Fertile Ground or Shark-infested Waters? (Part 1)

This week, 2 group members and I had the honor of teaching courses in an annual pastor's conference for the Maya Synod. The event draws about 30 pastors and their families to the bible school for 2 weeks of study, fellowship and time away from their usual responsibilities. Having a group of 24 Americans, 8 Mexican paramedics, construction workers, our staff & family, and all those pastors and their families really taxed the resources of the bible school, but we pulled it off.

Mexican pastors are an interesting lot. They are incredible servants with huge responsibilities. They typically pastor 2-3 churches, with each church having spun-off or planted 5-15 small congregations and/or tiny missions. The vocabulary is a bit different than what we're used to, but suffice it to say that churches are big, start other worship gatherings, and are responsible for the church (larger), it's congregations (medium-sized) and it's missions (usually 10-50 participants in worship). Although elders in all 3 sized gatherings help with preaching and day-to-day congregational care, the pastors are expected to visit all of the above and do their best to meet the demands of each. One little tidbit....session meetings are held monthly and typically last 3 days!

With all that responsibility, Mexican pastors also very authoritative. They command a huge amount of respect, are often waited on hand-and-foot by women, are prone to not respect women's intelligence, and often have bought into the notion that they really do know everything. To offer up new information to pastors can feel intimidating, even to the most seasoned teachers. Which brings me to our week... 3 American women, teaching 12 hours worth of content with translation by Pablo. While we were admittedly a little anxious that we might be venturing into shark-infested waters, we prepared ourselves to share important information with pastors with the fervent hope and prayer that we would be sowing seeds in fertile ground.

Penny Musson from N. Wilkesboro, NC has been participating in medical missions in Mexico for at least 5 summers. She has seen literally thousands of patients, loves the Tzeltal people, and hoped to share some important insights from her experiences here in hopes of reducing incidents of water-borne illnesses and other illnesses that can be prevented with better personal hygiene. She was joined by another highly experienced nurse and fellow group member, Margie Turner. They'd prepared for weeks but were feeling a little anxious about the audience. "Oh, it'll be fine!" I reassured her. To me, Penny & Margie's topics of community health, personal hygiene and handwashing seemed so benign and obviously important that I couldn't imagine them getting any flack from the pastors. I was worried for myself though, because I knew that I would be introducing very controversial information about alcoholism as a disease later on in the week.

Well, wouldn't you know it?! One pastor just had to take the benign and turn it into a theological discussion about the different biblical positions on the practice of handwashing! He challenged our teachers as if they were biblical scholars, wanting them to defend their recommendations biblically! For heavens sakes! These women were simply trying to help people avoid getting worms, amoebas and other things that make them unnecessarily sick! The atmosphere in the room went sour fast! The only saving grace was that it was at the end of the Tuesday session. All 3 American women walked away angry, defensive and highly guarded about proceeding with our part in the conference.

As it turned out, we were able to comfort ourselves and regroup sufficiently to resume our discussion the next day. Pablo was helpful in that, and he is the one who pointed out to that the source of the challenge was a "young whipper-snapper." Clearly this phenomenon is not unique to American culture! The next day, Penny returned to the classroom, armed with a strong biblical response to the young whipper-snapper, and prepared to move on with other topics --- hoping and praying that we would not have a repeat of Day One! Well, sure enough, Young Whipper-Snapper bowed out of that day's session, and his colleagues discreetly expressed their sympathies to Margie and Penny for the behavior of their colleague and encouraged them to proceed with the day's topics. Day Two, Three and Four went beautifully, and when Young Whipper-Snapper returned and was rebutted, he thanked Penny for her well-thought-out and biblically-defensible response. Even my sessions on Stress Management (which challenged them to be able to say "no" to some requests), Alcoholism as a Disease (worthy of the same kind of compassion as other diseases) and Pastoral Counseling (as a counseling approach rather than telling people what do) were all seemingly well-received.

As a teaching team, we found the fertile ground, but perhaps not until after we swam through some waters infested with at least 1 shark. God truly challenged each of us in different ways as we sought to share information with these Tzeltal pastors. In the end, I believe that our seeds did fall on fertile soil, that they did seem to consider some new ways of looking at old issues, and that our time together was valuable. For us as teachers, we learned to be prepared to face biblical challenges to modern conventional wisdom, to resist getting pulled out of our area of expertise, and to find ways to entice Mexican pastors to want to hear more about what we had to say. We as teachers grew. Hopefully they as pastors grew. Thanks be to God.