Chincha, Peru: What we did, where we went, and why we did it

Happy Pentecost!

As I prepare to receive the mission team from Hendrix College this evening, I wanted to share some more information about the activities of the team that flew back to the U.S. late last week. The team consisted of a diverse collection of folks from quite a number of different locations. The people included:

-- Andrew and Emily Thompson, Lynn Cross, Nathan Kilbourne, and Emily Dueitt (from Duke Divinity School)

-- Stephanie and Joe Dunn (from Candler School of Theology)

-- Danny Redding-Rhodes, Jessica Bridges, and Angela Flanagan (from Vanderbilt Divinity School)

-- Rev. Dee Harper (associate pastor at FUMC Searcy, AR)

-- Rev. Cody Schuler (pastor of Edgewood UMC in Fargo, ND)

-- Rev. David Hollis (pastor of a three point charge in Opelika, AL)

Of those 13 people, 7 of us had been to Peru at least one time before. And all of us have experienced a call by God to engage in mission work. For me personally, I never see the signs of the oneness of God's people so much as when I am in ministry with my brothers and sisters in the Iglesia Metodista del Peru.

Let me breakdown the itinerary we kept over the course of our 8 days together ... Thursday, May 1, was our travel day, and it was a long one. We arrived at the Nashville airport at 4 a.m., and after spending most of a long day waiting in the Miami International Airport, we hopped on board our international flight to Lima around 4:30 p.m. After landing and clearing customs, we met up with Pastor Pedro Uchuya, the district superintendent of the Distrito Costa Sur (or South Coast District). We traveled with him from Lima to Chincha, and we finally fell into bed around 2:00 a.m. (making it about 22 hours worth of travel in all!).

On Friday, May 2, Pedro took us on a tour of some sites around Chincha. Our contributions to the church's mission in Chincha this year (what we often call, 'project money') were put toward the construction of the district superintendent's office in downtown Chincha. Pedro sees connectionalism as a real key to the strengthening of the Methodist Church in his district, and the physical presence of the D.S.'s office, as well as the various ministries that will be coordinated from it, is an important step in making connectional identity a reality. As he explained it to me, the office of the D.S. will be the central point for the various churches around Chincha, so that they can all be better related to one another. We also visited the Templo Central, or the main church in Chincha, which is right around the corner from the D.S.'s office. This is the church where I have stayed, prayed, worshipped, and played over the past several years. A water issue kept us from staying there this year, but it still served as a central meeting point where we could engage in conversation and worship together.

The next day was Saturday, May 3, and we took a large part of the day to go out to Tambo de Mora, an outlying community about 20 minutes from Chincha Alta. This was a hard-hit area during the August 2007 earthquake, and signs of the devastation are still common. Tambo de Mora is also the site of one of the most exciting mission projects that the Methodist Church in Peru is working on right now. They call it the campamento, and it is a combination of church, community center, and retreat camp. I am going to give the campamento a blog post all its own, so I won't go into much detail here. But this is the place that is closest to my heart, and I have worked on its construction over the past 8 years. Tambo de Mora is a very poor community, but it is clear that the community also sees the work of the Methodist Church there as a great sign of hope. It was good to introduce our team to it, as well as to many of the people who live in that area and participate in the church's ministries.

On Saturday night, Pedro took us to one of the iglesias libres, the free churches, which tend to be much more charismatic than their Methodist cousins. Sometimes we hear about the growth of Pentecostal churches in Latin America as a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit, but as Pedro would be the first to tell you, it's not all good. These churches often reduce Christian discipleship to the religious experience of charismatic worship, and I myself heard the revival speaker say, "The gospel is not social, it is spiritual" (as if there can be a real separation of the two). It didn't take long to realize why Pedro had taken us to the service. He wanted us to see a little bit of what the Methodists in Peru are struggling with. Apparently, Protestants of other traditions are often attracted to the emotional worship of the charismatic churches and drift away from their own communities to become a part of one of the free churches. This is clearly frustrating to Pedro, who pointed out to me more than once the theological problems of the charismatic tradition.

