Conference coming up

I guess it is about time I posted something here since it has been quite a while. This month I have been either travelling or mostly preparing for the big event of the year which happens next week. Well, they are actually two back-to-back events. First, Monday through Thursday we are hosting around 30 Christian indigenous leaders from 7 different ethnic groups from the Bolivian lowlands and Amazon regions. The purpose is to spend 4 whole days seriously thinking about leadership both in an indigenous and in a Christian or church context.
For the last half century, the missionaries and local Bolivian workers here have struggled to see church leaders that come up from the ranks of the local church in indigenous communities, and today most indigenous pastors and church leaders are old and are despairing at the next generation's lack of interest in the Gospel. If we are honest with ourselves, we missionaries have to take the blame for a large part of this for two reasons: First, because we brought down here a Gospel wrapped up in North American, urban, capitalist, Western, modernist, (fill in the blank) culture and a couple generations later, the people are in the middle of a huge identity crisis. For this same reason today, North American natives are only 2% Christian. Secondly, in our urgency to build a church quickly and efficiently we did all the work for the indigenous church, thus not giving them room to grow, make mistakes, and learn how to be a church. Thus, in every village I have visited where there were once missionaries who founded the church I have found a dying or disintigrated church, with perhaps a family or two (usually the one that was trained by the missionaries to carry on the work before they left) struggling to keep everyone together and involved.
Another reason is the "absolute monarch" model of leadership modeled to the indigenous believers by the Bolivian church where the head pastor basically has to have every spiritual gift in the book and run the show and he (it is basically always a he) dictates to everyone else in the church what they are to do and how. Thus, in many communities where churches were founded by missionaries (foreign or Bolivian) I have found Christian families present but no church. When I ask why, they say, "well we don't have a pastor." Funny, but I don't recall the job of pastor ever being described in the church of Acts or in any New Testament epistle. Don't get me wrong. I think pastors are good, but I also think that maybe the structure of church itself or the model of leadership we have in it may even be cultural models, not something set in stone, which don't translate so well here.
Another aspect of leadership we will talk about is the Christian individual and the Church's role in the life of their community. Our predecessors preached that it was sinful for church members to participate in politics or "social work." First of all that is false. Second of all, in the indigenous case it is unavoidable since leadership of the community rotates and all adult men will take part at some point in the civic life of their society. Many times when this happens one of two things takes place in the church: since they feel they cannot reconcile their two roles as church and community leaders, many choose to leave the church while they complete their civic function, while others try to maintain their ties with the church but the church itself rejects them and does not give them the guidance and support they need in that role.
So we are going to ponder on a few of these things together. Then finishing the workshop on Thursday, all the participants are going to stay put and we are going to welcome another 50 or so indigenous christians from all over for the first gathering of lowland indigenous christian leaders. There we will spend three days together where they will discuss many things relevant to their church and community situations and talk more about the role of the church in society and about identity and the relationship between gospel, church, and culture. They are also discussing the creation of a movement, or a network, of indigenous churches, which we helped start at the end of last year. At this event, the indigenous leaders themselves have prepared it and they are the sole protagonists. We will be there to help as scribes, taking notes for publication later since many of these people don't even know how to turn a computer on, but we will not speak. Nor are other missions and people invited. They want this to be a space where they feel comfortable to express themselves.
So it is going to be a very exciting week. I have no idea what to expect. Please pray for me and all the participants. I will try to keep updates each day of what goes on, but I'm not making any promises :)
I am so grateful to all of our supporters who have helped make this happen. Many of these participants don't have enough money to buy a bus ticket to get here, and not working for a week will mean their families will go hungry, but your support has enabled us to cover all these costs so that they can make it here, and they are eager to come! We have already had to turn some away! These two events are the culmination of many conversations and workshops that I have been doing all over the country this year and all are eager to continue the conversation, as am I. Lord knows where this will lead . . .