Breaking Down The Barriers

A brief note from Paul Johnson, regarding the Amazon Consultation (ALTECO):

God is breaking down the barriers ... that has throttled true partnerships, and now the spirit of cooperation is stunning.... Four years ago, many skeptics told us it would take a "Red Sea caliber miracle" to get mission agencies to work together! Well guess what? He opened the sea again, and we're now learning to walk across on dry ground .. hand in hand, and shoulder to shoulder with our tribal and national brothers as well!!

• We had 72 participants - 23 returnees & 49 first timers .. more than 100% increase from 2005!


• Delegates represented 41 distinct organizations - 22 previously involved, and 19 new ones!


• In three Amazon Consultations to date, we've had a total of 142 delegates, from 54 organizations!


• There are 12 individuals from 10 organizations who have attended all three consultations to date!


• We are now in touch with a total of 86 organizations, about the annual consultations!


• We anticipate another 100% increase in 2007, and are planning for 150 - 200 participants next year!

ALTECO's focus is the 400+ tribes of the Amazon region, but the Asians and Africans have approached Alteco leaders for help in replicating what we're doing in their areas of the world as well. Of course, we're thrilled to help our brothers anywhere, and anticipate - in God's time - the formation of "GLECO" - the Global Empowerment Coalition!

ALTECO Feedback

One of the indigenous leaders from Peru had this to say:

Thank you so very much for giving us the opportunity to get to know other people who also have a great heart for the Amazon.... I speak my own language and also Spanish, but now I’m motivated to learn English too.

Upon returning from Florida, we attended the first-ever Amazon Consultation here in Peru. It was a great blessing. We formed a committee comprised of two indigenous leaders, a national leader and a Swiss missionary, in order to establish a missions network here in Peru, which can be a complement to ALTECO. ALTECO can focus on the broad Amazon region, and our network on the local level here in Peru.

I was able to teach on the truly Autonomous Indigenous Church, and also share about ALTECO with the over 50 delegates that attended from churches, denominations, mission agencies, missiological study centers, and theological institutions. We genuinely felt like one team in the Lord. There were testimonies and challenges, and all were in favor of establishing the Peru Network. All this makes me think that our Lord wants to come back and take His church to heaven soon. There is much interest in missions everywhere now!

More feedback

I wanted to share this bit of feedback as well, because this is a huge part of what Amazon Focus does: Encouraging churches to commit to partnering with tribal churches.
I am so pumped about the possibility of North American churches partnering with the Amazonian tribal churches. I believe that by understanding “Church-2-Church Partnerships”, the local church will begin to take ownership of missions.

This wave has really swept me up and I’m going to ride it out. I’m trying to compose ways to communicate the partnership concept. A short-term trip is an ideal environment for considering opportunities and deciding life-changing issues.

It used to be that we would get people out there short-term and ask them to consider two simple choices: Am I called to go or to send? Now as we take “decision making” people out there, and they see that the tribal church is doing the job effectively, we need to ALSO ASK if they want to PARTNER in the mission task!

Better Than Nothing?

3/16/2006

On Friday night, we heard updates from the Amazon, delivered by nationals through interpreters. The first to speak was Henrique Diaz, a Brazillian national pastor and member of an organization called CONPLEI, which is a council of indigenous pastors and evangelical leaders. In September of this year, CONPLEI will be holding a tribal conference in Brazil. Organizers are expecting 3000-4000 Indian leaders and non-tribal participants.

The story that Henrique shared at the end that most affected me was this: “In the past when someone came to speak to the native, they did not speak the language of the native… When missionaries came and gave them scriptures [in Portuguese?], the native gave back the Book and said, “If God is so interested in us, why doesn’t he speak our language?”

Maybe you're thinking, what’s the big deal?!! Imagine that you are part of an Amazonian tribe in Peru. You speak the language of your tribe, and if you are a man, you also speak some Spanish, but if you are a girl, probably not much. If there are no translations of the Bible in your tribal language, you may be given a Spanish translation instead. Though you may accept the book, it is not written in the language that speaks to your heart, and you may not understand it that well. Surprisingly, some organizations would declare your tribe to be “reached” with the gospel, because you have access to a Spanish translation.

Incidentally, I found this article about Henrique and his work, if you are interested in learning more: Son Shine in the Amazon Valley.

Orality

We were privileged to have Dr. James B. Slack for two sessions last week. He gave an excellent talk on “Orality”, which recognizes that many cultures (including the tribes of the Amazon) put the emphasis on storytelling to preserve history and culture and to educate their people. Historically, missionaries have brought the Bible and “non-oral” teaching to oral cultures, and ignored oral methods of teaching.

Oral cultures have very distinctive traits, which must be addressed if we are to reach the “orals” their hearts. We can come to them with our words, our expository preaching and our examples. By the grace of God, some may “get it”, but the teachings are unlikely to be taken to heart, remembered or reproduced by someone who grows up in an oral culture.

