Pastoral Training in Venezuela May 18-24

Left: Mario and Madilva Lopez /Right: Break out session

I met Mario Lopez in 2003 when he took the first offering of the Pro-Meta Church Planting Course (Latin America Training Network). Now he is serving as head of the Ministerial Association. His heart is for pastors and their preparation for ministry. When our team of trainers (church planting, church development and pastor training) offered to come he was excited. Twice we spoke on skype to prepare the event. He involved his entire team and did an excellent job preparing it. He said that last year they didn't have enough response to gather the pastors. This year they hoped for 25 and had 38 participate. The purposes were to encourage, equip, and build a long-term relationship. Here is the schedule in a nutshell:

• Weds May 19- Total Mobilization – Seven Steps toward Church Multiplication – Mike Gunderson and Gene Wilson
  
• Thurs May 20- Foundations of Church Health and Development – Part I – Mark Wold
  
• Friday May 21– Pastoral Training: A Biblical World view including a Biblical Understanding of Unity and Suffering – Al Lewis.
  
• Meeting with Association board. Report on the state of the churches, evaluation of training and plans for the future.
  
• Saturday – Visited Cata Bay and fellowshipped with Mario Lopez, his wife and Alexander Mora. Debriefing with Mario Lopez.
  
• Sunday – We preached and ministered in Valencia churches
  

During our debriefing he shared this evaluation:

• The training was on target and on level.
  
• Several pastors came who hadn't participated in any event for years. There was a hunger for this kind of training.
  
• It was timely. God has been stirring a growing interest for cooperation in church planting and leader/pastor training.
  
• In Maracay the pastors had not gathered for quite a while. They met recently and say "Perhaps we should plant a new church together." They took the training as a confirmation and decided to cooperate to start a new church in an unchurched region.
  
• In the Caracas region they decided to start a church in Los Teques, State of Miranda. It is the state next to Caracas. Mario said: "I had been praying for a while that God would lead someone to start a church there since we have none. When they announced that I said 'Praise the Lord' in my heart."
  

Saturday night it poured down rain and the Lopez home was flooded. It is the fourth time this has happened. The first time the water was 5 feet high and they lost everything. They had some work done to protect their home so this time the water only rose a couple feet. They have a terrazzo floor so no damage was done to wall or flooring but it will take time to get things back in order. And since the water is infected with garbage they have to disinfect everything. Their son Timothy (about 8 yrs old) who is experiencing some trauma every time there is a storm is calming down and people from the church helped them clean up. Life is returning to normal. Praise the Lord for Mario and his family.

Thank you for praying:

1) Praise God for the work of the medical team in Milot. Here they are headed to the base for refugees needing medical attention. Some returned on Sunday; others are staying longer. Please pray for them and for a vascular surgeon joining them this week.

2) Pray for Henoc Lucien and his family. Two orphanages collapsed and they have taken in many of the children. They have a good sized home to accomodate teams that come in but no permanent staff so Guerline Lucien and her volunteer helpers have to do most of the cooking and hospitality as well as care for the kids.

3) Pray for Mark and Kevin, the leaders of TouchGlobal Crisis Response as they plan the follow-up and put together new medical teams.

4) The biggest needs right now are cash donations and medical supplies. People have been generous. I called a pharmacy and a hospital and both agreed to donate supplies. Pray that this generosity would continue.

5) Pray for hurting people to humbly call on God and turn to him in spite of their hurt and questions. The seminary in Port-au-Prince has been turned into a refugee center. A friend reported that people were turning to God there and giving their lives to him during Sunday services there. Others may not be exposed to the love of God and Word of God.

Latest Prayer Requests and News on EFCA Relief in Haiti

REACHGLOBAL HAITI RELIEF
Prayer Requests

If you are like me you probably have given and want to do more. Let's maintain a sustained prayer effort even after the media shift their focus. I sense God is asking me to coordinate SPECIFIC and CURRENT prayer requests. I will send 5 a week until God releases me from this. Will you join us in praying?