Sunday, May 4, was a day for worship, and we had a great experience at the Methodist Church of Pueblo Nuevo (a suburb attached to Chincha). I got to teach a Sunday school class there, and other members of our group went to various classes for worship and study. We also visited another Methodist Church in Pueblo Nuevo called Micaela Bastidas, which is one of the main sites for the Methodist Church's Ministerio de Alimentacion, or Children's feeding ministry. This program has been going on for several years and receives monthly assistance from Dee Harper's church in Searcy, Arkansas. After a wonderful lunch at a local restaurant El Colque, we worshipped in the evening at the main church in Chincha Alta, where Danny Redding-Rhodes and Cody Schuler tag-teamed the sermon and I assisted Pedro in celebrating Holy Communion.

On Monday, May 5, we spent most of the day in conversation with Pedro at his home in Pueblo Nuevo. This was an important day, as it allowed us to take the raw experiences of the previous few days and refine them through conversation and interaction with Pedro. He told the story of the project in Tambo de Mora, talked about his hopes for a stronger connection between the churches of his district, and talked some about the theological conflicts with the charismatic churches. We also met Dr. John Deaver this day, who has committed to living half the year in Chincha in order to begin a health ministry aimed at preventative health and the care of mothers and children. That evening, we were back at the main church in Chincha Alta, where I led a bible study (in Spanish!).

The next day was Tuesday, May 6, and we toured the Escuela de John Wesley, which is connected to the church in Pueblo Nuevo. Through our connections to both the church and the school, I started getting to know a young local pastor named Obed, who both leads worship at the church and teaches at the school. The status of the school, and its relation to the Methodist Church, are both a little up in the air right now. But regardless, it is doing a great ministry with children (and as I was told, is also the only school named after John Wesley in all of Peru). We also worked at the office of the D.S. on this day, unloading a truck of bricks that will go to build the office's second floor. After sharing some educational resources we brought with Pedro (such as Sunday school curricula, VBS stuff, and Upper Rooms), we ended up back at the main church in Chincha Alta for a bible study (which I taught, again, in Spanish).

Wednesday, May 7, was our last full day in Chincha. After breakfast we had a meeting with Lucho Ruiz, who came down from Lima to tell us about Voluntarios en Accion, the organization he heads out of the bishop's office which seems to be like a combination of Volunteers in Mission and UMCOR in the American church. We later went back out to the campamento in Tambo de Mora, where uber-artist Danny Redding-Rhodes led a painting project to re-paint the emblem of the Methodist Church on the front gate of the campamento. We also had more time for playing with the children there, and Pedro and I were able to give the team a more extensive tour of the facilities and their intended use.

I took the group back up to Lima on Thursday, May 8, from where they flew back to the United States.

The trip as a whole was interesting to me, in that it pushed my conception of what a mission trip is all about. I am a firm believer that short-term missionaries need to allow their expectations of a mission trip to be conformed to the needs and desires of their hosts. I had mentioned to Pedro that I was bringing a group of people who wanted to learn more about the churches in Chincha, with the hopes of bringing their own groups someday. Pedro took that ball and ran with it, and he basically constructed our trip around the themes of experience, education, relationship-building, and worship. As we traveled around from church to church under Pedro's care, we were joining with him in strengthening the ties between his churches as well as the ties between the Peruvian and American Methodist Churches. And at the same time, all the members of our team were soaking in the basics of short term missions. As a way to aid this process, Danny Redding-Rhodes and I set aside conversation time where we talked to the group about mission logistics and the way that the theology of mission is embedded in how you go about preparing for the trip itself.

We did little manual labor on this trip, but in many ways, what we did do was much more important. With the members of this team, seeds have been planted and watered. The great possibility now is that 13 people will return with 13 different groups in the future, thereby expanding the work in Chincha and the relationships between Methodists of Peru and the U.S.A.

