Luz Maria and I have returned to Epiphany Lutheran Mission in La Caramuca after our first trip together since 2012. Luz Maria was invited to attend a conference of deaconesses from across Latin American sponsored by Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod World Missions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The centerpiece of the conference was a study of the epistles of St. Paul, led by Ginnatriz Vera de Mendoza. A native of Argentina, she was trained as a deaconess at Concordia Seminary of Buenos Aires and now lives in Yaritagua, Venezuela, with her husband, Angel Eliezer Mendoza, who is pastor of New Life Lutheran Mission there. They met while Angel Eliezer was a student at the seminary.
Clarion and Joel Fritsche with Angel Eliezer Mendoza;
Elsy Valladares de Machado; Luz Maria; and
Ginnatriz Vera de Mendoza.
We were met at the airport in Santo Domingo, the capital city, by missionary Joel Fritsche; his wife, Clarion, and two of their three boys. Pastor Fritsche served his vicarage at Christ Our Savior Lutheran Church of Freeburg, Illinois, where my mother is a member. From Santo Domingo it was a two-hour bus ride to Santiago, the second-largest city in the Dominican Republic, where the conference was held. The event drew deaconesses from Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Panama and the Dominican Republic as well as Venezuela. In addition to Luz Maria and Ginnatriz, Elsy Valladares de Machado from Caracas represented Venezuela.
Dr. Gillian Bond of Concordia Seminary, St.Louis, with Elsy,
Ginnatriz and Luz Maria.
The three deaconess training centers of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod were represented by Amy Rast, associate director of deaconess studies at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana; Gillian Bond, director of deaconess studies at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri; Deborah Rothrock on behalf of Concordia University, Chicago. We also enjoyed the opportunity to reconnect with old friends, like Pastor Ted Krey, a former missionary to Venezuela who is now region director LCMS World Missions in Latin America and the Caribbean; Rebecca Krey, his wife and their four children; Sergio Maita, a native of Maturin, Venezuela and graduate of Concordia Theological Seminary now serving as a missionary in the Dominican Republic; and Yoxandris Marcano de Maita, Sergio's wife, and their two children.
Vicars Idjon Fritz and Justn Massey.
For me, a highlight of the trip was our visit to Palmar Arriba, a small town in the mountains outside of Santiago. There LCMS World Missions has established a mission, a home for the disabled, and the beginnings of a seminary. On Sunday I helped vicars, Idjon Fritz (a native of the Dominican Republic) and Justin Massey (from Kankakee, Illinois) with a service of evening prayer. I also enjoyed talking with Pastor Carlos Schumann of the Confessional Lutheran Church of Chile, who represented the Lutheran Heritage Foundation.
Upon returning to Venezuela, we spent a few days in Caracas as I attended a meeting of the pastors of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela.
Now that we are back in La Caramuca, we are please to see continued progress on the construction of a new learning center and chapel. We also have expaned our chicken project.
Counting chickens and eggs.
The inspiration for this project came from Luz Maria's daughter, Charli Santana. She obtained the chickens from her in-laws. At present we have three hens, one rooster and 10 chicks. The hens are producing three eggs per day. We use the eggs to prepare breakfast for 10 to 20 preschool children every morning. Typically the eggs are served with arepas, the corn-meal muffins that are a staple of the Venezuelan diet (the arepas are stuffed with eggs, deviled ham, cream cheese, sardines or whatever other filling is available). We have the space to raise a maximum of 100 hens, but we think a flock of 30 would be the optimum size to produce enough eggs to significantly reduce our dependence on purchased ingredients. Thanks to a donation from Jim Burns, we have built on to the chicken coop, bought more chicken feed and hope to build the flock up to 30 laying hens within three months. Jim is the brother of Kathy Conrad, wife of Daniel Conrad, a former LCMS missionary to Venezuela who is now serving as a missionary in Mexico City, Mexico.
Another goal of this project is teach the children and young people involved with our mission how to raise chickens in their own homes. Backyard chickens are a Venezuelan tradition that is in danger of being lost due to social and economic changes.
