PHOTO:
Outdoor evangelistic punk concert
given by Chilean band Perros Despreciados
Cartegena, Colombia • Sept. 1, 2001
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TEXT COLOMBIA WHAT WAS GOING ON: From August 29 through September 3 I and Jamaal Johnson, a young leader at Harambee Center, traveled to Cartagena, Colombia for a conference on church planting among young people in Latin America. • Colombia might seem like a long way to go for a church planting conference, especially since the work of Harambee Center is focused on our own neighborhood in northwest Pasadena. However, leaders from Harambee Center have been welcomed all around the globe as an international resource. The reason? Our philosophy that includes indigenous leadership development plus discipleship at a local level is not only central to Christian teaching, it is something that has been missing from many church development efforts around the world. Indigenous leadership development means that we live among the people we seek to reach and serve. Discipleship at a local level means living 24 hours, 7 days among the people and sharing Christ by our demonstrable actions, not just by preaching the word. We at Harambee also learn much from seeing Christians around the globe in action, especially Christians who are reaching the poor, young people, and outcasts. • I brought Jamaal with me because we at Harambee try, as often as people, to bring young people along with us when we travel. In my mind I thought, "I don't want to look back in five years and wish I had brought someone with me." Well, bringing Jamaal was one of the best things I could have done. THE PRE-EVENT: The event was called Amancer X (Dawn X) and targeted fifty leaders from around Latin America. Fifteen countries were represented. Wolfgang Fernandez heads about the global emerging church mission of Colorado Springs-based Dawn Ministries. • Prior to arriving in Cartagena, however, a group of, uh, global networkers (?) met in Miami to discuss how to coordinate our networks and to work together. This little group first met in Malaysia in May at the Great Commission Roundtable (see my log from that event here). My role in this network is to represent, somewhat, urban ministry throughout the United States. We network in urban youth ministry through the Christian Community Development Association and our own contacts. • Between our Malaysia meeting and this meeting in Miami Harambee helped launch two web sites within this new global network. The first is a site for the Nigeria Evangelical Missions Association. We also partnered with Leadership Network to launch Areka, a user-driven, news forum web site devoted to tracking emerging global culture. • At our Miami meeting our group decided to focus on supporting the launch of an online training site for emerging church planters. This site will be built by a Europe-based, English, Spanish and German-speaking team headed by Karsten Wolf of the former East Germany. Karsten was living in East Germany at the time the Berlin Wall fell. He told us about the experience of the wall coming down. Even now, 12 years later, recounting the story elicited great emotion from him. TO CARTAGENA: On Wednesday, August 29 our group flew to Colombia. Jamaal and I were on a different flight from the rest of the group. They flew straight to Cartagena, location of the event. Jamaal and I flew to Barranquilla, a city 90 minutes away from Cartagena that has an American Airlines hub. It is also the hometown of Shakira. We flew past Cuba and Jamaica and arrived in just over two hours, which was surprising. On the map the Caribbean looks at lot bigger. Heck, it takes longer to get from LA to Dallas than it does from Miami to Barranquilla. • Ok, Jamaal and I didn't know what to expect, because we had heard a lot of bad things about Colombia, given the drug war and all, though many said the country was peaceful. So we were a little leery as we stepped off the plane, not knowing if we would encounter shysters from the get-go. Well, the result is that the country is very peaceful and very safe. It certainly feels as safe or safer than my own neighborhood. People are friendly, and not just in the tourist parts of town. It turns out we had little reason for concern. The one thing the local Colombians did say is that it is dangerous to take long drives through rural areas. The reason? There are many military and paramilitary factions fighting it out in Colombia and they do plenty of kidnapping and other stuff out in rural areas. So it was recommended to not drive around the countryside. Our little jaunt from Barranquilla to Miami and back went through some very lonely places, but locals said that didn't count because we were driving along the coast. • We flew out of Miami at 5pm and arrived in Barranquilla at 6:30 local time (Central Standard Time). It took our taxi driver quite a while to drive us the 90 minutes. It seemed to take 2 or 2.5 hours. Evidently, in a nation of free interpretation of stop signs and highway lanes, we found the only driver who prefers to drive under the speed limit and make frequent stops for who knows what reason. Eventually he got us to the sea-side hotel, the El Dorado. Man, it was nice. When we got to the hotel room we found ourselves in heaven: