I’ve been praying for at least a couple of years for a movement of God’s Word to take root in the country of Mexico.
My desire stems from conversations with Mexican brothers and sisters who say that the type of training WordPartners does is greatly needed in their country. There are so many pastors without biblical training who need equipping.
If they don’t know how to handle the Bible, how can they preach it? And how healthy can a church be if they don’t preach God’s Word?
An answer to prayer
By God’s grace, an opportunity recently opened up in Monterrey, Mexico this October to train a new group of Presbyterian pastors in the book of Ruth with the hopes of starting our four-year program there.
During an unofficial debrief time with our team (Patricio Paredes and Juan de Dios Torres), we concluded that this group:
- Couldn’t be more excited about the training
- Couldn’t have a better grasp of what we’re all about (which is important for raising up future trainers), and
- Couldn’t have a greater potential for multiplying the training. (In fact, key connections to a major Latin America church planting network may help multiply training in the future.)
This Monterrey group has a great biblical foundation, something crucial when thinking about raising up future trainers.
Here are how the pastors and leaders responded during our wrap-up session:
“This type of training helps me fall in love more with the Word of God.”
“Sometimes we rely on things without realizing it: models of ministry, ways of doing church, screens, music, smoke machines, things considered ‘relevant.’ None of that is bad, but it is a temptation to trust too much in that or what people say. We need to preach the Word of God.”
“A month ago I left my job to plant a church. I still don’t have formal Bible training. Something that disturbed me was not having structure. As an engineer, I like structure! This training has helped me to know the way I can study the Bible.”
“There are many conferences with PowerPoints and we leave with lots of notes and that’s great. But you have given us tools we can use to study God’s Word for ourselves! And we can even share them with our people!”
As we closed our training, we asked a question we always ask, “How could we have improved?”
It was silent until one guy raised his hand and said, “More tortillas. We ran out at lunch and Mexicans need their tortillas!”
What is our hope?
Our desire isn’t to visit a country and off-load a lot of information about the Bible—we want pastors to walk out of our training equipped in God’s Word and confident in their ability to proclaim it. We do that through working through books of the Bible with eight hermeneutical principles and by giving students a chance to receive feedback on sample sermons they share.
Our transferable training methodology encourages pastors to train more pastors who can then impact their churches. In other words, we want an indigenous-led, self-sustaining movement of God’s Word in Mexico and beyond. It’s already happening in several countries around the world, including Brazil.
Will you join us in prayer for these leaders and for the spread of biblical ministry in Mexico?
Also, if our work inspires you or my blog has blessed you, please consider partnering with me. I raise support for my ministry at WordPartners (for both training and producing content in the US) and will need many new partners in the New Year. Visit our website or contact me to schedule a conversation.
You can donate to my ministry here.
[You may also be interested in learning about our work training leaders from a country hostile to the gospel.]
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