Next week deaconess students from Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela will travel to the Dominican Republic for a three-day course on the letters of St. Paul. Deaconess Ginnatriz Mendoza will teach the course. She is the wife of Ángel Eliezer Mendoza, pastor of Nueva Vida (New Life) Lutheran mission in Yaritagua, the capital of the Peña Municipality of Venezuela's state of Yaracuy. She is a native of Argentina and trained as a deaconess at Concordia Seminary, Buenos Aires, Argentina, where her husband, a Venezuelan, recently graduated. They met while he was studying at the seminary. Luz Maria and I also will travel to the Dominican Republic. Luz Maria trained as a deaconess by taking theological courses by extension and has worked with the Lutheran Church of Venezuela to train more deaconesses. Some may ask, what is a deaconess? One might also ask, what is a deacon? The two words have a ong history within the church. Both are derived from the Greek work, διάκονος (diakonos), which in a broad sense means "servant" or "one who runs an errand". The apostle Paul refers to himself as a "deacon" or servant of Jesus Christ in Colossians 1:23. However, the word also is used in the New Testament in a special sense to mean trusted laity in positions of responsibility. The first example of this is found in Acts, chapter six, where the Apostle delegated the oversight of the distribution of food to the widows to seven men "of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom." Unlike the pastoral office of public preaching, teaching and administration of the sacraments, the office of "deacon" was not created by God's command. The apostles did not receive a divine order in a vision or a dream, but used their own judgement. This is similar to what happened in Exodus 18 when Moses, exhausted after trying to deal with all of the Israelites' problems himself, took the advice of his father-in-law and appointed "able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe" as his helpers. Because the responsibilities of the "diaconate" or auxiliary offices are not fixed by divine mandate, they can change according to the needs of the local church. There is evidence within the New Testament that women as well as men were able to serve in auxiliary offices within the early church. The primary passage is Romans 16:1-2, in which St. Paul refers to a woman named Phoebe as a "servant of the church at Cenchreae" The word translated "servant" is διάκονον, the feminine form of διάκονος. Other women in the New Testament, while not specifically named as deaconesses, are described as devoting themselves to the service of the church. Outstanding examples are Lydia, a woman who who housed many Christians in her home; Priscilla, who with her husband, Aquila, helped Apollos to teach more accurately the way of God; and Dorcas who made clothes for the needy. Some interpreters argue that the mention of "women" in 1 Timothy 3:8-13 means the wives of deacons. However, in verses 1-7, Paul speaks of the requirements to be a bishop (pastor) without mentioning their wives, ( only that a bishop must be the husband of only one wife). On the other hand, Paul makes a parallel list of requirements for deacons and "women". The word, γυναῖκας, "gunaikas" could mean a woman of any age or marital status, and thus could mean deaconesses. This was the interpretation of John Chrysostom (347-407), a great theologian of the early church. An early reference to deaconesses outside the Holy Scriptures is found in a letter written to the Emperor Trajan by the Roman magistrate, Pliny the Younger, in the second century A.D.He mentions torturing two deaconesses to find out more about what Christians really believed. The office of deaconess was formally recognized at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, and the Apostolic Constitutions, a Christian work of the fourth century mentions deaconess as an official position in the church. The work of the deaconess work in the post-apostolic church was to help the poor and sick; instruct catechumens; help in the baptism of women; and attend to the needs of woman in circumstances where a male deacon did not have access or could not be sent. After the fifth century A.D., however, the office of deaconess was discontinued. As the church as an institution became more powerful within late Roman and early medieval society, it became more hierarchical in structure. The word "deacon" came to mean a rank within the clergy, not a lay office. Thus, deacons could not have female counterparts. The work performed by deaconesses did not disappear, but was taken over by orders of nuns. The modern revival of the office of deaconess began when Theodor Fliedner, a Lutheran pastor, and his wife, Friedericke Munster, opened the first modern Lutheran deaconess mother house in Kaiserwerth on the Rhine. Germany, in 1836. Fliedner saw a pressing need, demand for nurses with religious formation to attend the wounded as the Napoleonic Wars had created devastation and great misery. By 1864, year of his death, some 1,600 women had received training as deaconesses in Kaiserswerth. One of them was Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse of the Crimean War. In the village of Neuendettelsau, Bavaria, Wilhelm Loehe (1808-1872) also became interested in the restoration of the office of deaconess. He established a school for deaconesses in 1849, where women trained to care for the sick, teach school, and work in other fields of service to the church.
Rosie Adle with Luz Maria and Elsy Valladares
de Machado in 2007.
The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod began training deaconesses in 1919 and today both Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, and Concordia Theological Seminary, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, provide deaconess training program. Deaconess Rosie Adle, an instructor at the Fort Wayne seminary, worked in Venezuela to recruit and train deaconesses in 2007. She explained the role of the deaconess in a recent Issues Etc. interview.
My sister's name is Dorcas Baltazar,
and although she has never visited Venezuela, a number of people here
are becoming familiar with her first name. More precisely, with the
name of her biblical namesake.
According to Acts 9:36, “Now there
was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by
interpretation is called Dorcas...” Tabitha and Dorcas are
respectively the Aramaic and Greek forms of the word for gazelle.
Apparently she was known by both names (not an unusual situation in
that cosmopolitan era; the Apostle Peter was known as Simon bar-Jonah
and Petros, St. Paul as Saul of Tarsus and Paulos). St. Luke goes out
of his way to make sure that his Greek-speaking readers knew who he
was talking about.
We often speak of the “12 disciples”
in reference to the men who Jesus would choose as His apostles, since
the word essentially is a synonym for apprentice or student. However,
in New Testament usage, all believers in Jesus Christ were known as
His disciples, even as all Jews were known as “disciples of Moses.”
When Jesus comissioned the 12 apostles, He told them to “make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you.” Thus, all who have been baptized and instructed in
the Christian faith are disciples of Christ.
Nevertheless, Acts 9:36 is the only
passage in the New Testament which uses the feminine form of
“disciple” (μαθητρια). Luke 10:38 speaks of Mary of
Bethany seated at Jesus' feet and listening to His words in the
recognized manner of a disciple. There were other women prominent in
the life of the early church, such as Lydia of Thyatira (Acts 16:14);
Priscilla, who, along with her husband, Aquila, St. Paul called “my
helpers in Christ” (Romans 16:3); and Phoebe, the deaconess of
Cenchreae (Romans 16:1). But perhaps the word “discípula” (it's
feminine in Spanish, too) is used in Acts 9:36 to emphasize Dorcas'
importance to the church and her exemplary behavior.
“She was full of good works and acts
of charity.” It is specifically mentioned that she made clothes for
destitute widows and other needy people. So when she unexpectedly
died, the church at Joppa (modern-day Jaffa; now as then a
Mediterranean seaport, but now part of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area
as well) prevailed on Peter to implore God's mercy for those who
depended on her. And God, in His mercy, miraculously restored her to
life (Acts 9:40-41).
Today some
dictionaries define “Dorcas society” generically as “a
society of women of a church whose work it is to provide clothing for
the poor.” The first modern
Dorcas society was founded on December 1, 1834, by Methodist
women on the Isle of Man as part of the community's thanksgiving for
being spared from an outbreak of cholera. There are “Dorcas
societies” and “Dorcas circles” in congregations throughout
the world, including many
Lutheran churches, serving in a variety of ways.