That's a heck of a lot to read, but if you are still with me, thanks! And if you would like to know more about the mission in Peru - including how you can be personally involved - drop me an e-mail.

God bless +

A respite in Lima

Okay, so I'm in Lima now with a little more time to write and let you know just what the heck I'm doing in Peru. Most of you probably remember the terrible earthquakes that Peru suffered in August of last year. Those quakes struck the very area where I've been working through nearly-annual trips since 2001. The epicenter of the quakes was in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Department of Ica (equivalent to a state in the U.S.). The departmental capital city of Ica, together with the cities of Pisco and Chincha, suffered widespread destruction and a loss of life that topped 500.

Soon after the earthquakes occurred, many people who had accompanied me in mission trips in past years started sending e-mails to see what could be done. The first matter, of course, was to join with our brothers and sisters in the Methodist Church of Peru through prayer for their healing and recovery. And the second task was to begin sending down assistance for relief supplies, which many people did. But the third task was to start a conversation about how we could physically travel down to Peru to help out with recovery efforts. The original hope was to go in January, so that we could be there as soon after the earthquakes as possible. When airfare costs made that time frame impossible, we rescheduled for May. The group that formed promised to be interesting in its makeup: a number of young pastors with previous Peru mission experience, current seminary students with a heart for mission, and a couple of spouses with past experiences in Peru as well (including mine!). There was no rhyme or reason to the group's roster, which included pastors from North Dakota, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama, and seminary students from Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. It was simply those who responded to the call to go, help as they could, and join with the Peruvian church in witness and mission. We set our dates for May 1-9, and I also accepted an offer from my alma mater, Hendrix College, to lead a subsequent mission team of Hendrix students that would follow this first trip from May 11-21.

The interesting wrinkle for this group was that all of the people who signed up - whether they had been to Peru before or not - expressed an interest in learning how to lead short term mission trips. Some of these folks are already serving in ministry positions, while others are in school. But they all discerned a call to connect with Peru through learning to lead trips themselves at some point in the future. So my partner in leading this trip, Danny Redding-Rhodes (who directs the Cal Turner Fellowship Program at Vanderbilt Divinity School and is soon to be commissioned in the Arkansas Conference), and I together began to envision the trip as both an outreach to the earthquake damaged areas and a 'Leadership Development' experience where we could help our team members work through the nuts & bolts of mission logistics, purpose, and theological undergirding.

The long story short is that the trip has been great. We did not do nearly the amount of actual manual labor that we thought we would do. The Methodist churches themselves did not suffer much earthquake damage, and it has been long enough since the quakes that the acute needs have long since been taken care of (although signs of the quakes are everywhere, in the form of piles of rubble on sidwalks and streets). But what we did do, under the direction of Pastor Pedro Uchuya, the district superintendent of the Ica District, was engage heavily in forming relationships, bearing witness, strengthening the sense of connection in the district, and joining in worship with the churches around the city of Chincha Alta. The trip ended up being heavy in the education area, which was great for the aforementioned Leadership Development component we were aiming to emphasize. We had the opportunity to visit a great diversity of churches and communities, and then afterward to talk about what we saw, what it showed us about the Peruvian church's ministries, and how we could connect with those efforts through future trips. This was great for helping my team members think through their own calling to mission, and it was also clearly what Pedro thought was most important for us to be about while we were in Chincha.

In Ephesians 4:11-12, Paul writes about the gifts God has given so that the saints can be equipped for ministry. I think there is something to be said about both the development of the spiritual gifts of leaders and the way those gifts can be used for forming the discipleship of the whole church. The great folks on my team have all been gifted by God for the work of ministry, and it was a blessing to be with them so that they themselves might be better equipped to form disciples in mission in the future. I give thanks to God for that.