Prayer requests:

1.Pray for [Pastor] Henoc Lucien and team as they go into Port-au-Prince (PAP) and get refugees out. They are establishing a refugee center in Pignon where he grew up and both his father and brother are pastors. It is ½ way between PAP and Cap Haitian (CAP). See report from yesterday, following.

2. Estimates of dead are increasing. Please pray for civil order and against the spread of diseases. Pray for generous hearts.

3. I learned that our friend Moise Vaval lost his oldest son Jean-Marc when the school building collapsed on him. Almost every family in PAP has lost at least a person. Jean-Marc is the boy on the right. The young man on the left is Michael Pinney who recently went with his father to minister there. Please pray for Moise and his wife Francoise as they grieve and still work to save others.

4. A team from our Mission left for CAP Monday. Mark lewis, crisis response director and Brian Duggan are flying into PAP Tuesday a.m. to preprare for a medical team that will be arriving on Wednesday. Please pray for safe travel and supernatural direction. Please pray for Mark Lewis who will lead the effort and long-term aid. Pray for wisdom in setting up refugee shelters.

5. Pray for René Préval, President of Haiti (palace destroyed) and for the government to make wise decisions when mistakes can be very costly in lives.

Sent: Sat, January 16, 2010 9:28:34 PM

Subject: The Latest from Pastor Henoc in Haiti

Here you go...please be praying as you read...

The earthquake happened on Tuesday evening. All communication was cut off. We did not know what was going on except for what we were reading on the internet and on the radio.. Because of the heavy overcast, we could not watch CNN. I wanted to go to Port au Prince, but with no telephone communication, it could get complicated.

Thursday morning, around 11, the telephone started to work slowly. Just one company. So, we could try to reach anyone subscribed with Voila. However, people in Port au Prince cannot be reached because there is no power to charge the phone. Some have lost their phones and it takes a lot of time to get through. We arrived around Port au Prince at 5:00. However it took over 2 and a half hours to travel the one mile road to the airport. People are coming in to look for their loved ones and others are leaving town. We saw many people on top of roof digging up flattened buildings. Stock piles of dead human beings were everywhere. At the cemetery, and on open fields, they dig large holes and fill them up. We found at one cemetery where they put a pile of dead people and burned them with gasoline. To ignite the fire, they used old tires. The smoke was going up and I call it the Smoke of Hell.

There is no fuel. However, there are lines of people by the gas stations. They are just hoping that there will be some somehow. There are no government ministries.. Most of them have been crushed. Some senators, some deputies, a lot of high government officials have lost their lives. There is no one in Haiti that has not lost a loved one. The schools and universities have been crushed to the ground with students underneath. It happened at the end of the day when most people were still at work. Many banks have all their employees and clients under the rubbles. There is no water, no electricity, no store opened, no food. Dead people are piled by the hundreds and dump trucks come by to pick them up. All the markets have been destroyed. The prisons have been crushed. The prisoners are on the streets and some of them have been killed by the earthquake. There is a lot of pillage, looting, raping. There was even an exchange of fire yesterday between the police and thieves. People fear their homes will fall again. Everyone sleeps on the streets where there is the smell of dead flesh.

Banks are closed, churches have been destroyed. There is nothing left. The people sleeping on the streets don't know for how long. They don't even know if they will ever return to their homes and have normal lives. Port au Prince is a metropolitan center with 4 million people coming from all corners of Haiti. Everyone starts going back home. No money, no vehicles, nowhere to go. I left on Thursday morning and came back in the middle of the night with 18 people in the double cab Toyota. It was mainly students from CSS who are in Port au Prince for university education. Now their houses and apartment are destroyed and they are homeless. On Friday morning, I went back. We spent all day looking for Sainsoir's two daughters. One of them was found and the other one was no where to be found. We were looking for two other girls who go to nursing school in Port au Prince. On our way back, Sainsoir's daughter called us and we'll go back on Sunday to pick her up. On that day we rescued 23 people and we were back by 11:45 PM.

