"So that we may no longer be children,tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ..." Ephesians 4:14-15
"Aren’t they
all Catholic?”
People sometimes ask
this question about Lutheran mission work in Venezuela or, perhaps,
Latin America in general. The thought is that, since we Lutherans
regard Roman Catholics as Christians at least in some sense, and
since most, if not all, Venezuelans identify as Catholics, should we
not concentrate our evangelistic efforts on those parts of the world
where there is not a Christian majority?
A short answer to
the first question is no, they’re not all Catholic. Not any more.
Fifty years ago,
when I prepared a report on Venezuela for my sixth-grade teacher,
nine out of ten Venezuelans would have identified as Roman Catholics.
Even in those days, however, less than 10 percent attended Mass even
once a month. Even today the Catholicism we usually deal with here is
a form of cultural Christianity. That means Christianity, or a
certain form of it, has had an impact on the history and way of life
of a tribe or nation. Most people at least pay lip service to its
teachings and values, if only out of loyalty to family and country.
But do they faithfully apply these teachings and values to their
daily lives? Well, maybe, maybe not. Do they know Jesus Christ as
Lord and Savior? Again, an open question.
But times are
changing in Venezuela. According to the most
recent census figures, 71 percent identify as Roman Catholics and
19
percent as Protestants. The word, Protestant, is not used as much
as “evangélico” or evangelical. Either Protestant or evangelical
is a catch-all term that takes in quite a variety of beliefs. Most
evangélicos are neo-Pentecostals, which has been the
fastest-growing religious group in Latin America for some time.
Some of these belong to the Oneness
Pentecostal movement, which denies the doctrine of the Trinity.
Evangélico may even mean Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and
Seventh-Day Adventists, all of which are active in our area (there is
a Kingdom Hall in La Caramuca).
Statue of Maria Lionza by Phil Bickel
Besides the
permutations of Christianity, there are cults of non-Christian
origin. Some are homegrown, like the
cult of Maria Lionza. Santeria began in Cuba, but has
flourished in Venezuela in recent years. There is an
Islamic presence in Venezuela, as well as various types of New
Agery.
So Venezuela is not
a contentedly Catholic country. Even if it were, as Lutherans we
would consider it part of our confession to proclaim the Word of God
in all of its purity here. The Roman Catholic Church may not be as
far off base as some of the other religious options that face
Venezuelans, but the fundamental issues of faith, grace and church
authority that fired the debates of the Reformation still burn today. Not only that, but there are many more winds of false doctrine in our world. Our job as missionaries is to anchor weak Christians in the truth of the Scriptures, that they may be able to discern sound and unsound doctrine. To this end, the unity of all believers in heaven, even if such unity cannot be achieved on earth.
What’s more, those Venezuelans who believe that the Lutheran
Confessions are the most faithful exposition of the apostolic faith
face a practical problem: Throughout most of Venezuela, there are no
congregations that subscribe to the Book of Concord. So if they have
to move to find work, they may not find a confessional Lutheran
congregation anywhere near their new home.
So, the answer to the second question is that even in countries that have a nominal Christian majority, there is much work to
be done.
Solar panels
on-line
On July 22, we
suffered with most of the rest of the country through the third
nationwide blackout since March. We continue to experience local
blackouts of varying lengths on a daily basis. On Sunday, August 4,
we remembered in our congregational prayers the victims of the El
Paso, Texas, shooting. However, because we were in the middle of an
18-hour power outage, we did not find out about the Dayton, Ohio,
shooting, until after our morning service.
However, thanks to
the generous financial support of our donors, we have installed a
solar power backup system. Photovoltaic panels on the roof and a bank
of batteries below now maintain our security system and emergency
lighting. We also can recharge our cellphones to keep our lines of
communication open. For reasons of security, I will not post photos
publicly, but if you are interested, I will send some by private
e-mail.
By the grace of God and the generosity of supporters in North America, we soon will have built a playground for the preschool. We thank everyone who helped us raise the funds in time for the new school year.
The playground includes a swingset that we purchased from a metalworking shop in the nearby town of Barinitas, and a wooden clubhouse/jungle gym built by woodworkers also from Barinitas.
