Today’s activities will take us to Talanga to visit the church plant which is a combined effort of the Park Plaza church in Tulsa and the Guanacaste church in Tegucigalpa. The church plant team has two members–one supported by Park Plaza and the other supported by Guanacaste. The work has begun in an exciting way with an average attendance of 25-30 after only a few months.
We hope our presence will be an encouragement both to the church with many new Christians who are babes in Christ, and also to the mission team. I have been invited to preach and will present God’s plan and hopes for the church based on the book of Ephesians.
I have found that one of the things most needful for God’s people is an understanding of the power of Scripture when it is studied in context rather than by a topical approach, which too often degenerates into a proof-texting approach. When Scripture addresses the topics of our lives naturally, God’s people are blessed, none feel that the sermon was chosen to address a problem or fault in their life, and the power of God’s word is seen.
[The same approach that works in preaching also works in our Bible classes, where the study of God’s word in context is more powerful than accumulating a number of topical sets. I am working on an article describing this process in more detail and suggesting a possible sequence which addresses basic needs and can be altered to meet special situational needs. I will try to remember to mention it in another blog when it is posted; alternatively, you can check out the articles on the site from time to time.]
This day will be a day of “rest” in a special sense for the group–not that we do not have a full day of activities, but in the sense that we will have a day away from the labor of construction. After worship this morning, we will spend a time of fellowship as we lunch at Talanga.