The Church

Once again I find myself in Honduras. This is my 35th trip to this beautiful country. Every time I come I have humbled, challenged, and inspired. The purpose of this trip was two-fold. First, I want to spend some time with a church in the city of Tegucigalpa who asked to come under our church’s covering and for me to be their “spiritual father.” That, in and of itself, is humbling to me. Our goal as a church, when we started coming to Honduras, was to build relationships with people, churches, and pastors. With this request, I believe we have reached our goal. The picture to the right is of Pastor Maychol Rodriguez and his wife, Mary Lou.

The second reason for this trip was to travel the department of Olancho (like a state) and the city of Juticalpa, to visit churches and hold a pastors’ conference. That conference was today. What a blessing it was for me to speak into 100+ pastors who live in the mountains and pastor poor churches in very rural areas! At the end of the conference they blessed me by laying on hands on me and praying for me while the praise team played my favorite Hispanic praise song, “Ven Espiritu Santo” (“Come Holy Spirit”). I will never forget that time.

Here is what is on my mind as I reflect on the past few days in Olancho. We, in the USA, have made church to complicated. We need to get back to the simplicity of meeting together, worshiping together, learning together, fellowship it together, doing life together, ministering together, and loving and serving each other. Instead of these things, we have cluttered our calendars and our churches with program and after program that do very little to build the kingdom of God. Below are pictures of a few churches I have visited in Olancho. All these churches are alive and thriving and transforming their communities with very little resources and programs. It’s just simply people, following Jesus and living out their faith. We can learn from them.