comment

Last week, a Panama church invited me to share a mid-week service about ways to reach more young adults for Christ.

After a 45 minute drive across the country to the Northern coast, I met with the pastor, who is a young guy, probably in his 20s.

He leads a rapidly growing church of young adults just outside the city of Colón.

I’ve been following their growth over the last three years and seeing the impact they make. I first encountered them three years ago when this church was in their infancy. Even though they have grown, their passion is still to reach more for Christ.

They invited me to share my teaching with them.

So this night, I spent a brief time looking at the core personal evangelism teaching I give.

While it’s too soon to know the impact of how they practice what I shared with them, they’ve invited me back for a day long workshop to explore what these themes mean in their particular context.

I admire their passion to reach young adults for Christ. It is contagious being around them. What moves me more is how they want to be more effective and less obnoxious. Teaching them how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the work of evangelism will help them accomplish their goals.

Committing Theological Errors in Prayer

March 8, 2012 by ecoach Leave a Comment

Imagine the scene.

A church of 300 people or so gathered for a service and our team is leading the ministry time after the preaching.

It’s hot. There is no air conditioning.

The worship song set had lasted nearly 90 minutes of up tempo worship music that had many people dancing and jumping for nearly the whole time. . .

I was tired

We had been ministering for several days already.

Add the mental exhaustion from

days of cross cultural communication,
teaching in a second language,
and a persistant head cold,
on top of back to back weeks of international travel and ministry

meant that my body was reaching a functional limit of strength.

By the time the service was moving into the most intense part – personal prayer ministry – I was wiped out.

Stumbling in Prayer Ministry

We had assembled several ministry teams from local church members and spent time going over ministry guidelines.

But the demand for ministry was greater than the number of our teams so we got personally involved as well.

I paired up with another team member to start prayer ministry. She was fluent in Spanish, but when it comes to healing prayer, we both found we were stuck with not knowing words for interior body parts.

For example:

gall bladder,
kidney,
spleen,
bladder, etc.

Those don’t usually come up in an evangelism conference.

People were seeking physical healing for interior infirmities, for body organs we didn’t recognize Spanish names for. . .

On top my exhaustion, now add the stress of language confusion. .

Not all prayer was for physical healing

One man’s store had been robbed. He wanted justice and the return of his musical equipment.
Another one wanted faith to believe their prodigal child would come home.
Another was wanting God to provide a job.

Committing theological mistakes in another language.

One man in particular was a husband wanting prayer for an aspect of his marriage. After hearing his story, I launched into prayer.

This is where exhaustion overpowered the ability to pray clearly in a second language.

Even after 5 years, I still mentally translate some things in my head before speaking, though it is getting less and less. I’ve not yet made that switch to thinking in a second language.

I’m in that in between mode where some phrases mentally form in Spanish and some phrases mentally form in English. In my tiredness, the fine filters that keep everything straight were no longer in place.

I meant to pray:

Thank you Lord for this man’s wife.

Instead, I prayed

Thank you Lord for your wife.

It went on. Nearly every reference that should have been “her” (3rd person pronoun) came out “you” (2nd person pronoun). . . I didn’t catch it. My prayer partner did and graciously informed me of this a little later.

It’s really easy to commit theological errors in a second language when one is tired and exhausted.

Growing a Healing Ministry in Matagalpa

March 5, 2012 by ecoach Leave a Comment

At the end of February, the next teaching trip took me to Matagalpa Nicaragua.

We received an invitation from 5 city churches to teach on the Healing Ministry of Jesus. This is a new step in the growth of the work for us in Nicaragua, as we move beyond the work with Vida Joven and into the city.

The Healing Conference

Over the course of a few days, nearly 100 people attended the conference. We taught on the five areas of healing that Jesus brings:

Spiritual
Relational
Emotional
Physical
Deliverance

Most of the time was focused on Emotional and Physical Healing, given the context of the churches we ministered in. Each section had a prayer time associated with it, where we moved from theory to practice.

Lots of tears where shed, as Jesus brought significant healing to various people.

The stories are too personal to share here, but people gave testimonies of forgiveness they encountered, forgiveness they granted, freedom, and some reported physical healing as well.

Relational Healing

Sunday morning was my turn to preach. The church was packed, and the Lord had me focus particularly on relational healing:

Between spouses
Between parents and children
Between friends
Between pastors and leaders

The ministry time wound up being a time of surrender for people, inviting them to surrender their conflicts, seek forgiveness, and pledge to work towards a solution rather than destruction.

Sunday night

Sunday night was a healing service at yet another church, with nearly 300 in attendance. Some of our friends from Vida Joven ministered with us. Team member Sam Hale brought a message of faith and then moved us into a time of prayer ministry.

There was so much need for prayer that even 9 ministry teams were not enough. . .

My reflections

We are intentional not to be the North American superstars. Historically, I’ve seen a mentality that the “preacher” is the “anointed one” and all personal prayer must be done by this one person.

Instead, we teach how the Holy Spirit empowers each one of us to cooperate with the loving work the the Father wants us to do. Thus, we encourage local people to form the prayer teams and practice what we’ve been teaching.

Rather than a line of people seeking us out, there are multiple teams that can provide prayer ministry. This is intentional equipping on our part.

A second marvel for me is the cooperation of the 5 churches that brought our team to Nicaragua. Praise God for their unity and their sacrificial offering to help continue to spread the teaching in other churches in Latin America.

What’s next?

We’ve been invited back in the fall 2012 for another conference with these churches, and hopefully with more churches participating in the city. Planning is in the works.

Your gifts support this work and enable us to get airplane tickets for events like this.