February 2008

Pack Your Purse with REVERENCE

Feature: "Falling in Love Again"
Send out invitations for the women to come out for an evening of "Muffins and Memories". Serve various kinds of muffins and decorate with a Valentine's Day theme. Divide the women into small groups and have them share with one another the answers to the following questions: When was the first time you fell in love? What is your favorite love song/ love story/movie? After they have had some time to talk about these questions, come back together as a large group and play "Name That Tune" with various love songs, awarding prizes for those who guess the most songs correctly. End the evening with the story of Gomer and Hosea, found in Hosea 1-14. Read I John 4:9-10 and discuss the dynamics that draw us into a relationship of deep love and reverence for our heavenly Father.

Outreach Idea:
Adopt a grandparent. Visit your local nursing home or care facility and offer to visit one of their residents on a regular basis. Keep in touch through regular visits and send notes of encouragement. You may find you benefit from this experience as much as your new friend does! If you have young children, take them with you and allow them to spend time with your adopted grandparent!

Prayer Tip:
We are to be holy. We are to bear fruit. Pray that we will remain in Jesus, so that as John 15:4 says "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." We can bear fruit. Pray that the fruit of the Spirit will be seen in us.

Discipleship Thought:
We, as disciples of Christ, will face tribulations, trials, temptations, hardships, and even persecutions. In the midst of all these, Jesus encouraged us to "rejoice and be glad, because great is our reward in heaven" (Matt. 5:12).

Good to Go in Ecuador

MISSIONS - Our Offering to God (CORBAN)

By Lisa Brown
I could feel the beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Oh no, not again, I thought. Sure enough, the whole process was starting, and I could feel my stomach turning flips. I knew I was going to throw up. Why am I here? This is not what I signed up for, not what I imagined missions to be like. I could here the roar of the crowd, and remembered all the nationalities represented in the audience tonight. I felt sick again. Did I have time to throw up, and still pray before going on? The pastor was motioning the band to get ready to go on. I gave the international "give me a second" sign and ran to the bathroom. This is it, I thought, the last time I am going to go through this! I'm sorry God, but you have the wrong person!

I made it in time to run on stage with Janet, Elmer, Percy, and Jose. From the first song, through to the last, calm came over me, and a sense of offering love to God. It's the only way I can describe it. Funny that offering should come to mind, since this is the meaning behind the bands name. Corban: "My offering to God." Tonight, as we jump and sing in this jungle city of Peru, I worship God with people from all over the world. We are one voice crying out to God. Teach us how to love. Show us more of yourself so we can imitate you. Help us celebrate your love. We are grateful for your mercy. There is no one here who deserves it.

Rich gets up to preach and he gets everyone laughing and crying at himself or herself. We all struggle with our natures; we all want to love God more. Many are here tonight who want to know exactly who this God of mercy is. Rich describes the God who loves us enough to die, and conquer death and sin. We are free. Is there anyone who doesn't think they are free and would like to be free? A crowd gathers up front as we sing about laying our burdens down. This is just the first night in a long tour of 14 days in and around the jungle. The best thing is, we know God is with us and now these young people up front know God is with them too.

What I have just described happened on the first tour I made with Corban 4 years ago. Corban is a band that started from the Larco Alliance Church in Trujillo, Peru. Seven young guys who wanted to use their talent for God. Seven guys who wanted to reach the hard to reach university students in their city. Of course, it was very tough. None of them had the money for their own instrument, so every day they paid a small fee to "rent" an instrument and place to practice. As the years went on, the pastors saw the vision this group had and helped them by allowing them to practice at church. There were also commitments like work and studies that made it hard to travel to lesser-reached areas of the country, the cost of getting from one place to another, and again, renting sound equipment. The group shrank from seven to four.

In 2000, Rich and I came back from home assignment to Trujillo, and were reunited with the young people we had pastored for our first four-year term. At that time, our church was birthing a daughter church, and we were asked to join the church planting team and help start the America Sur Alliance church. We would pastor the youth in this new church. Three of the seven guys that had started Corban came with us to help at the church plant.

Just as our ministry had changed, Corban had changed. There are only three original band members left, Elmer, Percy and Jose. It wasn't long before they approached Rich to pastor the band, and asked me if I could help with piano and vocals. We readily agreed, having no idea, just how God would use this ministry in our own life and ministry. I came in with another girl from our youth group named Janet. I could remember her first time at our church and when she decided to follow Christ. It was exciting to see her spiritual maturity and share extra time with her. Her spiritual walk STILL inspires me! While we were still in Peru, Corban traveled every month or so, trying to go to out-of-the-way places and tell others about God's love. What impressed us about Corban was their missionary heart, and we asked God to lead this group to places we wouldn't normally be able to go. That is exactly what He did. Thankfully, since my piano skills were so lacking, we found 2 keyboardists to take turns traveling with us, and all I had to do was sing. The nausea disappeared!

Our 4 year term in Trujillo flew by, and before we knew it, we were hugging everyone goodbye. Corban gave me a hat that I always stole from the guitarist, and signed the inside of it, so I wouldn't forget them. We had grown so close to the members of the band, it was hard to say goodbye. All my life though, God has taken me to the most amazing places and allowed me to see wonderful things, so I trusted Him and said goodbye.