Unfortunately, we had 6 flat tires. Today, Saturday, we bought 4 brand new tires. One family from the church had a daughter who is a nurse and had gone to Port au Prince to look for a job. Both she and her son were found dead. The same family could not locate their son. He was found alive under the ruins of a government building.

His leg is almost destroyed. We will pick him on Sunday to take him to a hospital. A man from the Grande Riviere church has been found with multiple injuries. He will come back with us. I will finish this e-mail and head to Pignon where I will spend the night and need to be in Port au Prince before 8 am.

My cousin's daughter was killed in school as the building collapsed and everyone inside was killed. A graduate of CSS, Sterly Manigat, was killed. Many other friends and loved ones were destroyed. I have seen death, but I don't understand it. I have seen people's lives destroyed and I cannot understand it. However, I trust in the Lord and that He has a purpose for everything. Above everything His name will be praised and there will be a reason to see His glory in the midst of chaos.

Please pray for our safety as we travel at night time and everywhere. Please pray for strength.

Pastor Henoc Lucien

Glen Schrieber
Superintendent - EFCA Southeast

For more news:
www.vohmhaiti.com

Give to Relief through EFCA Touch Global www.touchglobal.org/haiti

God Sightings in Latin America

Coaching Clinic 301 and Church Planting School

Nov. 17-21, 2009

Orosi Valley, Cartago, Costa Rica

Eph.3:20 God sightings – "above and beyond you can ask or think"
Sunday Nov. 22 5:00 a.m.

Thank you so much for your investment and prayers that are yielding wonderful fruit to God's glory. The training in Costa Rica Nov. 17-21 was used by the Lord in some ways beyond what we had expected. My heart was filled with gratitude as I wrote God-sightings at the river's edge at 5 a.m.


A beautiful place. I told José I thought the cabins were too crowded He said "You gringos need your space; we like it close. It's not a problem for us." He's right. Our goal was that it be simple, organic, and reproducible.

Praise God 32 of 34 came for at least part of the event. People from 10 countries: Mexico, Argentina, Honduras, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, USA, Costa Rica, Colombia, Nicaragua (Jim & Melanie Wilson).

When you look at the churches represented by the leaders present, there is the potential of impacting at least 250 churches through our coaches and planters.

20 Tico church planters and 10 Tico leaders (included in 32 coaches mentionned above).

Praise God for the evolution of the vision and work of training church planters, leaders and coaches. A desire was expressed to strengthen collaboration between leaders and national bodies and to grow the vision for Latin America.

Transition to a more mature partnership between RG and movements in Latin America. ReachGlobal did 90% of the work in Coaching Clinics 1 & 2. Four organizations pulled together to pull this off:

1. GBIM (Grace Brethren) send the main speaker for the church planting school and Oscar Chavez is from the same background.
2. COMIBAN (Premier Missionary-Sending body in Latin America) sent Omar Gava as a speaker and consultant for the Coaching Clinic.
3. ReachGlobal did planning and several of us contributed to training.
4. INCRESE (Costa Rica EFC Training) put on the Church Planting School, handled on the ground logistics and paid for ½ of Church Planting School.

High caliber of main speakers: Omar Gava, Craig Ott and Walter Testa. Each had a significant contribution to make.

1. Reproduction and Innovation– We know that Venezuela, Brazil and Costa Rica have already used the basic Coaching Clinic. It was encouraging for me to hear some creative ideas like a plan for the mobilization of youth for church planting and missions in Brazil.
   
   
   

   These people have the opportunity to take the vision, concepts and training (reproducible) to 250 churches with a possible impact on 500 churches.
   
   
   
   All praise and glory be to the Lord!
   
   

(In front of the statue of Pope John Paul at wawel castle in Krakow)

(Evangelical Christians singing and witnessing a Krakow park. Look at the faces!)

(Birkenau Concentration Camp near Auschwitz)

Poland is unique in several ways.

1. In the suffering that it has seen. It has been partitioned three times with Germany and Austria occupying part of its territory and Russia another part. During WW II it was attacked by both German Nazis and Russia at the same time before the Nazi turned on the Russians. Three millions Poles died in WW II; as many as the Jews who were killed. Then at the end of the war the Communists under Stalin took control.
   