Now there is a “Proyecto Dorcas” in
Venezuela. Recently Luz Maria traveled to Caracas to attend the
national convention of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela's women's
organization, SOLUDAVE (Sociedad de las Damas Luteranas de
Venezuela). She was elected vice president (the president is Mayerlin
Flores of Ascension Lutheran Church in San Félix de Guayana) and
also managed to get passed a resolution to organize Proyecto Dorcas
efforts, with the goal of helping the needy, in congregations across
Venezuela.
Luz Maria first developed the idea of
Proyecto Dorcas several years ago with the help of her close friend,
Luise de Muci, a former president of SOLUDAVE. Unfortunately, Luise
passed away before Proyecto Dorcas became a reality. However, the
passage of the resolution this year is part of Luise's legacy.
Here in La Caramuca, Deisi Yovana
Torres has volunteered to manage collection of a special “Proyecto
Dorcas” offering of food items and other necessities for the many
people who are still homeless after last year's torrential
rains in Venezuela.
Elsy Valladares de Machado of Caracas will be Luz Maria's traveling companion. Together Luz Maria and Elsy are national coordinators of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela's deaconess program.
Clearly I did not marry just any Venezuelan. It is said the new model for overseas missions is for North Americans to work in partnership with national church leaders, a concept that we have taken to an extreme.
Nevertheless, there is a lot to be said for it. Over the last 50 years, the world has seen phenomenal growth in the number of Christians living in "the Global South" (Africa, Asia and Latin America) or "Majority World" and the emergence of national churches there.
The term "Majority World" has come to be used as a replacement for "Third World" or "developing world", and it has a double meaning. First, the majority of the world's human population now lives in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Second, so does the majority (75 percent) of the world's Christians.
According to Pennsylvania State University professor Philip Jenkins, author of an influential Atlantic magazine article, "The Next Christendom" (which he later developed into a bestselling book):
“Christians are facing a shrinking population in the liberal West and a growing majority of the traditional Rest (of the world). During the past half-century the critical centers of the Christian world have moved decisively to Africa, to Latin America, and to Asia. The balance will never shift back.” Yet Christians in the United States still have the financial resources, educational institutions and, above all, the religious liberty, to train and send cross-cultural missionaries that many national churches do not. There are not that many places in the world where there is a happy combination of all three of these things.
Becoming a cross-cultural missionary means not only receiving a sound theological education, but also learning to live day-to-day in an environment where the language and customs are very different. But even with the amount of preparation involved, once a trained cross-cultural career missionary is in place, it often is more economical to support such a person than to rely on short-term volunteer missionaries.
According to Dr. Rutt, "What we have seen in our circles is that there is precious little preparation of a missiological nature for those missionaries coming from the majority world. While typically they have a thorough theological education at a residential seminary, most have had almost no orientation in cross-cultural ministry, linguistics, mission strategy, mission history, and theology of missions...Too often we have made assumptions about the readiness of a family to live and work in another part of the world that have proved to be false because we assume the cultures are similar. For example, if you send a Brazilian family to work in a place like Panama, you may assume that, since they are Brazilian from Latin America, they will have to cross very little cultural and linguistic distance to minister effectively in Panama, another Latin American country. Our experience has been that in this kind of situation those Brazilians who go to a place like Panama run into the same kinds of misunderstandings in their new home, make the same kinds of inaccurate judgments about the new culture, go through the same culture shock, experience the same loneliness and isolation, often have similar linguistic challenges, and go through the same kinds of trials and tribulations that are a part of becoming enculturated in a new society, just like any of our missionaries from the U.S."
Nevertheless, from 1988 to 2008, the number of "career missionaries" sent out by U.S. mission agencies declined by 45 percent. Ralph D. Winter, founder of the U.S. Center for World Missions, said in a 2007 speech to the Asian Society of Missiology in Bangkok. that nearly two million short-term volunteers leave the United States each year compared to 35,000 long-term missionaries. It costs at least five time more overall to send a short-term volunteer than a long-term missionary – financial support that Winter suggested would be better invested in a long-term missionary. (In 2005, Time magazine included Winter in a special feature section on "America's 25 Most Influential Evangelicals")
Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with short-term mission trips. These trips may yield long-term results if:
Volunteers are moved to consider preparing for a career in the mission field themselves;
Or, return home with a renewed zeal to support long-term missionaries.
However, it is a question of balance. Craig Greenfield wrote in the February 2009 issue of Lausanne World Pulse: "...the mission pendulum has swung heavily toward resourcing local people...supplemented by short-term missionaries who focus on transferring their skills without learning the language and culture. But we must strive to find balance by remembering the rich biblical tradition of prophetic outsiders...Throughout biblical and recent history, God has used outsiders to bring about his purposes in foreign nations".
Greenfield is the international coordinator of Servants to Asia's Urban Poor. For six years he and his wife, Nay, lived among the urban poor in the slums of Cambodia.
In regard to "empowering" national church leaders, Greenfield writes "The concept of empowering people is central to good mission work. But it takes wisdom to discern the difference between empowerment and disengagement. Just as a good manager of people will know just how much to delegate and how much support to provide, so a foreign missionary needs to learn how to empower rather than overpower. However, not showing up at all is not empowerment; it is apathy".
In addition, according to Greenfield, "It is a beautiful and exciting thing to see African, Asian, and Latino missionaries spreading out across the globe, and there is much more that can be done to assist and support them. But when Jesus told us to go into all the world and make disciples, he wasn't letting any nation off the hook as though their contribution was not worthy or useful. We must come alongside our brothers and sisters from around the world and joyfully do our part in the Great Commission".
Luz Maria and I have this objective in our mission project: To use the strengths of our different backgounds to provide the Christian instruction sorely needed in this country, both at basic and advanced levels, and particularly for the region where we live. We thank God for the opportunity to serve and that we may continue the good work that has begun here in La Caramuca.
