Missionary Gas

We’d love you all to visit us. So I hope what I write won’t scare anyone off. On Saturday afternoon, we went to see a comedy about French cooking. Before the film started, instead of warnings about mobile phones, there was a chilling re-enactment of children being kidnapped by guerrillas from a Colombian village. It was screened to make us remember another reality. The next day we heard of an entire football team, called the Peanut Men, being taken and murdered. They evidently sold peanuts on the border with Venezuela: not the most likely reasons for assassination. And last night two of our best loved lecturers, Don and Elizabeth Sendek, were attacked when their taxi drew into the Seminary residency. They lost their laptop, however mercifully not their lives – the city’s murder rate is escalating, the robbers were armed, and Don fought back. Before all this happened I had compiled a video of our students’ regional night with their different dances. h...

There was a neighbour who used to wolf-whistle at me when I went out running in the early morning. Last night he was murdered. The family reckoned he had been cursed as he suffered from a psychiatric disorder which when combined with marihuana or the full moon made him uncontrollable. He was well built, in his mid-20s and had been stealing from another barrio. Two teenagers from there came and killed him: a life is valued at the cost of a few trinkets. The Seminary’s immediate neighbourhood is one big interconnected family and some of them come to the sewing room. They reckon the only person that’s sorry about his death is his granny. There’s no notion of his importance as a human being in the image of God. Today in the class we examined the Spanish Conquistadors treatment of the Indians in the name of Christianity. They too were sold for trinkets and killed like soul-less rats. How powerful are James’ words about genuine Christian faith resulting in doing good...

The Spanish for mosque sounds like the word for fly. When speaking about Islam, students love to try and trick me into saying fly, and then roar with laughter. Every day you’re reminded that you’re a foreigner. But it’s a busy time for some of the students. As the semester closes they have to get their theses in. This year I’ve three groups to supervise. One is on how Jesus suffered in his death and what lessons there are for suffering Christians in Colombia. A second group, of Pentecostalists, is working on Calvin’s teaching on the Holy Spirit and comparing it with their own church’s doctrine. Finally one student is looking at why the oldest church in the city, the Presbyterian, has grown so little in its 125 years existence. Although we’re foreigners we want to help Christians understand how the Bible, theology and evangelism works. And it’s an honour even if our help is fly-sized . Photo: Living with violence: Lima street poster showing children on a dum...

This half-semester I’m teaching History of Israel: New Testament. It’s an introduction to Jesus’ world: culture, history, literature and so on. We started off with a virtual tour of Palestine. At the end of the class, the student rep asked if he could say something. This sometimes happens and concerns internal student affairs. Today was different: “Let’s have the dream of going on a class trip to Israel”, he said. Now the rep is sincere and Christ-like but poorer than a church mouse (the mouse doesn’t owe Seminary fees). So us realistic souls just smiled, packed away our books and had something amusing to tell our wives. Two days later in a shopping centre I saw pictures of Israel, placed by a group of students who’d come back from a visit. They’d been funded by an Israeli-Colombian association. Today I let the students know about the funding, and recharged my practice of faith. Photo: Dreams and reality can combine: Olwen photoshopped on the ...

It was the mid-semester break, so we decided to have a couple of days away from the city. These kind of trips give me butterflies in my stomach: you’re not sure of where you’re going, where you’ll stay, nor how safe it’ll be. We arrived at the bus terminal where buses and the like aggressively tout for travellers, trying to persuade you to buy a ticket to who knows where. We got a small bus for Guatapé (pronounced Guah-ta-pay) which soon filled up and then someone got on with 35 buckets. The area we headed for is renown for its lakes, granite monolith and the ex-home of that most infamous drug baron, Pablo Escobar. After 2 hours we were the last people on the bus and arrived in a small town which was hot and deserted. Feeling somewhat conspicuous we walked to the main square, sat in a shaded restaurant and enlisted the waiter’s help. Things worked out really well and we soon got a quiet hotel room overlooking the waters. The locals were welcoming, mo...

Teachers in the Seminary fall into two categories: permanent and visiting. The visitors are either potential lecturers or retired ones. One of the retirees, Jack Voelkel has just returned to Arizona after a couple of months teaching. He previously worked in the Seminary for 10 years in the 90s and recently had the task of clearing out his old office. It meant I inherited a number of musty files, lithographed sheets and faded booklets. Amongst them are one or two important documents, for Jack had specialized in missions, especially those in Peru and Colombia. It felt as if someone was passing on original writings from the reformation. We have little congregational detail of the reformed church at Knox’s time, for records have disappeared. The annoying thing is that in South America, and on missions boards, no one seems to realize that the same process is happening today. The first generation of believers have passed on, with little recorded. Written accounts of churches are rare. Histor...

It’s a funny old world in the Seminary. In fact my neighbour has just written a book called, “El humor en el Antiguo Testamento” (Humour in the Old Testament). And recently one of our charismatic teachers had me smiling all day when she announced we should all fast on a particular occasion, not realizing it was the cook’s last day before retirement. Then the authoritarianism of the place never ceases to enliven things. Letters arrive on minor matters with signatures that look like those on a Bill of Rights. Communications are sent calling meetings with no explanation, as if everyone were a subversive. Terse emails go out keeping offenders right. And consultation is so rare that a colleague commented about leaving her mind at the Seminary gates. The interesting thing is the effect it has on you. The products of authoritarianism are a loss of team-work and increased individualism. Exactly the kind of thing that Latin Americans are famous for. And everyone just kee...