There were two men working on the wooden structure for a couple of days, then Señor Artilio started showing up by himself. So two of the youth from our mission, Sandro Perez and Pedro Santana, began helping him.
The playground equipment already has seen a lot of use and the new school year hasn't even started yet. We also have been able to do some needed maintenance work on our water system.
Five to be confirmed
God willing, we will confirm five on Reformation Sunday, Oct. 31, 2010. The young people who have been faithfully attending confirmation class include:
Karelis Santana;
Pedro Santana;
Jeison Arellano;
Jhonny Torres;
Jimmy Perez
Trip to Trujillo
As summer vacation time draws to a close, Luz Maria and I took a couple of days off and traveled to the city of Trujillo, capital of the state of Trujillo, the smallest of Venezuela's three Andes Mountain states. The city, situated 3,134 feet above sealevel, features many historic landmarks. It was in Trujillo that Simon Bolivar issued a "Declaration of War to the Death" against Spain in 1813. Actually he meant to the death or until Spain recognized Venezuela as an independent nation, whichever came first. Fortunately, it was the second option that came first and there also is a monument in Trujillo that marks the spot where Bolivar and Pablo Morillo, the leader of the royalist troops declared an armistice in 1820.
Luz Maria and I spent an afternoon enjoying Trujillo's many beautiful parks and plazas, and narrow streets winding between houses in the classic Spanish colonial style (the city is named after Trujillo, Spain). The next morning we visited the city's major tourist attraction, la Virgen de la Paz (the Virgin of Peace) monument which stands above the city at an elevation of 5,249 feet above sealevel. The statue of the Virgin Mary holding a dove is 153.28 feet high, a little more than 2 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty (not counting the Statue of Liberty's foundation and pedestal, which add approximately 150 more feet to the height of the monument). The Virgin of Peace was built in 1983 according to a design by sculptor Manuel de la Fuente and plans by engineer Rosendo Camargo.
The Virgin of Peace is the object of religious devotion (the state government, which maintains the site, reported 11,000 visitors during Holy Week 2010) and there is a Roman Catholic chapel housed inside of a geodesic dome at the base of the statue.
But if you are not into veneration of the Virgin Mary, the statue allows a panoramic view of the surrounding area. We entered at the base and climbed the stairs all the way to the top (there is an elevator as well, but it currently is not in working condition). There are four observation ports along the way and in the statue's head you can climb a narrow ladder to peek out her eyes. Luz Maria climbed the ladder and found the "eyeball" view really wasn't worth the effort.
The climb to the top was a bit of exercise, but the stairwell was comfortably wide, much wider than the stairwell in the tower of Holy Hill Basilica in Hubertus, Wisconsin, at least as I remember it from 20 years ago. Holy Hill, located 30 miles northwest of Milwaukee, is the highest peak in Wisconsin's Kettle Moraine region. The top of the hill itself is 1,300 feet above sealevel, while the tower rises another 192 feet. A favorite fall pastime for Milwaukeeans is to drive to Holy Hill when the trees of the Kettle Moraine are changing colors, sampling fresh apple cider from farms along the way.
One reason we chose a trip to Trujillo is because preschool plans include teaching the children about the 23 states of Venezuela, starting with their home state of Barinas and continuing with the neighboring mountain states. So we will have plenty of pictures of Barinas, Merida and Trujillo with which to begin.
Although we have a small group of people that have been baptized and confirmed as Lutherans, our mission actually serves a somewhat wider community. Because there are so few schools with any kind of Christian orientation here, some of the people who send their children to our preschool are devout Roman Catholics or Pentecostalists. The father of one of our little girls is the pastor of a Pentecostalist church, while two of our preschool teachers are Catholic (ideally, all of our teachers would be Lutheran, but Venezuelan law dictates that the preschool have a certain number of state-certified teachers and there are not that many state-certified Lutheran teachers here).
Of course we do not demand that faithful members of other churches join ours in order to send their children to our preschool. Attendance at our Sunday services is alway be invitation. Therefore, we strive to maintain a solidly Lutheran position in doctrine and practice while respecting the beliefs of those who subscribe to other confessions.