Spanish Portals of Prayer once more in print
Spanish translations of Portals of Prayer were at one time popular as devotional literature in Venezuela. Actually, they still are. But only used copies have been available since 2003, when Concordia Publishing House stopped printing Portales de Oracion. Since 2007, someone at El Salvador Lutheran Church has been faithfully transcribing the used copies in which the dates correspond to the current year and e-mailing to everyone on the Lutheran Church of Venezuela mailing list. The drawbacks to this include the time required for transcription and the costs of printing and making multiple copies of the e-mails every month.
Now there is another alternative as CPH has resumed publishing Portales de Oracion. Even better news is that this time the daily devotions will be composed in Spanish rather than translated from English as was the practice in the past. Individual subscriptions will cost $10. Presumably there would be the cost and logistics of shipping Portales de Oracion to Venezuela, but it has been done before.
Maria de los Angeles Brito was baptized in La Caramuca, Saturday, Novermber 29, 2008. Maria actually lives in Barinas and attends Corpus Christi Lutheran Church, but her father wanted to attend her baptism and was not able to do so on Sunday, November 30. So Maria was baptized by Pastor Ted Krey on his last official visit to Barinas and we had our second service of Holy Communion for the newly confirmed in our mission. I am happy to report that Sandro Pérez was once again released from the hospital and was able to attend.
The following day there were three baptisms and four confirmations at Corpus Christi. The children baptized were Moisés, Olgret and Ricardo Rivero. Confirmands were Maria Brito, Maria Eugenia Vera, Yelitza Pérez and Luís Eduardo Jimenez. Since Eduardo Flores personally instructed these four young people, it was a great way for him to end his year of vicarage in Barinas.
Eduardo and I will be in Caracas this week, preparing for our ordinations on Saturday, December 13. I have received and accepted a call from the Lutheran Church of Venezuela to serve as a missionary in western Venezuela. I will be based in La Caramuca (and authorized to preach and administer the sacraments there, but also will have the privilege and responsibility of searching for new locations to plant churches (we already have made some contacts in the neighboring state of Apure, for example).)
Eduardo and our fellow “seminarista” Sergio Maita will be ordained and installed as instructors at the “mini-seminary” that has been established in Caracas. Sergio has completed his vicarage at Cristo Rey (Christ the King) Lutheran Church in the eastern city of Maturin. In addition to teaching new seminaristas (there are six prospects so far for this next year), Eduardo and Sergio will take turns serving the congregations of La Paz (Peace) and La Santa Trinidad (Holy Trinity) in Caracas. Neither of these congregations have full-time pastors.
Pastor Abel García, director of the Juan de Frias Theological Institute, will be moving from the city of Barcelona, Venezuela, to Caracas in order to supervise the seminary.
The Juan de Frias Theological Institute was founded by Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod missionaries 45 years ago and based on the concept of theological education by extension (TEE). This concept, TEE, was pioneered by Presbyterians in Guatemala in 1963 as a way of meeting some of the challenges of training pastors within a Latin American cultural context.
After some apparent initial success, the TEE model became widely promoted throughout Latin America by many denominations. But, in Venezuela at least, after 45 years that as a total replacement for a seminary education, TEE leaves something to be desired.
The New Testament does not mandate any specific method for training pastors. We have the example of Jesus teaching the Scriptures in the typical manner of a Jewish rabbi, and selecting 12 men from among those who listened to His teachings. To these men He gave special training for three years before commissioning them as apostles (there were, of course, only 11 by that time, Judas Iscariot having dropped out of the program in a spectacular fashion). So according to the model of our Lord Himself, there should be several years of preparation and examination before one is qualified to receive a call into the public ministry.
This preparation does not involve only “book learning”. We read later in the New Testament that although Saul of Tarsus was highly educated by both Jewish and Greco-Roman standards, approximately 17 years passed between the time of his conversion and when he was ready to embark on his first missionary journey as the Apostle Paul (Galations 1:16-2:1). Preparation for the public ministry is a matter of character formation as well as intellectual development.
Finally, we may note the importance of Biblical instruction starting in early childhood for Paul's protege, Timothy. Before receiving Paul's special training, Timothy was taught the basic doctrines of the Holy Scriptures by his mother and grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5, 3:14-16).
It also is important to consider that the original 12 apostles were devout Jews, too. Jews in the first century A.D., like Jews today, placed a great deal of importance on religious education. So, despite being “simple” fishermen and tradesmen, they did not start from a position of ignorance when Jesus chose them as his disciples.
The modern, North American system of recruiting young men for the seminary presupposes this kind of religious upbringing. The grooming of a pastoral candidate from early childhood on can greatly speed up the process of pastoral formation. In addition, a shared faith motivates a family to make the sacrifices necessary to support the prospective pastor for four years of college plus four years in the seminary.
Beyond the family, Missouri Synod Lutherans historically have recognized the importance of undergirding seminary training with formal Christian education at all levels. This is why the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod developed the second-largest network of private preschools, elementary schools and colleges in the United States (surpassed only by the Roman Catholic Church).
One problem throughout much of Latin America is these preconditions for seminary training often do not exist (although there are Lutheran seminaries in the larger, more prosperous countries of Brazil and Argentina). In Venezuela, second- or third-generation Lutherans are rare birds. Members of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela often are the only members of their extended families who are practicing Christians of any sort. So the young man who wants to become a pastor may not have a role model within the family to emulate, plus the family may not be keen on the idea of the young man being taken out of the workforce for eight years only to receive wages considerably less than what he could expect in a secular profession that required an equal amount of education.
Likewise, in Venezuela even the Roman Catholic Church does not support the vast network of parochial schools that one sees in the United States.