   
2. In its welcome to the Jews. Though they were oppressed at times, for the most part they were allowed to live in peace and develop their own communities from the early Middle Ages. Many settled during the inquisition in the 15^th Century. When Nazism arose the greatest concentration of Jews in Europe was found in Poland. Our tour guide at Auschwitz said that one reason they were not able to protect them was that they had not rebuilt their army from WW I. There were many other work camps in Poland Auschwitz was unique in that it was built ten years into the Nazi persecution of Jews as a "death camp" to bring about the final solution.
   


3. In the resilience of their Catholicism. We saw churches filled in Krakow. Some had seven services a day and more on weekends. Poland is unique in Europe in that 40% still go to mass. But attendance has declined by 6% since 2003. One of their theologians commented "Polish religiousness tends to be based on turning to God to escape distress. When that disappears, so may God." There is still a window of opportunity before secularism takes hold. Poland is following the path that other traditional Catholic peoples like Quebec and Ireland have followed. Yet the church is alive as we witnessed while walking downtown in a park. We pray that many will be reached before indifference sets in.
   

Church Planting in Europe

Our reason for going to Poland was to meet with church planters gathering from all over Greater Europe as far as Cappadocia, Turkey and Kiev, Ukraine. We had appointments for every meal and some during our breaks and free time. There was good participation in the church planter forums. We discussed "best practices" in several areas. The 3 issues/challenges that stand out in Europe are:

1) The difficulty of evangelism in secular, post-modern countries,

2) the challenge of finding local church planters to work with, and

3) the danger of missionaries slipping into a pastoral role and how to avoid that.

As we spoke with church planters we saw that the further west on worked in Europe (Portugal, Spain being the extreme) the harder the soil was for the gospel. Some central European countries, though the curiosity has eased, are still experiencing solid church growth. We spoke with several teams working with Muslim Ministry background people. God is doing a work among Iranians in Europe. Friends who have been sowing among the Turks in Germany for almost three decades are seeing more fruit among Iranians in the last few years. There is an encouraging work in Berlin that is raising up new workers and resulting in multiple church plants. We talked about how to sustain the momentum and keep it from becoming resource dependent.

I believe God wants us to invest in Europe in spite of the challenges. Why?

The invitations of the planters themselves. We had several invite us to spend time with them, especially teams beginning their ministry and teams transitioning to a partnership with local workers now that a foundation has been laid.

Then one day Linda spoke with me about a sense that we should visit church planters on site right after I had had the same thought. Could this be the leading of the Holy Spirit? Later I met with our Mission's associate executive director and he encouraged us to explore this further.

"No church planter left alone" is one of our mottos. Although we have several experienced church planters who could coach others locally, none of them are ready to take on the role of Point Person for all of Europe at this point. Until God raises up that person it seems that direct coaching is a valuable and needed investment.

Yet the needs are great and resources limited. Where should we go Cappadocia Turkey, Berlin, Lisbon, Birmingham England, and Toulouse, France? We would love to help workers in all these places we need God's word about this. In March 2010 there will be a Church Planter Training Institute in Amsterdam with national planters from all over Europe. Gene has been asked to participate. We did our church planting internship in Paris. We understand the challenges first hand. Who would have thought that God would call us to come alongside so many church planters in Europe twenty-five years later?

To those of you who know Europe much better than I do, I invite your comments and counsel.

picture 1: Carlos, Gene, Guillermo, Giovanni, Mike and Jhollman

Picture 2: Giovanni the national leader prays for Guillermo

picture 3: church plant that had 7 people 3 years ago when Guillermo arrivedpicture

Hot in Colombia! It was 104 degrees in Cartagena so we struggled with the heat but at least had a simple room with AC to sleep. No toilet seats but who cares when you have AC and can get a good night’s sleep! J The people were as warm and hospitable as the weather. One highlight was traveling by bus for the first time to Sincelejo on a road which had been controlled by the FARC guerrillas for years. There we (four Colombian national leaders, Mike Gunderson and I) encouraged the saints and ordained their church planter Guillermo.