The TV had Fox Sports, meaning it had 19 hours a day of soccer programming. Soccer highlights, great goals, games, replays, news, more goals, games from all over the world, not just Latin America. We were happy because our sorry neighborhood cable at home does not take Fox Sports Americas or any other hardcore soccer station. • Soon, however, a visitor to our room came and informed us that we were in the wrong hotel, that it was the local coordination team's fault and not our own. We went to Capilla del Mar instead, on the same stretch of beach, and it was also nice and carried soccer channels. DOING THE CONFERENCE THING: For the next two days, from 9am to 9pm, we were in hardcore conference mode. This was the "do it to them, not with them" style of conferencing, which I believe is good -- you only have so much time and attention when you gather national leaders. Let them play when the conference is over. Here's some stuff we learned (from my notes): • Wolfgang's opening speech was from the text of Galatians 4:4 (go here and read it). He noted that Jesus was born in the time of the Pax Romana, the general Roman system that included the Roman roads that went throughout the empire. Using those roads, Christians went throughout the empire and slowly transformed a pantheistic culture. Today, Wolfgang said, those roads to young people around the globe are the Internet, Music, Film, and Symbols. • Wolfgang went on to talk about how we are living in the first Global Culture, giving evidence from news stories from around the world. A cover story in AsiaWeek described how Asia's 20-somethings are shaking up the region. (Note about Japan: the Japanese are enamored of Black Gospel music. This is significant in a nation with a tiny percentage of Christians and which historically has had little interest in Christanity.) • A Newsweek cover story about Japan said that Woman are taking the lead and had two young women on the cover with their red and orange hair). • In the U.S., Christianity Today ran a cover story that said that the most visible evangelical in the country today is Ned Flanders, a character from the television show The Simpsons. • U2, one of the most - if not the most - influential rock bands in the world, has significant Christian symbols and wording on their latest record. Wolf noted that on the cover of the latest album, the gate sign at the Paris airport is changed from the actual gate number to J33:3. Bono, the band's lead singer, made this change. He says the new number represents God's phone number. It's a verse in Jeremiah, 33:3. Read it here. • The folks who work for DAWN Ministries are really, really good at digging up statistics. Here's a few that Wolf presented: • There are 3.8 billion people worldwide under the age of 34 (my age as I write this; I don't know if that's good or bad; am I old or young?). But this number represents 64% of the world's population and they are living in an age of global culture that the majority of existing churches around the world are slow to embrace. • In China there are one million evangelists, with 80% of them under the age of 25 and 90% of those are women. Hmm. • In Taiwan a Christian singer named Vintz Huang is #1 on general music charts. He doesn't sing just straight Christian stuff. He planted a church from among his fans. Their web site is http://www.gpowermusic.com • In England a 27-year-old pastor named Pete Greig has launched a 24 hour prayer movement where they are teaching young people to pray. Their web site is http://www.24-7prayer.com • In Germany, former East German doctor Karsten Wolf advises over 200 new church plants among young people. • In Brazil Olgalvaro Bastos, Jr. leads a church and a movement that has launched 15 churches in five years and also sent out 12 missionaries to other parts of the world. • Redefining Church: Wolf offers a few ideas for redefining Church if we are to reach young people in the emerging global culture. Here are a few ideas: Communicating the Message
Redefinitions
Doing It
The vision
What is needed
Whoever want to talk about this, let's talk about this. It's very good and very heavy stuff. SO THE CONFERENCE ENDED: Yes, eventually we finished with the formal part of the conference. It was very good, very fun and relational, but man, sometimes it's hard to pay attention the whole time. • Saturday, September 1 was a day of freedom and relaxation. At 5pm there was a concert that was put on by some folks who attended the conference from Chile. They are called Perros Despreciados, which means (without consulting my dictionary) Unwanted Dogs or Devalued Dogs or Rejected Dogs. Whatever. They are a punk band and man, did they grind it out. Really. They played their concert in a local mall and drew a crowd of about 200. An altar call was made and 25 young people came to Christ. In effect, it was a new church plant, because it doesn't look like any of those young people will be going to any of Cartagena's existing Christian churches anytime soon. I mean, these are some hardcore, skater and punk kids. But that was the whole point of the event, to reach young people where they are at and plant churches where they are at. RESULTS: A number of things came from the conference. In talking with Wolf later, I saw that it was among the most effective conferences I've ever been a part of. Here are the results: 1. 