Then there is in Latin America the wide cultural gap between those who have received some form of higher education and those who have not. This gap exists to some extent in the United States between those who have gone from high school to four-year liberal arts colleges and classmates who ended their formal education with a high school diploma or maybe two years at a technical college or business school, but the difference in Venezuela and other Latin American countries is much more pronounced. Young people who have left their rural village or urban slum for the university may find it very difficult to reassimilate into their old community.
The TEE alternative is to offer theological training to people already recognized as leaders within their communities without requiring them to change their place of residence or abandon their means of earning a living. The students are given printed materials to study on their own time and meet periodically with an instructor to discuss and review what should have been learned. The student can take as many courses as desired and advance at his or her own pace. Involvement with a local congregation is supposed to provide the opportunity for practical application of the knowledge acquired.
Over the past 45 years, the Juan de Frias Theological Institute has offered theological education by extension to all interested parties, with the proviso that one must complete the more basic courses before continuing to a more advanced level. This approach has proved successful in providing laypeople with the basic grounding in Christian doctrine that they may not have received as children or teenagers.
As a method of training pastors, TEE has proved to have a number of shortcomings:
It assumes an extraordinary degree of self-discipline on the part of the pastoral candidate, assuming that he will devote himself to daily study for an indefinite period while working to support himself and his family, and assuming leadership responsibilities within a local congregation. The result is a high drop-out rate as students become discouraged by these demands. I should also note that in Venezuela it is, in the first place, quite difficult to find a) a job that b) pays enough to support a family while c) allowing one enough free time for night courses and church activities.
The Lutheran Church of Venezuela is struggling to fill its existing pulpits in the face of an urgent need for pastors to plant new churches. Doors are open that probably will not remain so permanently. Yet training pastors solely by TEE has proven extremely time-consuming. The historical average for achieving the training needed for the pastoral ministry by means of Juan de Frias TEE courses is 13 years.
The TEE approach does not promote a sense of dedication to the pastoral office. Jesus told Peter, Andrew and the rest to leave their fishermen's nets and follow Him to the ends of the earth, if need be. He also said that heeding His call might well mean leaving family and friends behind (Mark 10:28-31, Lucas 9:59-62). He did not say, “Stay in Capernaum where you can witness to the people with whom you feel most comfortable when you have the time.” According to a Lutheran understanding of mission, not every Christian is called to be a missionary, but all pastors are called to be missionaries wherever the Lord may lead them. It is the responsibility of the whole church to send pastors to preach and (the sacraments, even into the poorest and most remote areas.
While not an inherent flaw in the strategy of theological education by extension, another problem the Lutheran Church of Venezuela must consider is this: LCMS World Missions withdrew nearly all of its ordained missionaries from Venezuela in 2003. Theodore Krey, the last LCMS-sponsored theological educator in Venezuela, will leave in January 2009. The Lutheran Church of Venezuela lacks the financial resources to support theological educators whose only task is to travel regularly to the far corners of the country to teach theological extension courses as the LCMS missionaries did.
Starting in 2006, the Juan de Frias Theological Institute has attempted to balance its TEE offerings with a program of resident or semi-resident study in a central location for pastoral candidates. Eventually this program will be supplemented by regional centers for theological education which will not only serve to teach basic doctrine to the laity, but also recruit pastoral candidates. One of our goals is to establish La Caramuca Lutheran Mission as one of these regional centers.
I began taking Juan de Frias courses during my first year in Venezuela as I realized my continued presence in Venezuela would require at least the capacity to teach Bible classes in Spanish. At first I did not seek the responsibilities of the pastoral office, but eventually I realized that our mission in La Caramuca would require the attention of a resident pastor and that I was the most likely candidate for the position. So it was a great blessing when I was invited by the national church to participate in the pastoral study program in 2007. The program requires a five-year commitment: one year of intensive, resident study; a year of vicarage; and three more years of attending seminars in Caracas and other locations.
This program has allowed me to study for the ministry without interrupting the development of our Lutheran school in western Venezuela.
Over the past five and a half years in Venezuela, I have had the privilege of receiving instruction from the following visiting profesors:
Mark Braden, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, Cleghorn, Wisconsin, and a Greek tutor at the Fort Wayne seminary.
Paul Brink and Henry Witte, both former missionaries to Venezuela currently serving Latino missions in Iowa.
I am grateful to these people and also to Phil Bickel, another former missionary pastor to Venezuela, and Dale Saville, agricultural missionary in eastern Venezuela, who awakened my interest in mission work as a second career and in Venezuela as a mission field.
One of my favorite hymns is "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken" by John Newton (he also wrote "Amazing Grace"). The first verse goes like this:
Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God. He whose Word cannot be broken, Formed thee for His own abode. On the Rock of Ages founded, What can shake thy sure repose? By salvation's walls surrounded, Thou may'st smile at all thy foes.
Of course we are by salvation's walls surrounded in La Caramuca, but now by a wall of masonry as well. It lacks only metal gates, which we expect to have installed in the next couple of weeks. The entire mission is now enclosed.
Despite a generous donation toward this project, it has strained our budget to continue. This has been due to the steadily rising costs of materials and labor in this inflationary economy. Nevertheless, we have pressed on for three reasons:
First, the more we improve the property, the more we must control access to prevent petty theft and vandalism (somebody stole our parrot a few weeks ago!).
Second, for the sake of the children. We have encouraged them to visit us and use our property as a playground. But up to now we have not been able to prevent them from doing so when we are absent and therefore unable to supervise them. To avoid accidental injuries (and there have been some close calls), we must establish a physical barrier.
