Matt and I finished up our Venezuelan Workshop last night. The whole thing consisted of six sessions over two afternoons and evenings through a translator. Each session lasted about an hour. 

Working for the kingdom of God is a strange thing. The church where the conference was held on a street lined with car repair shops. There you are in a exposed-flourescent-bulbs room with rows of plastic chairs and a freeway just outside the window. You're speaking through a translator to 60 or so people who look like they're paying attention, but you don't know what's really translating. Even if the words are translating, are they getting it? Maybe a pastor can see this or that particular tree, but can he see the whole forest of what we're saying? Have we spoken about the right things? Emphasized the right things? Sufficiently explained how to apply what we're saying in his church back home?

You get to the end, people smile, shake your hand and say, "Thank you," and you say, "Gracias," because that's all the English they know and it's all the Spanish you know. And that's it. The whole time, of course, you're praying, "Lord, do something...because I'm feeling pretty useless here."

Preaching is a strange thing. Sowing seeds is a strange thing. The kind of people God uses is a strange thing. On the one hand, it's frustrating because you can't see anything. Is this seed falling into good dirt? Will it grow? Am I wasting my time? I have no idea! I can't see!

So maybe we should put on a fancier show. Maybe we should build up a bigger production. This will get them really excited and we will be able to see the results of our work. We'll even be able to quantify them with statistics and spreadsheets, right?

No, that's missing the point. It's confusing planting for growing. One is our work; one is God's. We're to sow the seed of the Word, that's it.

Readers of this post, may I impose on you to take ten seconds right now to ask God to take the biblical seeds planted in the hearts of these pastors, sprout them, and grow up thirty, sixty, maybe even a hundred healthy churches in Lecheria, Venezuela? Will you "remind" him of how utterly useless Matt and I are, and that now he must do something, if anything is going to get done?

Then, maybe in glory, he'll let you and me actually see what our words and your prayers accomplished. Hurrah!