I want to write more about the specifics of some of what we saw and did, but I'll save that for another post. My team has returned to the U.S. now, and I am in Lima for a couple of days waiting for the mission team from Hendrix College to arrive. For me, it is a chance to relax and catch up on sleep before the second half of my own time here begins. That's important, since the group from Hendrix will be focused much more on manual labor. I have access to the Internet at the hotel where I'm staying in Lima, so maybe I can write more before I head back down south.

Chillin' in Chincha

We've been in Chincha since late Thursday night ... Hard to write a lot because of the Spanish-language keyboard and the crowded conditions in the Internet cafe. This has been a wonderful trip, different in some significant ways than trips I have taken to Peru in the past. Because of the large number of seminary students and young pastors on this trip, we have been focusing heavily on forming relationships with local churches and communicating the story of the Methodist churches of this area to the group. This is all in the hopes that some of the folks will want to lead groups themselves in future years.

Pastor Pedro continues to amaze me with his energy, his leadership, and his love for Jesus. They have been working through some difficult times here lately, due to theological differences with the iglesias libres, the free churches, which tend toward an over-spiritualized gospel and a tendency toward 'prosperity preaching'. Pedro has been sharing a lot of this with me and with the group as a whole, and in some strange ways, it is nice to see a church struggling bravely with divisions that are truly theological in nature (not that our church's struggle over moral issues is not rooted in theology, but our debates over them rarely reach the level of theology from which they spring). As the district superintendent for the Chincha District, it is Pedro's task to help the church through its current struggles and grow it stronger.

As always, the church's ministry with children is among the most awe-inspiring example of God's work that I have seen. In a few days, I'll have some free time in Lima and will try to write more then. For those of you out there who have been to Peru with me before, you would be interested to see a lot of what is happening here.

Your continued prayers for this mission are appreciated!

Worlds enough and time

Well, the last 24 hours of my life have been crazy. I'm in Nashville, ready to fly to Lima, Peru, very, very early tomorrow morning with a mission team I'm leading to work with a community in Chincha Alta. This is the same community I've visited several times before, and it is led by Pastor Pedro Uchuya, who is a friend, Christian brother, and spiritual hero to me.

The last day of my life has been spent grading final exams, packing, praying, and generally not getting a lot of sleep. I had planned to do one big General Conference-related post, and the time just caught up with me.

So all that's to say, I'll just have to do a GC breakdown when I get back!

There has been a WHOLE lot of interesting stuff come out of Ft. Worth over the past couple of days. If you have any thoughts and want to share them in the comments section, please feel free. I did get an e-mail tonight from Carol Bruse of the Texas Conference about the passage of the candidacy petitions. That's exciting news. If anyone at GC wants to comment on that or any other matter, I'll be checking the Internet from time to time in Peru and would love to hear some info!

Otherwise, I will be back from the mission on May 21 and will start posting again regularly - about Peru, GC, and otherwise - at that time. I would also appreciate your prayers for this trip. My experience with Peru over the past few years has shown me the depth and fullness of God's grace at work in this world. The church is a wonderful place to give your life. And friends, we've got all the time in the world for this stuff.

Peace to all +

General Conference cans and can'ts

As we enter into this second week of General Conference, I wanted to share some thoughts on what I think General Conference can and cannot do. I do so in my current UM Reporter column, where I approach the issue as one of form vs. content in ministry.

That is, General Conference has the ability to make changes in the form of the church, which (hopefully) will make the church a place more conducive to the Holy Spirit's work. The example I use here is the proposed alteration to the candidacy process. But even with changes made, it is still up to individuals and congregations to do the real work of ministry. I think that is an important distinction to remember, lest we be tempted to think that GC can be the cure-all for the church's ills.

May God continue to guide the work that is ongoing in Ft. Worth. Above all, the fact of the General Conference is a powerful witness to the faith of the people called Methodists!