Third, the wall gives the mission a more "institutional" appearance and helps convince the community of our intention to serve over the long term. Just down the block stands an empty building that had been a Pentecostal church. It did quite a few good works in the community for the two years that it was in operation, but the doors have been closed for seven years now. Pentecostal churches, especially the "house churches" rise and fall like mushrooms. One of our big challenges is to assure everyone that our mission (God willing) will not be like those of the past: here today, gone tomorrow.
Wedding of Ted and Rebecca Krey
On August 30, 2008, Luz María and I attended the wedding of Pastor Ted Krey and his wife, Rebecca, at La Fortaleza Lutheran Church in Maracay. They had been married in Canada, but this ceremony was for all their Venezuelan friends who could not attend the first one.
The service followed the common liturgy that has been adopted by the Lutheran Church of Venezuela. I might note that the closing hymn was a Spanish version of "Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee", a hymn set to the fourth and final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, commonly known as the "Ode to Joy". This is a very popular piece of classical music in Venezuela. You frequently hear it on the radio and high school bands often play it.
"Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee", was written by Henry J. van Dyke, and first was published in the 1911 Presbyterian Hymnal. The first stanza in English goes like this:
Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love; Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above. Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away; Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!
This is the Spanish version:
Jubilosos, te adoramos, Dios de gloria y Salvador. Nuestras vidas te entregamos como se abre al sol la flor. Ahuyenta nuestras males y tristezas, oh Jesús. Danos bienes celestiales. Llénanos de gozo y luz.
Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets
Really, it's:
בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ
But your mileage may vary in regard to Hebrew fonts and Web browsers. The more familiar English translation is, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). We dashed to Maracay for the wedding August 30, then returned to La Caramuca that evening so that I could preach in Corpus Christi Sunday morning and we could lead our Sunday school in the afternoon. Then Sunday night we boarded the bus for Caracas to attend a week-long intensive study of Genesis. The course was taught by Pastor Mark Braden of Zion Lutheran Church, Cleghorn, Wisconsin. We studied the text word by word in the original language, which means we did not get that far even for an overview, only to chapter 17.
Luz María and I took the course together, which was a lot fun. But I had something of an advantage in pronouncing the guttural Hebrew, since Spanish does have many sounds made deep in the throat. I cannot roll my r's the way Venezuelans do, though.We reviewed the many foundations of the New Testament in Genesis, starting with the original Messianic prophecy (Genesis 3:15).
We also looked at Noah's Flood as a prefiguring of holy baptism (1 Peter 3:21), and Pentecost and the Great Commission as reversals of the Tower of Babel (in the Genesis episode, humanity was cursed with a confusion of tongues and dispersed to many parts of the world; at Pentecost, people gathered from the far corners of the Roman Empire heard the Gospel proclaimed in their own language, and in the final verses of Matthew, chapter 28, Jesus sends his apostles out into the world to gather all the nations into the church).
We talked quite a bit about the mysterious figure of Melchizedek, priest of "God Most High" and king of the city that one day would be called Jerusalem. In Genesis 14, it is written that Melchizedek "brought out bread and wine" and blessed God and Abraham. Not only did Abraham accept the blessing, he offered Melchizedek a tithe of all that he had taken from the petty kings that he defeated in the process of rescuing his wayward nephew, Lot.
Later the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews would call Jesus Christ "high priest after the order of Melchizedek", both high priest and king forever. In Psalm 110, King David wrote, "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand...You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek". This psalm is referenced by our Lord Himself in Matthew 22: 41-46:
"Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions."
In Psalm 110, David refers to One who will be a king greater than himself, that is to say, the Messiah of Israel, seated at the right hand of Jehovah. As we learned in our course on the Psalms, taught by Pastor Rudy Blank, to be seated at the right hand of a Middle Eastern king meant to be entrusted with the full confidence and authority of that king. David also prophecies that the Messiah would be both a king and high priest, like Melchizedek.
In 2 Samuel 24:25 we read that David offered up sacrifices to God in the manner of a priest. When King Saul tried this, his sacrifices were not acceptable to God, because at that point God had withdrawn His favor from the faithless and disobedient Saul and would direct Samuel to anoint David as God's chosen king. The word "Messiah" means "anointed one". Thus, to Jewish believers in the first century, to call Jesus a high priest after the order of Melchizedek meant that although he was not a descendant of Aaron, according to the priesthood of the Old Testament, as the promised king of the lineage of David, he could offer sacrifices to God as did Melchizedek, priest of God and king of Jerusalem in Abraham's day, and as did King David himself. Like His ancestor, David, Jesus was both priest and king -- and prophet. Although David's identity as a prophet is not emphasized in the Old Testament, Psalm 110 and other psalms contain Messianic prophecies.
Congress of Lutheran Educators
Luz María took the final exam for the Genesis course early and left Thursday night with Elsy de Machado for the annual Congress of Lutheran Educators in Barquisimeto. Luz María is national coordinator for Christian education for the Lutheran Church of Venezuela. In Barquisimeto she presented a slide show on the results of this year's vacation Bible school program. The highest levels of attendance were found in La Caramuca (92 children in total) and Tierra de Gracia Lutheran Farm in Monagas (208 children). Volunteers from St. Louis, Missouri, and several young men in the "seminarista" program were involved in VBS on the farm.
On Friday evening I returned to La Caramuca to prepare for preaching and leading the service at Corpus Christi on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008.
"I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well." Romans 16:1-2
The word translated as servant in the verse above is the Greek word diakonos, from which is derived deacon and deaconess. The Apostle Paul refers to himself and Timothy as "deacons" or servants of Jesus Christ in Philippians 1:11. However, Acts 6 records the establishment of the diaconate as a special ministry of service within the Church, distinct from the pastoral ministry and intended to allow the apostles to concentrate on preaching and prayer. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was a deacon. The requirements to serve in this ministry are described in Paul's first letter to Timothy, chapter 3.