Church Planting Advance in Colombia

The first time I tried to go to Colombia, Linda didn't want me to go. Crime and kidnappings were at an all time high. We checked with someone in the country and they said the day we planned to arrive was election day and trouble was expected. We postponed.

A few months later we went and we were restricted to the major cities. The only way to drive from Bogota to Cartagena was in a caravan with military escorts. We went to the cities.
This time (July 09) for the first time we could travel freely outisde the cities. One church plant in Sincelejo had not been visited in years. The plan was to visit, encourage the brothers and sisters and ordain the church planter. Three other goals had been set:

1. Help them with church planting plans and strategies using lay church planting teams
   
2. Encourage and advise all the workers
   
3. Introduce Mike my replacement as church planting coach for Latin America
   

It was so encouraging to find out that our Colombian friends didn’t wait for us to make their CPing plans. They chose three new sites in Monteria, Bogota and Baranquilla and had already discussed who would be interested in planting the churches. Most of the pastors would love to leave their pastoral ministry to evangelize and start a new church. One pastor has already made an exploratory trip to one of the new sites on his own. The real challenge we discussed was raising up new workers and pastors in the churches to replace the pastors who want to go out. Our colleague Omar Rodriguez will be going in a few weeks to launch a new Church Based Training ministry that comes from Spain. We see so clearly how Missions and Leadership Development must go hand in hand. Please pray for Omar’s ministry and the facilitators he will be training from each region.

In Bogota

The last 2 ½ days were much cooler - about 65-70 during the day and cold at night. Bogota is a mile high and the people are more reserved and professional. There is less interest in church planting but the pastors we met want to plant a church together. Two of them feel God’s call to be missionaries one day. It is so encouraging to see how God is tugging at the hearts of Latin Americans to reach Post-Christian Europeans and Muslims. Anoth highlight personally was spending the entire week (including flights) with Mike Gunderson who is replacing me as Latin America Church Planting Coach. He is a joy to work with and an able equipper and coach with 20 years of experience in Brazil. Please pray for Mike as he transitions to this role and builds on what God has already done to raise up church planting leaders and coaches.
Soon after I got home Orlando, one of the pastor who was away during our visit called me on skype. He asked about my new role. I assured him that roles change but friendships remain. Some relationships last for time and eternity. What a joy to work with these fine men.

Exponential New Church Conference: Church Planting Leaders moving toward multiplication

April 20-24 we had the wonderful privilege of bringing together 17 church planting leaders, both nationals and missionaries, for the Exponential New Church Conference in Orlando FL. We met as a team before and afterwards and went together to take in some amazing speakers. The theme was "The Art of Movements." Our discussions were primarily about raising up and training church planters. It helped me a lot to get people together face-to-face as I build the new Global Church Planting Team.

George Klippenes, Church Planting Director for the EFCA, was so helpful generating prayer and finding scholarship money to bring the international leaders together. Good things are coming our of the interaction between USA church planters and those from other countries. The learning goes both ways. Ehab shared how God is bringing revival to some traditional churches in Egypt and sending our a wave of church planters from that country to others around. One of the biggest lessons is the variety of people God uses to multiply churches. Sometimes it is very grassroots and spontaneous; at other times it needs to be deliberate and strategically planned.
Between these two pictures you have all of our ReachGlobal team. What a joy it was to share with this rainbow coalition of battle tested leaders. They are working in:
Europe: Spain, Germany, Czech Republic
Asia: Indonesia, Myanmar, N. Thailand
Latin America: Brazil, Costa Rica
Africa: Ethiopia, Liberia, Congo
Middle East; Egypt
USA: Miami, CA and Chicago

Please pray for these men to advance Church Multiplication Training and to invest in many others through mentoring and coaching. Two of them from Africa launched the training in Togo in June and will be continuing in the Congo in July. The guys from Latin America will be working with me on training for leaders from 10 Latin American countries in November. Praise God for the reproduction He is bringing about and for the part I can play as a catalyst and coach.