The preschool will be closed for Holy Week, therefore we are using this week to teach the preschool children that Holy Week means something other than vacation time. One of our teachers, Yosaira, had approached me with her huge family Bible. It was a "Catholic" Bible, including the "deuterocanonical" books in its Old Testament and some beautiful color-plate illustrations of the traditional Stations of the Cross. Yosaira thought perhaps we could scan the illustrations and use them to teach the children about the events of Good Friday.
The Stations of the Cross were first mentioned in writings from the fifth and sixth centuries as a series of numbered stops for pilgrims to meditate and pray while retracing the Via Dolorosa, or Christ's path from the Garden of Gethsemane to Golgotha, in Jerusalem. Supposedly these were places where Jesus paused on His way to the Cross, except for the last four which involve Him actually being nailed to the cross, dying, and being taken down and laid in the tomb. Eventually a list of 14 "stations" became the accepted norm and every year to this day hundreds of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem follow this pattern in following the Via Dolorosa.
Somewhat later, since relatively few people had the time or money to travel to Jerusalem, it became a devotional practice to recreate the path to the Cross with paintings or crosses along a circumscribed route in a church or elsewhere. For example, in Colonia Tovar, a German-Catholic enclave in the mountains north of Caracas, the main street of the town is marked with crosses representing the Stations of the Cross as it winds down to its end at St. Martin of Tours Church.
The imagery of the Stations of the Cross have provided inspiration for Christian art for centuries. Not only paintings and sculpture, but also Christian theater, as the European "Passion Play" tradition incorporates dramatizations of the various stations. This includes Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ," which is essentially a Passion Play on film (see postscript on Passion Plays).
However, there is a problem with the traditional Stations of the Cross: Not all of them are really part of any of the New Testament narratives. The traditional 14 Stations of the Cross are as follows:
Jesus is condemned to death
Jesus is given his cross
Jesus falls the first time
Jesus meets His mother
Simon of Cyrene carries the cross
St. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
Jesus falls the second time
Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem
Jesus falls the third time
Jesus is stripped of His garments
Jesus is nailed to the cross
Jesus dies on the cross
Jesus' body is removed from the cross
Jesus is laid in the tomb and covered in incense
Only eight of these stations have clear Scriptural foundation. Numbers 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9 do not and the traditional representation of Jesus' body being placed in His mother's arms as it is lowered from the cross in number 13 is an embellishment of the New Testament story. The Roman Catholic Church today recognizes this and, as I pointed out to Yosaira, in 1991 Pope John Paul II approved an alternative form of the Stations of the Cross that is completely consistent with the Scriptures. This form also was approved by Benedict XVI in 2007. This is the new pattern:
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested
Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin
Jesus is denied by Peter
Jesus is judged by Pilate
Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns
Jesus takes up His cross
Jesus is helped by Simon to carry His cross
Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
Jesus is crucified
Jesus promises His kingdom to the repentant thief
Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other
Jesus dies on the cross
Jesus is laid in the tomb
Jesus rises from the dead on the third day
I told Yosaira I would have no problem with using this form of the Stations of the Cross. We used most of the pictures from her Bible and I filled in the gaps with graphics from the Wisconsin Synod Web site.
There is another problem with the Roman Catholic interpretation of the Stations of the Cross and that is this form of devotion still is considered an "act of reparation" or, in essence, a meritorious work.
"Reparation is a theological concept closely connected with those of atonement and satisfaction, and thus belonging to some of the deepest mysteries of the Christian Faith. It is the teaching of that Faith that man is a creature who has fallen from an original state of justice in which he was created, and that through the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of the Son of God, he has been redeemed and restored again in a certain degree to the original condition. Although God might have condoned men's offences gratuitously if He had chosen to do so, yet in His Providence He did not do this; He judged it better to demand satisfaction for the injuries which man had done Him. It is better for man's education that wrong doing on his part should entail the necessity of making satisfaction. This satisfaction was made adequately to God by the Sufferings, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ, made Man for us. By voluntary submission to His Passion and Death on the Cross, Jesus Christ atoned for our disobedience and sin. He thus made reparation to the offended majesty of God for the outrages which the Creator so constantly suffers at the hands of His creatures. We are restored to grace through the merits of Christ's Death, and that grace enables us to add our prayers, labours, and trials to those of Our Lord "and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ" (Colossians 1:24). We can thus make some sort of reparation to the justice of God for our own offences against Him, and by virtue of the Communion of the Saints, the oneness and solidarity of the mystical Body of Christ, we can also make satisfaction and reparation for the sins of others."