50 national Christian leaders reaching young people in 15 nations agreed to work together to go after young people in all their sub-cultures and to support any Christians who are doing likewise. 2. A coordinator for the entire Latin American church planting effort was named. He is Fernando Gallegos and he looks like a long-hair punk/goth type of guy - not quite what you imagine in a pastor. He pastors a church in Chile called Rejected and Despised that is straight metal, go figure. 3. A coordination team was chosen that breaks up Latin America into 8 regions. Evidently the U.S. is a Latin nation, because I was named coordinator for the U.S. My first order of business is to find another coordinator (well, I'll do what I can, too. I love this work.) 4. An outdoor evangelistic event was held that modeled outreach to a sub-culture in this emerging global generation (that would be the punk concert that was held at the mall). 5. A real-live new church was planted as a result of the 25 young people who came forward and gave their hearts to Christ. 6. We launched a web site for the movement at http://www.qvo.cc That's a successful conference. AT HOME: For me and Jamaal, the conference made us think about what is going on in our neighborhood in relation to reaching young people for Christ and starting local churches. I'm excited to talk with folks and try to discern what God is doing in our neighborhood. It was great for me to see Jamaal's interest in this subject, and to see him build close friendships with the punk band members from Chile and the two university-age church planters from Japan. Thanks to all who prayed for us, helped finance our way to Colombia, and made it possible for us to be away from home. |
PHOTOS
WOLFGANG: Wolfgang Fernandez of DAWN Ministries (a global church planting ministry based in Colorado Springs) organized the event. See notes at left from his presentation on church planting in the emerging global culture.
CONFERENCE SHOT: Ok, boring conference shots are, uh, boring. So here's just one of them. This is actually the section that was receiving translation into English, as the event was held in Spanish. I spoke in Spanish for most of my group presentations and was successful at mangling el idioma - mission accomplished, I guess. But the conferees understood most of what I said and were gracious with what I fumbled.
Jamaal (left) doing the Matrix thing. Mika, right, is from Japan and is planting a church among her fellow university students. She is 21. We are all invited to her place in Tokyo in March.
These three young men pictured here with Jamaal attend a church in Chile called Rejected and Despised. They reach out to kids in the street who into punk and metal. They themselves are a punk band. Listen to one of their songs here (MP3 download, 5megabytes) or see a video of the band performing at the mall (video download, 5 megabytes).
This is me with Dai, an 18 year old Japanese student who is seeking to plant a church in Japan. He is part of a young Christian church planting movement in that country. I don't know why he is trying to kiss the woman in the painting. He is also a tremendous soccer player. He and Jamaal teamed up to beat the local Colombian pastors who run the soccer clinic - no small feat. Jamaal and Dai closed out that sand soccer game with a cross by Jamaal to an oncoming Dai, who headed it in as the Cartegenan sun sank below the horizon.
Fernando Gallegos, left, pastors Rejected and Despised church in Santiago, Chile. Freddy, right, hosted a metal radio show in Uruguay before coming to Christ.
Hmm. This is the view from the 21st floor conference room where we held our conference. I'm not going to lie - Cartagena is all that. We played the soccer game on the beach down there.
This is me with Andrew Jones, a good friend and a worldwide consultant on church planting among marginal cultural groups (skaters, goths, punks, skinheads, all sorts of characters that we Christians are not often good at reaching). He does some amazing stuff with video. He currently lives in the Czech Republic with his wife and four kids and they are planting a church there and also planning a consultation for Eastern Europe, to be held at a former Nazi hq-cum-seminary in Prague, scheduled for June.
This is a shot of some of the regional team members. Fernando, in black, is the coordinator for all of Latin America. I represent all Latinos in the U.S. - yeah, right. Olgalvaro, left, coordinates Brazil and in Portuguese (it's amazing how similar Portuguese is to Spanish - at times. Not always.)
The concert in the mall was the bomb. The guys kicked much butt. The music was on, the Spirit was there.
This is the altar call Fernando gave. These are the 25 people (or so) who came forward to accept Christ and who will form the nucleus of the new church plant.
The guy in the KISS shirt came to Christ as a result of the altar call. Turns out he hosts a radio program for heavy metal music.
You know, there was much time for fun and messing around. Suffice it to say that Jamaal and I owe the Chileans are very good time if and when they make it up to LA (they say the have strong contacts in Whittier). Here's Jamaal explaining something to Alejandro. |
