Tamales and Training

After a great day in two churches yesterday Global Baptist Training Foundation started its first official day of training today here in Oaxaca, Mexico.  We left the little house where we are staying to walk a few blocks on a dusty brick-road  to the church.  Unexspectedly, we were treated to our second incredible breakfast in as many days; hot tamales!  We each got two; one was sweet, and the other was the spicy version.  It was your choice if you wanted to douse it with more hot sauce.  Then they brought out kettles of Mexican coffee!  Not a bad way to start your day!

The conference began with our ministry partners who support church-planting through our associate Greg Dixon and Advance Ministries.  They have begun over fifty churches in Mexico in the last several years.  Our partnership is based on a very simple premise.  That premise is that those we theologically equip for ministry are eligible for receiving short-term funding for starting a church in their local places of interest.  So far in just over a year and a half, we have seen over fifty new church plants being started by GBTF students in Liberia, Myanmar, and soon in Togo, Uganda, and Rwanda.  In just Liberia alone, we envision the raising up of two-hundred churches in the next five years all over the countryside.  If there is a better ministry combination than that then Lord sign me up!

We began our training in Hermeneutics this afternoon among the students.  This is the study of how to interpret Scripture.  It is the foundation of all the other coursework GBTF does.  We will know tomorrow just how mamy pastors will be here for the training.  As our readers now know, you can miss one day of class but you have to make up that day's quiz in order to receive the certificate of completion.  We are as flexible as we can be to make the material available but we do not dumb down material unecessarily or make concessions to inflexible students.  Because we bring mobile training at no cost to nationals we demand that they demonstrate the desire to obtain it!  They must come and invest a week of their time.  It works everywhere we go because most of our students deeply appreciate the labor that is expended on their behalf.

Let me remind our faithful readers that the greatest thing we can possibly do for nationals is to train and equip them for service.  We don't want to de-incentivize them or steal their dignity by just giving away stuff or doing what they can do themselves to alleviate temporal poverty.  There simply isn't enough supply in the world to successfully do that.  Yes, let's help them if we can but not without their absolute buy-in and commitment to take responsibility to implement change themselves!

We are just now beginning to see some of the rich dividends from such an investment as this!!