Pray For Us...

Future Ministry Plans

As soon as I finish my doctoral studies--and maybe even before--Phyllis and I will start traveling around Latin America. My position with MTW is a new one so my job description may not be familiar to you. The short version is this: my assignment is to help our missionaries in Latin America be as effective as possible. The Lord is doing many good things through MTW in Latin America. But questions still arise. How can we do things better? Why aren't we reaching more unbelievers? Why are we reaching only a certain type of person? Why are people leaving the church? Why aren't the local leaders we have more effective? Why are we having team tensions? These and other questions are being asked and need to be examined carefully.

Why should I be the one to take on this responsibility? I certainly don't have all the answers. But it is often helpful to have someone with experience come into a situation with the eye of an outsider. Many times the missionaries on site have answers, but need someone to ask questions, dialogue with them, and help them bring the answers out into the open.

I consider that my main qualification for this job is 25 years of experience as a teaching elder assigned to cross-cultural ministry. I have been a church planter among the poor as well as among the upper middle class. I have been a team leader. I have also been MTW's Regional Director for South America, so I am familiar with our missionaries and their ministries in that region. During the last five years, since I took on this new responsibility, I have been working with and getting to know some of our missionaries and ministries in the rest of Latin America--especially in Mexico.

During these 25 years I have made many mistakes. Both my sin and God's grace have become clearer. I have struggled before the Lord, along with my colleagues, to understand the work of planting churches cross-culturally. In all this I have learned some important things about cross-cultural church planting.

In the Lord's providence, it was this struggle that led me to pursue further studies. By his grace I was able to complete a doctorate in Urban Missiology from Westminster Theological Seminary. This has been very helpful. However, I found that it didn't cover a number of the problems that were coming up. So now, also in the Lord's providence, I find myself finishing up a doctorate in Organizational Development. The two areas of study complement each other well.

Organizational Development is not a narrow focus on management principles, but on the dynamics of people working together in organized groups and interfacing with other organizations. The focus of my dissertation is organizational learning and contextualization. I believe that while individual missionaries usually learn a lot from their cross-cultural experience, as an organization we still tend to export our organizational and cultural priorities without realizing what is happening.

For example, in our message and especially in our methods we often emphasize the aspects of the gospel that are more relevant to the pressing questions of our own culture. As a result we tend to overlook the ways Scripture addresses issues that might be more pressing in a different culture. There is only one gospel, of course, but it has so many implications and applications that you can't say everything at once. If we focus primarily on the applications that are important to us, we may end up planting a church that has a foreign ring to it.

So you might say that my job is to be a kind of consultant. But I don't see myself as the one who has all the answers, who tells missionaries what to do, and then leaves. There is certainly a place for in-and-out consulting, and I will no doubt do some of that. However, I would like to be a consultant who actually lives and works with the missionaries and nationals for as long as they want us--as much as a few months at a time. My plan is to spend enough time at each church planting site to learn from those who have been working there by joining with them in their work, prayer and dialogue.

Phyllis and I are at the stage of life in which this nomadic lifestyle might be possible. Micah and Seth have finished college. Andrea will be a junior in college this fall. Audrey will soon be entering college. We don't know how well we will adapt to that kind of lifestyle. We may need to do something to provide for more stability. But we think this kind of ministry will be helpful and we look forward to giving it a try. Please pray for us as we enter into this new stage of ministry. Pray that I will be able to finish my studies soon.

Support Account Needs

Mission to the World has informed us that our support account is in the red. This means they will not reimburse our ministry expenses until the account is in the black. MTW says we need $9,500 dollars in one-time gifts and $598 more in monthly pledges. Please pray that these financial needs will be taken care of.

Thanks for keeping us in your prayers.

Gary and Phyllis Waldecker