Romans 16:1-2 is regarded as evidence that women served in this ministry in the early Church. In addition to this Scriptural reference, Christian deaconesses are mentioned by Pliny the Younger in a early second-century letter to the Roman Emperor Trajan.
The office of deaconess was formally recognized at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. The responsibilities of deaconesses in the post-apostolic to medieval periods included assisting in the baptism of adult women, leading prayer services for women, instruction of catechumens, caring for the sick, and, in some areas, administering the sacrament of Holy Communion to women who were ill, to nuns, and to young children when a pastor was not available.
The female diakonate had gradually disappeared as a distinct ministry within Western Christendom by the 6th Century and within the Eastern Orthodox Church by the 11th Century. However, interest was renewed as a spiritual revival and rapid social change swept Europe and the United States in the 19th Century, prompting women to seek ways of dedicating themselves to the Lord's service. Theodor Fliedner and his wife, Friedericke Munster, opened the first Lutheran deaconess motherhouse in Kaiserwerth on the Rhine in 1836. Fifty years later, there were over 5,000 deaconesses in Europe.
Within the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, deaconesses have served in a variety of roles since the 1830s. In 1919, the Lutheran Deaconess Association was formed and assumed responsibility for the formation of deaconesses wishing to serve in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Deaconesses were trained at the Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where they received training as nurses. Later, in 1943, the program moved to Valparaiso University.
As time went on, the training of deaconesses evolved and deaconesses no longer needed to be trained as nurses or social workers. Those wanting to serve in parish settings were trained in spiritual care and were educated in the scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions, so they could teach and assist the pastors by providing both spiritual and human care to those in need. Both LCMS seminaries (Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne) offer a master’s degree-level deaconess track for women with undergraduate "pre-deaconess" courses offered at universities within the LCMS "Concordia" system.
So why am I telling you this? Because the Lutheran Church of Venezuela has a similar training program for deaconesses. In fact, it is the largest deaconess program of any of the LCMS partner-churches in Latin America. Currently there are 65 women studying to be deaconesses through extension courses offered by the Juan de Frias Theological Institute and nine Venezuelan women actively serving as deaconesses. Much of the rapid development of this program is due to the work of Fort Wayne deaconess-missionaries Mireya Johnson and Rosie Gilbert, who although no longer serving in Venezuela, remain consultants to the program.
The two most highly trained deaconesses within the Lutheran Church of Venezuela are my wife, Luz Maria, and her friend from Caracas, Elsy de Machada. In fact, since these two have completed all of the four levels of theological education by extension offered by the Juan de Frias Theological Institute, there is no one here with a higher level of theological education than Luz Maria and Elsy.
Luz Maria is actively serving as a deaconess through her involvement with our preschool and mission project in La Caramuca. Elsy, a member of La Paz Lutheran Church, Caracas, is involved with Katerina Lutero (Katherine Luther) Preschool.
Because of their qualifications, Luz Maria and Elsy have been named coordinators of the deaconess program in Venezuela. They met February 27 with Olga Groh, director of deaconess programs in Latin America for LCMS World Missions. Olga is the wife of Dr. Jorge Groh, Latin America region director for LCMS World Missions. The meeting went very well and Mrs. Groh was favorably impressed with the work that has been done in Venezuela.
Afterward Luz Maria returned to Barinas, but I and the other men studying in Caracas traveled with the Grohs to Colonia Tovar, an ethnic German community in the mountains north of the city. The Grohs are natives of Argentina and descendants of German-Russians who settled there.
Colonia Tovar was founded in 1843. Agustin Codazzi, an Italian explorer, geographer and close friend of Simon Bolivar, raised the money to transplant farmers from the Black Forest in Venezuela. The idea was that the highly efficient family-farming practices of the Germans would greatly improve Venezuela's agricultural economy. Unfortunately the plan did not work as intended because the Germans made themselves at home in a remote valley and did not mix with the general population.
For more than 100 years, Colonia Tovar's only connection with the outside world was a steep, rugged dirt road up into the mountains. Because of the Germans' farming expertise, their community remained largely self-sufficient during this time, and because of their isolation, their German language and culture was preserved.
Then in the 1970s, a blacktop highway was built from Caracas to Colonia Tovar and the community has become a tourist attraction. In Colonia Tovar today, you can enjoy a plate of German sausage and potato salad in an outdoor restaurant while "oompa oompa" music plays in the background. We talked to a young woman running a strudel stand. She had natural blonde hair and blue eyes, both extremely rare in Venezuela. Her parents could speak German, she said, but the only language she knew was Spanish. The old ways are gradually disappearing despite the incentive of the tourist trade.
The Roman Catholic Church of St. Martin of Tours remains at the center of Colonia Tovar. The street leading to the church actually is a "via crucis", with the stations of the Cross at various points along the way. The town cemetery is up on a hill with every grave facing toward the church visible below. The church has a large parish school attached, something you do not often see in Venezuela.
I could not help but think of the last time I was in a similar setting, especially when I saw a sign for a travel agency called "Regenwald Tours". In contemporary German, "regenwald" means "rainforest", but many years ago it was the name of the village on the Rega River where my great-great-grandfather was born (in other words, "the wood by the Rega River"). My ancestors on my father's side lived in Pomerania, which lies along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. It was once the home of Goths (with a capital "G"), then Slavs, then Germans, and was ruled at various times by the kings of Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Poland. Today Germany claims Pomerania west of the Oder River while the territory east of the Oder, including the Rega River, is considered part of Poland. The largest city, once known as Danzig, is now called Gdansk.