Now Rich and I are here in Quito, Ecuador. Our ministry is nothing like we ever imagined. We have always been youth pastors in the local church. Even when we became career missionaries, that is where the mission kept placing us, and the churches most needed us. Now we are involved more regionally in Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. We are reaching out to youth pastors in these three countries, encouraging and equipping them to reach the 3 million youth in Latin America. It is exciting. It is also hard work. How do we get the word out of who we are and that we want to help out? There are so many discouraged youth workers. Remember, the whole idea of pastoring youth as a "legitimate" calling is still fairly new in these countries. We were having a hard time finding ways to get to know people and encourage them, until God brought Corban back into our lives.

Corban has helped us get in the door of larger youth events to give concerts, and then we let them know our missionary vision. We have one CD out, and the proceeds of that CD go to the garbage dump ministry our churches are involved in.

Corban has come to run the music in two of our youth encounter events here in Ecuador. They have also gone to the "ends of the earth" where no other band would go to send out the message of Gods love in song. We have been in prisons, on boats, at street concerts, big church events, and smaller youth leader conferences. When people ask me what I do as a missionary, I always feel funny telling them about the band, but I realize just how many doors have been opened because of our music.

There are still so many challenges. We don't want to make any money off our music and yet, to travel to out of the way places takes time and money. We want to bless those who could never afford to go to regular youth conferences, or concerts. We want to raise money for the garbage dump ministry; we want to be a missionary band! Usually, when we get together to dream, we start to think, "This is all too impossible". Of course, just last January we were in both Ecuador and Peru, worshipping God with very different crowds. Corban raised almost $1000 for the Garbage Dump ministries from financially challenged youth in Ecuador and Peru. One Peruvian didn't have money with him for the love offering, so he took off his watch and gave what he had. It reminds me of the stories we heard of sacrificial giving in the times of our founder A.B. Simpson. In February, we again were able to watch God work through the youth encounter as we helped with the music. A few months from now, we will be going to Colombia for a second time. This is another opportunity to give the little we have as Corban "an offering to God".

Latin American missions are really changing. Our goal is to build leaders up so that they can pastor their people, and reach out to the unreached. This challenges us to be creative, and well prepared. If you are considering coming this way as a missionary, expect the unexpected and dream the impossible dream!

Oops... one last thing! Corban has a web page. It is www.corbanweb.com. It is all in Spanish, but there are lots of videos and pictures, and even bits of our songs! We just wrote a song about the garbage dump that we will be adding soon. It is in English and Spanish. In the picture, I am the one with the Jesus hat on! It's the hat that they gave me.

"Brooke's Story"

By Brooke Prokopchak

My life has been steeped in Christianity. A Christian home, a Christian school, a Christian church. Christian music, books, movies, conferences, concerts, and camps. I've been indoctrinated, inculcated, insulated, and inoculated. Where I grew up is nearly unparalleled by the rest of the world: I once counted at least eight private Christian high schools within thirty miles of my home.

Mission trips, therefore, were frequent and familiar. We did them as families, as youth groups, as school classes. From each graduating class of the Christian high school I attended, about a third went to college, a third to the workforce, and the remaining third to the mission field. By the time I reached college, I had mission-tripped my way to Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, Guatemala, Barbados, and Grenada.

So when I committed to spending my spring break in Ecuador, I was ready. I knew how it worked. Fly in, do some construction, attend some church services, teach the kids a few songs, fly out. Not that I didn't have right motives. Not that I didn't anticipate God working in me and through me. I did. What I didn't anticipate was my discovery that the definition of my faith, this Christianity that I had memorized and mimicked and maintained for over twenty years, was formulaic and faulty.

For starters, my definition of short-term missions needed to change. After arriving in Quito, our group sat down with Alliance missionaries Rich and Lisa Brown. As they explained that this was a mission's experience, not a trip, I could already feel God impressing on my heart that my perceptions of many aspects of my faith were going to be challenged during the next ten days. The Browns encouraged us that this experience was as much for us as it was for the Ecuadorian communities we were going to serve, that God was going to meet us where we were, that He is personal and would speak into our own individual lives about our circumstances and callings.

It took maybe ten minutes in Pano, a non-English speaking jungle community six hours outside Quito, for me to realize that God had purposed this experience to stretch me in all the right places. I'm not used to working with children, so of course Pano happened to be a central location for Compassion International. I usually pass the responsibility of translating to another more skilled than I in the Spanish language, but I happened to be one of the most fluent speakers of the group. One of the few comforts I hate going without is running water, so naturally there was none. Funny, God.

The Browns incorporated debriefing time into our schedule every night, another first to add to my missions' repertoire. We were asked to share a high and low moment of each day as well as our thoughts on what God was teaching us as individuals throughout. At the final debriefing session back at Rich and Lisa's home in Quito, I watched myself and my fellow students become completely vulnerable in front of the entire group and admit the ways in which the pure love and selflessness of the South American people acted as a mirror to reflect our own tainted and selfish images back on us. Not to mention the wrench this threw into our ideas of Christianity.

My North American Christianity says that as long as you know so many Bible verses, prayed the prayer so many years ago, attend church and small group meetings so many times per week, these will add up to pure religion. But this is a lie that the enemy uses to enslave believers in a mentality that says the church is a meeting time and place rather than a living, active body. The Christianity I saw in the Browns and in South America understands what James meant when he said, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (1:27). Away from the clocks and schedules, mirrors and materialism of the United States, Christianity could become what it was intended to be: the physical representation of the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit on earth, free from denominational barriers and theologians trying to one-up each other in their doctrinal dissertations.

I returned home with a visual of what Jesus meant when he told his disciples, "Again I tell you that if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them" (Matthew 18:19-20). South America has grasped this relational definition of the church far more quickly; they are waiting for us, their North American brothers and sisters, to catch up.