Certainly Colossians 1:24 read in context does not support the above assertions. Paul writes in Colossians of the redemptive work of Christ as being sufficient to atone for all the sins of all men. In verse 24, he says that he is able to endure "the sufferings of Christ", that is, the difficulties that he, as a preacher of the Word, experiences above and beyond the normal problems of life for the sake of Christ, as being something that will benefit Christ's body, the Church. If he, Paul, is able to endure these sufferings, then perhaps the Church will be spared some suffering for the sake of Christ. But as in baptism Christians share in the resurrection of Christ, they also will share some of the same sufferings as Christ (persecution and rejection by the world). In no sense, however, do our sufferings add anything, or need to add anything, to the price Christ paid for our sins on the cross.
I addressed this issue in an introductory talk to parents and children on Monday and again in my presentation of the pictures on Wednesday, saying that our worship and praise during Holy Week were not required of us to earn His love and favor, but rather were our response to what Jesus did for us on the cross. Through His suffering and death on the cross He paid the full price for our sins and that therefore we are justified before God through faith in Him, not through any of our works. Therefore, the Stations of the Cross ares simply a tool for us to remember and appreciate Christ's sacrifice for us.
No preschool next week, but our Holy Week schedule includes services on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Postscript on Passion Plays
When Luz Maria and I visited my family in South Dakota in 2006, we stopped at the Spearfish Amphitheater in Spearfish, S.D., which for nearly 70 years was the main venue for the Black Hills Passion Play. The Black Hills Passion Play was presented on a 350-foot outdoor stage with seating for 6,000 people. Performances were Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays during the summer months.
In 1932 a troupe of Passion Players from Lünen, Germany, where a Passion Play had been presented since 1242, began touring the United States. One of them was Josef Meier, a seventh-generation Passion Player. Their script was in German, which meant their engagements were limited to theaters and churches frequented by German-speaking immigrants. Because of political and economic conditions in Germany, Meier decided to stay in the United States. He had the script translated into English, hired American actors to replace the German cast, and while touring various towns, began looking for a permanent home for his Passion Play. Spearfish was chosen in part because of the site's excellent natural acoustics. The amphitheater was built in 1939. During its heyday, the Black Hills Passion Play company not only made special appearances throughout the United States and Canada, but in 1953 established a winter home in Lake Wales, Florida, where the play was presented until 1998.
There were no performances scheduled for the winter of 2006, but Luz Maria and I were given a personal tour of the Black Hills Passion Play Museum by Guido Della Vecchia, husband of Johanna Meier, Josef's daughter. Guido spoke Italian while Luz Maria spoke Spanish, and they were able to communicate to a limited extent.
Genesis Noeli Marquina Villamizar was baptized June 29, 2008, in La Caramuca. I assisted Pastor Miguelángel Pérez in this, the 10th baptism here since we started our mission project in 2004.
Genesis, who is one of the children enrolled in our preschool, was born in 2004. It is sobering to realize that many of the preschool children were not yet born when I first visited Venezuela in 2002. Of course, this includes Luz María's three youngest grandchildren. Her fourth-oldest grandchild, Oriana, was an infant when I met Luz María. Now Oriana is nearly six years old.
Sponsors at the baptism included two relatives, Angelmiro Camacho and Ana Julia de Toro Peña, Yepci, Luz María's oldest daughter, and Eduardo, my partner-vicar. There were more than 30 people, children and adults, present for the baptism that Sunday afternoon. Eduardo was not actually present, since he took Miguelángel's place, preaching in Barquisimeto. But Genesis loves Eduardo, so we made sure his name was on the baptismal certificate.
Noel and Jefferson, the two older brothers of Genesis, have been faithfully attending our Sunday school. The boys received the sacrament of holy baptism as infants from a Roman Catholic priest, but Genesis never did, due to the influence of a relative who converted to Pentecostalism.