In the early 1800s, Pomerania was part of the Kingdom of Prussia. It was the will of the King Frederick Wilhelm III that all the Protestant churches in his realm merge into one state-controlled church. My ancestors were among the "Old Lutherans", who remained faithful to the Lutheran Confessions and refused fellowship not based on doctrinal unity. As their resistance grew, the king stepped up persecution of the Old Lutherans, confiscating their property and sending soldiers to hunt down people worshipping in the traditional Lutheran way on Sunday mornings, and carry them off to prison. (There were populations of Roman Catholics, Jews and Mennonites within Prussia at this time and the king had set up agencies to control their affairs. However, these groups were apparently not large enough to worry the king. It was the Lutherans who really put the bee in his bonnet.)
The persecution resulted in thousands fleeing to the United States of America. My great-great-grandparents eventually became part of a group that settled on the western shore of Lake Michigan and named their community Freistadt. (The geography of eastern Wisconsin is similar to that of Pomerania with Lake Michigan substituting for the Baltic Sea.) Their leader was Heinrich von Rohr, who had served with distinction as a captain in the Prussian army. He was of noble blood, with a pedigree that reached back to German knights of the Crusades. But von Rohr had been stripped of his rank and medals for having his firstborn child baptized by a Lutheran pastor rather than a minister of the king's state church. In time the former Captain von Rohr became Pastor von Rohr, and the church my great-great-grandparents helped found, Trinity Lutheran Church of Freistadt, remains the oldest existing Lutheran congregation in Wisconsin.
Freistadt is now part of the Milwaukee suburb of Mequon. When I lived in the Milwaukee area, I used to go to Freistadt every July 4 when the community would have an all-day celebration of their cultural heritage and the religious freedom they have enjoyed for generations as U.S. citizens. A group called the Pommersche Tanzdeel (roughly "Pomeranian Dance Company") would perform traditional folk dances with the women dressed in cone-shaped hats and flowing gowns, and the men in the tunics and pantaloons typical of Pomerania in the 1800s.
The Independence Day festivities would culminate with the raising of the U.S. flag in the the town square and a 21-gun salute by local members of the VFW and American Legion.
In 1989 I attended Trinity-Freistadt's 150th anniversary (founded in 1839, the congregation has been part of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod since 1848). There was a large wall completely covered with photos of the children of the congregation who had become LCMS pastors and teachers. Among them I found a picture of my great-grandfather, Louis Ernst, who left Wisconsin to become the pastor of congregations in Iowa, Texas and Nebraska.
The point of this digression being, that although the language and customs of my great-great-grandparents are, like the language and customs of Venezuela, foreign to me, I am grateful that previous generations of my family were able to pass on the most precious part of our heritage, a common confession of faith. Also it is clear, as I study the Lutheran Confessions in yet another language, that the enemies of truth and freedom are always with us, and if one is not willing to suffer all, even death, for what one believes to be the truth, one will not enjoy freedom for very long, either. And I give thanks to God that His Word and His Spirit abides with us always.
We're back on the farm after an eventful week in Caracas. In fact, Luz Maria and I have moved out of an apartment in Maturin and are living on the farm.
There are two reasons for this. First, and most important, is that we are moving forward with the farm's evangelism program and Luz Maria, who is qualified as a deaconess in the Lutheran Church of Venezuela, is an important part of it. She begins every day with prayer and Bible study for the workers on the farm and is making visits to people in the surrounding communities. Today she is in Quebrada Seca. Later this week she will be teaching Sunday school classes at the farm.
Luz Maria will work closely with the farm's pastor once that position is filled. There are three candidates under consideration. Soon there will be a special account for contributions to the evangelism program.
The other reason we have moved to the farm is the increasing need for security on the property. The farm looks more well-tended and prosperous every day. Unfortunately, that means it is becoming more of a target for thieves. There must be as many people as possible on the property at all times.
We have already lost a portable irrigation pump due to a security lapse. For the first and only time it was left in the river while not in operation. The workers near the river left for lunch and when they returned, it was gone.
Despite this problem, it is very peaceful here. Compared to the turmoil in Caracas, it's like a different country here. The protests and marches are something we watch on television, not part of everyday life. While Caracas might be compared to New York City and Washington, D.C., combined, Monagas is Venezuela's answer to Iowa. Maturin is as wild and wicked as Des Moines. The other day as I was hoeing some weeds in front of the farmhouse, Rafael, an older fellow who is a frequent visitor to the farm, stopped by to talk. He was eager to share his faith in Jesus Christ with me. I asked him if he believed Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the whole world. He said that he did and that because of that fact all who believe have the assurance of eternal life. But Rafael was quick to assure me that he was Roman Catholic, not "evangelical."
In Venezuela, the word "evangelical" means almost anything that isn't Catholic, including non-Christian cults like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Most Venezuelans will tell you that they're Catholic if you ask them, but unlike Rafael have only the vaguest idea of what Jesus' death on the cross might mean. To them, being Catholic means you might have a priest perform a ritual on appropriate occasions and that's about it.
On the other hand, the most common alternative to Catholicism are independent "evangelical" churches that are as far from being Catholic as you could imagine. They rely heavily on emotionalism and subjective experience, have leaders with little or no pastoral training, and often are close to being cults. These churches also impose a lot of rules on their members, such as no drinking, no dancing, and women must wear skirts that fall below the knee. No makeup, either, ladies.
This is, of course, largely a reaction to the prevalence of alcohol abuse and sexual infidelity in Venezuela and the enormous damage to family relations due to such things. But it also means to the average Venezuelan, the term "evangelical" has the connotation of a religious nut, the kind of person who knocks on your door early in the morning and tells you exactly what kind of fun you can't have.
One has to take all these things into account when sharing one's faith in Venezuela, not putting them down for beliefs that you might not agree with, but affirming them when like Rafael they realize what is truly important. And, of course, pray that more might come to know what "evangelio" or Gospel really means.
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