Ultimate Desire and the Journey of Ascent - Part 2

 Eventually, at age 29, I became involved in a project to start a church. This was not something I had ever considered doing, it came to me quite unsought. Nevertheless, it worked, and after six years we had a wonderful little spiritual family gathered. This was a community of people who wanted to love God and love one another and do their part to make the world a better place. My intense desire for the ultimate had found a specific focus: planting churches to advance Christ’s kingdom on earth.

In 1983, my father invited me to go with him on a mission trip to Mexico. I got sick (Montezuma’s revenge), lost ten pounds and worked my ass off in a construction program. But it bugged me that I could not understand Spanish or read the signs and I was intrigued with the culture. When we got back, I began to study Spanish. A few years later, a friend invited me to go with him to Colombia. While there, I fell in love with the country and the culture and began learning Spanish in earnest. My drive to learn Spanish was powerful and unstoppable: another aspect of my particular journey was clicking into place!

Eventually, my wife and I with our four children moved to Bogota, Colombia where I was an exchange student at Los Andes University. We all became fluent in Spanish over a two year period. I LOVED it … I loved the culture, the city, the language and the people. A church grew up around us, almost without trying, effortlessly. Another aspect of my journey had clicked into place; not only the call to plant communities of faith, but to do that cross-culturally and in Spanish.

As I said, I loved it there, and could have stayed in Colombia the rest of my life but my journey lay elsewhere. Colombia was just a turn in the path. Circumstances forced us to move back to the U.S.A. (finances, and Debbie’s dad’s poor health). Within six months we arrived in Miami.

At this point, I started extrapolating my journey, making assumptions based on my previous experiences. I assumed I was supposed to start a church because that is what we had done first in Ohio, and then in Colombia. I also assumed that it would be cross-cultural; for Spanish speakers. We met with some other missionaries and spoke with some people at Latin American Mission who were doing demographic studies of the greater Miami area. We found an area on the far west side of Dade County called West Kendall with 80,000 residents and no churches. So, we set up shop there.

I had just finished my bachelor’s degree (after twenty years of off and on studies!) at Ohio State University in Romance languages. My major was Spanish with a minor in French with a few classes in Portuguese.  While I was at Los Andes University in Bogota, I had also taken two years of classical Greek. I loved language study and I loved Latin America.  It was like a new world for this sheltered farm boy from Ohio.

As I was doing research on Miami-Dade County, I became aware of Florida International University. I was fascinated by the “International” in the name and went to the campus to walk around.  There was a center on the campus called the Latin American and Caribbean Center! That “drive” within me once again became activated and I found myself thinking about getting a master’s degree at the LACC program. I sought some advice from a respected friend who advised me not to try to start a church and get a master’s degree at the same time, advice that in retrospect I now disagree with.  Nevertheless, I reluctantly turned away from my ‘desire’ and the LACC center and wandered off into a ten-year ‘church planting’ detour that almost cost me my family and my sanity. 

To be continued …