For hundreds of years, Venezuelans regarded baptism in a Roman Catholic church essentially as an insurance policy in case the Christian God turned out to have the last word after all. They were not helped in their understanding by Roman Catholic teaching which emphasizes the ritual of baptism as being efficacious in and of itself, apart from the Holy Spirit working within the heart and daily life of the believer.
Nevertheless, as Lutherans, we agree with Roman Catholics that God has instituted the sacrament of baptism as the visible means by which the believer receives the promise of eternal life in Christ and thus the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.
However, over the last 30 to 40 years, the influence of the Roman Catholic Church has waned in Latin America. This may be largely the result of a worldwide shortage of priests as well as a general dissatisfaction with established institutions due to the persistent wide gap between the rich and the poor in this part of the world. During this same period, most traditional Protestant churches have greatly reduced missionary efforts in Latin America, leaving the field open to Pentecostal/charismatic groups which teach that all may have direct access to the Holy Spirit apart from the authority of the inspired Scriptures and the sacraments instituted by Christ Himself.
Luther recognized the corrosive effect of this idea on any objective standard of faith when he said of the Zwickau Prophets, “They have swallowed the Holy Spirit, feathers and all.” Indeed, one of the most active groups in Venezuela today is the United Pentecostal Church, a “charismatic” body that denies the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity. Under the Pentecostal umbrella there are many other lesser-known heresies, generated by leaders who claim “apostolic” authority apart from either an ecclesiastical hierarchy or the Holy Scriptures.
And certainly Pentecostal theology fits in well with the syncretistic stew that is popular religion in Venezuela. The idea of daily supernatural revelations and interventions is very consistent with the practice of brujeria and espiritismo, as is the “health and prosperity” gospel which claims that if you pray hard enough, God will bless you with all of your earthly desires. In fact, this aspect of Pentecostalism may be the most popular of all here.
Finally, there is the notion that if you may receive a “baptism of the Spirit” apart from the visible means of grace, “water baptism” is not necessary at all, despite our Lord's command. We praise God that after hearing Luz María explain the blessing of holy baptisms to the mothers of our preschool children, Zoraida, Genesis' mother, decided she wanted this gift for her daughter. Eduardo and I, and finally Miguelángel, had further meetings with the family to explain what we believe about baptism, and the responsibilities of parents and sponsors.
Miguelángel also preached and administered the sacrament of the Lord's Supper that Sunday morning at Corpus Christi Lutheran Church in Barinas. I do not recall now under what circumstances I first meet Miguelángel. It seems he always has been in the picture. He is about the same age as Luz María's older daughters and is an old friend of theirs from national Lutheran youth gatherings. When Luz María and I were living on Tierra de Gracia Lutheran Farm in eastern Venezuela, Miguelángel came to visit us there.
He had been studying for the ministry for nearly the whole time I have known him. He was finally ordained March 30, 2008, and now serves as the pastor of two congregations, Cristo es Amor (Christ is Love) and El Paraiso (Paradise), in Barquisimeto. He originally was a member of Cristo es Amor.
The week before the baptism I attended a seminar in pastoral care in Caracas. Pastor Henry Witte led the seminar. He and his wife, Ruthie, served as missionaries in Venezuela for 20 years and for five years in Panama. They are back in the United States where Henry has accepted a call to Sioux City, Iowa.
The focus of the seminar was following the theology of the cross rather than the theology of glory in counseling the severely ill, the dying and the families of such people. The "health-and-prosperity gospel” is, of course, a form of the theology of glory, which says having a right relationship with God means gaining everything you want in this life. The theology of the cross, on the other hand, says suffering is part of living in a world marred by sin and that the point of the Christian life is not to avoid suffering, but to withstand the temptation to despair through the hope of life eternal.
I met the Wittes on my first visit to Venezuela six years ago. Ruthie led the children in vacation Bible school in Quebrada Seca, Monagas, in the “Padre Nuestro” song which we now are using to teach our preschool children the Lord's Prayer. This past week I recorded Eduardo and his brother, Francisco Rafael, singing “Padre Nuestro” and other songs for children to guitar accompaniment. Then I burned a CD to play in the preschool even on the days when Eduardo is not able to come to La Caramuca.