Having studied American Sign Language and having lived with and ministered to the Deaf, I confess that I found this particular topic absolutely fascinating. Jim was rattling off the many characteristics present in an oral people group, some of which are:

• Emphasis on storytelling to teach and to preserve culture
• Reluctance to ask questions
• Unfamiliarity with rationality and logic
• Respond emotionally to ideas contrary to accepted teaching
• Very tight cultural relationships which orals are reluctant to severe
• Repetition is important
• Inability to understand or remember outlines

As I listened, I couldn’t help but think that he was describing so many of the characteristics and culture of the Deaf. I immediately checked online to see if someone else had made the connection and found thousands of links pertaining to that.

Another application of this address is the education of small children, since they love stories and are (as yet) unable to read and think logically. It really made me think about how I can better communicate with Ian in the future.

The Challenge Before Us

Thursday night’s sessions began with Paul Johnson laying out “The Challenge Before Us”. Some time ago, the question was asked to missionaries, “If we take all the missionaries out of the Amazon, how many of the tribes could stand on their own?” The surprising (to me) response? 2-5%! So the challenge placed before us is that our strategy must change dramatically and soon.

What Paul was talking about, in a word, is self-sufficiency. Another word? Empowerment. Think of a father-son relationship. Within tribes, a father will teach his son to hunt or to fish. The father doesn’t teach so he can sit back and let his son do all the work. He also doesn’t teach so his son can go off on his own, disregarding the family either. The father teaches his son the skills that he needs to help contribute to the family, and to be able to take care of himself, if he ever needs to.

In an ideal world, the relationship between missionaries and tribes would be like the relationship between the father and son just mentioned. But missionaries have been reluctant to teach the skills, or to step back and encourage the tribal Christians to exercise their gifts. The issue is full of cultural complexities on both sides, but the end result has been that the missionaries believe that the Amazonian church will not be able to function when and if they leave. Clearly, this is not what God intends for the Amazonian churches.

The Bible teaches us that we all need each other. We are all part of one body, and we are each given a gift by the Spirit that is meant to be used within the Body. The key is in the equipping. “…these entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” So the challenge before us is to equip and empower the Amazonian churches. The difficulty is that empowerment is difficult to accomplish and hard to measure. The fruit will come in the long run, but we are a results-oriented society, so we (our donors, our organizations and churches) want to see the fruit now.

The harsh reality is that many of the South American countries have already begun kicking out the missionaries. More are thinking about it. Peru is currently moving to block access to the tribes. A candidate in the current Peruvian election has stated that he wants the missionaries out. So the time is now to move from dependency on the missionaries to dependency on God.

Not Hijacked!

No doubt you've been losing sleep wondering if we had been hijacked. After all, we told many of you our intentions to post during the ALTECO Conference last week. Unfortunately, for all involved, we were "experiencing operating difficulties".... Hopefully you've been standing by!!

Since I wasn't able to do the daily post while I was gone, I have been wondering.... Should I just blurt out all our days' experiences with one post? A textual diarrhea of sorts? Well, that just sounds sick, doesn't it? So, I'll break the last week up as best I can over the next few days.

First, a little about the conference.... It was held in Orlando on the Wycliffe property and mission representatives from many organizations were in attendance. We arrived a couple of days early, hoping to help out wherever needed. So, Steve had the privilege of picking up some of the delegates arriving at the airport. He loves doing that kind of thing, and as an added bonus he got to meet a lot of the attendees.

Our roommate...

On our second day at Wycliffe, we acquired a new roommate in the ample two bedroom apartment where we were being housed for the week. We were joined by Irma Espinoza, a fellow AF missionary, who works among the Candoshi Indians of Peru. Steve knows Irma from his many trips to Peru, and I had the opportunity to meet her at the end of 2001.

Sharing the apartment allowed us to talk over breakfast and late in the evenings after the meetings had ended. It was so much fun listening to Steve & her conversing in Spanish, and I felt like I was understanding more as the days went on. We can only imagine what Ian thought about Daddy's strange new way of talking though. He may have been watching the Sprout channel, but we could tell he was listening to the Spanish conversation. Who knows? Maybe Ian will start speaking in Spanish soon too.

As a side note, Ian warmed up to Irma very quickly and soon was looking for her whenever we went to the conferences. When he spotted her, he would either run excitedly towards her or he would begin chattering up a storm... It sounded to me like he was trying to say "Irma". Once in her presence, he would begin to flirt with her--across the room, between tables-- he didn't care. Apparently, he is a fluent flirter. :)

***NOTE TO MYSELF: Take some Spanish classes soon!! This is my second opportunity to be immersed in the language, but not able to communicate, except in the most basic terms… Fortunately for me, Irma's (and some others’) grasp of English is better than my Spanish!