GC first couple o' days

J. Richard Peck of the United Methodist News Service has two summaries of the first few days of GC the first one here and the second one here. Here's a highlight of some of the notable happenings:

-- The Episcopal address, given by Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher. Bishop Christopher suggested that membership decline in the U.S. branch of the church is at least partially attributable to infighting that arises out of differing liberal and conservative viewpoints. That is an interesting perspective, though not one I have ever seen backed up by any statistics. Also interesting to me is Bishop Christopher's suggestion that "right relationship" should take precedence over the "fervent pursuit of being right". That's a curious statement, since it suggests that ethics and doctrine are wholly separable for one another. I appreciate the bishops' frequent appeals for unity, but I often fear that their statements lack the depth of substance that would allow real unity within the church to exist.

-- It sounds as if the laity address, given by Lyn Powell of the North Georgia Annual Conference, was heavily focused on evangelism. Peck indicates that she had some challenging words for the laity, particularly in terms of being willing to go out into the world and actively participate in ministry.

-- The 13 general boards and agencies are adopting a fourfold emphasis for the coming quadrennium: 1) Developing principled Christian leaders for the church and the world; 2) Creating new places for new people and renewing existing congregations; 3) Stamping out diseases of poverty by improving health globally; 4) Engaging in ministry with the poor.

-- The "Seven Pathways" developed by the Council of Bishops served as a model for these four areas of focus by the general boards and agencies. These pathways offer a fuller description of what the church is wanting to do in terms of mission, evangelism, and development. I do have one question here: Why do we in the UMC seem to have such a difficult time talking about salvation as a real, spiritual process? If you read Peck's article, note that the four emphases and the seven pathways all talk about making material changes in the lives of people in order to help them out. And this is certainly one aspect of the Wesleyan understanding of outreach and ministry. But Wesley's first call to his preachers was to save souls, and this is not just done through eliminating poverty and disease. Why do we have such a hard time claiming the evangelical portion of our heritage, which holds that souls as well as bodies need salvation? For those of you at GC, are the news reports underemphasizing this, or is it simply not there? I like the language of forming disciples, but it isn't just about getting people to do good works in a local church setting!

-- The UM Task Force on Immigration is supporting a couple of resolutions that would support the church's harboring of immigrants. A press conference was held today, I suppose to anticipate the upcoming resolutions. Regardless of one's position on immigration, I believe the church has a biblical duty to harbor the alien in our midst, and that means protecting the vulnerable when they seek sanctuary with us. I hope the church can act prophetically in this area.

-- Looks like the committees have elected their chairpeople and gotten to work sifting through all the proposed legislation. Godspeed your work!

-- As a sidenote, I would be curious to hear from anyone at GC who can offer some insight into how prominent the transgender issue has been at the conference thus far. A couple of news stories reported the press conference led by Rev. Drew Phoenix, where he claimed that his gender reassignment/sex change surgery represented "steps toward wholeness." I can only assume that this press conference, like others, is designed to influence pending legislation on transsexuality. My understanding of our embodiedness as God's creatures makes me highly skeptical of anyone claiming a greater wholeness by artificially mutilating their bodies, whether through cosmetic surgery or intense hormone therapy. But given the typical nature of the sexuality debates at GC - which have been focused on homosexuality in the past - at least Phoenix's pushing of the transgender issue will allow the church to come to a better degree of understanding of the range of sexuality issues. I only hope some folks do some significant theological work on this after the GC is over. As I said in a recent post, I tend to be skeptical about the amount of substantive theological work that can be done in the context of the conference itself.

Young People's Address at GC

The 2004 General Conference created the Division on Ministries with Young People, within the General Board of Discipleship. Now the 2008 General Conference has heard the first ever Young People's Address, before the whole gathered body. United Methodist News Service reports on today's address in this news story. It sounds like the 6 teenagers and young adults represented a diverse cross-section of the church.

The church yearns for young people, and young people yearn for a place to belong, according to one of those who gave the address. Amen to that. What they said up there is important. The fact that the church invited them to say it and celebrated their presence is even more so.