Listen to "Padre Nuestro".
We would ask you to remember in prayer the family of former missionary Rudy Blank and his wife, Ramona. Her father, Adrian Rivero, passed away this week. Adrian was one of the first national pastors in the Lutheran Church of Venezuela and remained a member of Principe de Paz (Prince of Peace) Lutheran Church in Sierra Caroni until his death.
She blurted out this plea after we had spent some time discussing the commandment to remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. We talked about why most Christians worship on Sunday, but she was still confused because the Seventh-Day Adventists (another group that is active in the Barinas area) insist with all sincerity that Saturday is the proper day of worship.
Our reply: The way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who became incarnate as a man to suffer and die for the sins of the whole world and be raised from the dead on the third day. The Bible testifies to this and we who call ourselves Lutherans consider the Bible to be the inspired Word of God and the final authority for all matters of faith. But we Lutherans have no new revelation from God and no secret key to the Scriptures. Understand first that Jesus died for your sins, study what the Scriptures have to say about Him and judge the teachings of all who claim to have the truth by that standard.
Understanding this woman's question and our reply requires an explanation of the spiritual situation in Venezuela.
The historical relationship between church and state in Venezuela is much different than that in the United States. One thing that fascinates Venezuelans about the U.S. is that there are so many thriving denominations, but none is the nation's official church. Luz Maria commented on this frequently during our visit to my homeland.
She also insisted specifically that I take a picture of a Baptist church. Why? To show her mother, who is a member of the Baptist church in Barinas, that Baptist churches in the U.S. have crosses prominently displayed outside their sanctuaries. Her mother's Baptist church does not have a cross displayed where passers-by can see because that would be too "Papist." That's another aspect of religion in Venezuela that I will explain in more detail.
One of the realities of the Spanish colonial period is that the Spaniards forced many native people to be baptized whether they were convinced of the truth of Christianity or not. One legacy of this period is that people here are baffled by the idea of total separation of church and state. Another legacy is widespread formal acceptance of Catholic Christianity but day-to-day practice of folk religion and witchcraft.
But over the last 100 years or so, Venezuela, much like the United States, has become a more secular society and traditional institutions, including the Catholic Church, have lost influence. Many people now live strictly for the pursuit of money, power and/or pleasure. Of course, these things, even when one is fortunate enough to have them, do not bring lasting joy in life, so there is great spiritual hunger as well. A great many things have moved in to fill this void. Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the New Age movement - they're all here and aggressively seeking converts.
But the most noteworthy trend has been the rapid rise of "evangelical" Christian churches over the last 20 to 30 years. According to Venezuelan government figures, up to 40 percent of the population in certain districts consider themselves "evangelical." This is not necessarily a positive development.
As I have mentioned before, the term "evangelical" is used as a much broader term here than in the United States. Often Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are often lumped into the category "evangelical" even though their doctrines as far outside Christianity as Islam and Buddhism. But even "evangelical" groups that are not as readily identifiable as non-Christian cults may be just as problematic.
Often developing from disillusionment with "cultural Catholicism," the evangelical churches often reject anything that might smack of Catholicism. Unfortunately, this means some of them throw out parts of Catholic tradition that are good. Most disturbing is when, while disdaining any centralized ecclesiastical authority, these churches will give unquestioned authority to their local pastor, who may be someone without much formal training but feels he has been "anointed by the Spirit" to preach. These preachers often "micro-manage" the lives of their followers, laying down all kinds of rules that they must obey (for examples, absolutely no alcohol or dancing for anyone, and for the ladies, no makeup or skirts cut above the knee).
Some people are attracted to this kind of thing, again out of reaction to the prevailing culture in which sexual immorality and alcohol and drug abuse are common. But many are not attracted to this kind of Christianity, and the message that nearly everyone receives is not the Gospel, but that one earns God's favor by good works.
So what are we trying to accomplish? To witness to what we believe about Jesus, teach those who will listen and point all toward the truth of Scripture.
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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