Anyone want to start a factory?

The other day I sat with a woman, a neighbour to the church, and talked about the survey we just begun. It's a simple survey about the needs in the community, only five questions long. Her answer to the question "what is missing in Benjamin Aceval?" was: Work. She didn't need to say more, I got it. There is very little work opportunities in the area, only some factories in the nearby town of Villa Hayes. To work you have to go to Asunción, to work in houses, or to the big cattle ranches in the Chaco wilderness.

What struck me today is what difference a factory would make to life here. A simple production factory, low tech, that would employ 50 people, and had a bit of a conscience, could transform the life of maybe 250-500 people. Follow my thought if you will.

To be able to support their family, many men leave their families for months at a time to go the the Chaco. Or alternatively get jobs with enormously long hours, like the security guards that normally have twelve hour shifts, plus travelling  time over an hour each way, often seven days a week. Or, they leave for good and start what they call here a second family. The result of this is absent fathers in the home. And mothers, that more often than not, themselves need to work long hours in the homes of other people.

The social impact of this is enormous. A colleague of mine said that 4 out 5 Paraguayan households are run by single mothers. If they are working, there might be grandmothers to pick up the care for the children. Or there might not. There is nothing from the state. In short, there are many kids without any oversight, especially since school is only 4 hrs a day. Add to that the unemployment connected to alcoholism and general insecurity in the workplace.

A new factory in Benjamin Aceval, with 50 employees from the town, which ran reasonable hours, did not exploit it's workers and paid at least minimum wage, could really change some of this. It could mean that some people didn't have to leave the families for so long, or have much shorter days, which would help family life. It could provide 50 households with a stable income.

If you would add to that any kind of benefits, remember that Paraguay does not have national health insurance, like reading classes or the chance to finish up to sixth grade, any kind of child care, stipends for further education, basic health education, etc you could really have an impact.

These days this seems to be called "Business as Mission". Basically it's business people doing what they do with the purpose of creating welfare and prosperity that help change peoples lives. We could use some of these people here.

Dealing with a very local life

Life for many people in Benjamin is very local. And I mean VERY local. When we had a thing for Mothers Day, the children commented that some of their mothers never left their house, and getting them to come was a real treat. Asunción, the capital is inly about 40 km away and accessible by bus, but some have never been there. The town has 15000 inhabitants, not very small but certainly not big, yet many people complain about the distances, walking a few blocks could be considered far. Basically, if you're not working and especially if you don't have a motor bike, you're not moving far, your house and street is often your world.

This affects church life. In response some pastors, like in many places, have "reuniones caseras", meetings in homes, mostly on weekdays. This appears to be popular and neighbours have the opportunity to come by. It gives the opportunity for people who can't or won't leave their streets to listen to the Word and fellowship. We have been thinking about this as well, since we also have contact with people that have a transport issue. And being used to working with house groups and such it's natural to us.

But the complaint from some pastors about these meetings is not that they don't work, it's that the people that come to these meetings don't then come to church, and some of the church members that attend also stop going to the services. And because of that some pastors stop with the meetings, slightly annoyed at times.

I have reflected about this. And it seems to me a bit like the difference between boxing and judo. You can confront something you don't like straight on, like in boxing, and spend a lot of power defeating your opponent. Or you can use the the movement of your opponent and bend it in your direction, like in judo.

Because if you take out the goal "people should go to the service in the church" from the equation, the problem disappear. If you instead work from a perspective that the group that gather in the home is in reality a small church, then the local life is no longer a problem. If you don't treat the meeting as a recruitment point for the "real church", which happens on Sundays, but as something that can grow and function as a New Testament church in it's own right, then you have bent the local mindset in your direction. And as such the culture can become an asset, not a hinder.

As we haven't tried this yet, it's more of a theory, but I'll come back and report the developments. A great thing about being a church planter / missionary is that we have a mandate to try new things, as long as we're happy to fail at times!

Teaching or implementing?

The other day I met up with some pastors and one of them shared that he was working with the book The Purposedriven Church by Rick Warren. But, ha added quickly, what he did was he was preaching through it in the services. I reflected on that afterwards, because I think it's something that we often do, as leaders. We teach things, explain things, share books we have read, or we go to conferences and seminars and hear about stuff. But we don't actually put it to practice.

For example: It's one thing reading The purpose driven church and teach through it, it's something completely different implementing the philosophy of that book, the way of doing things that it describes.

As I reflect more it seems to me that one is the work of a Teacher, an explainer, and the other is the work of a Leader, or perhaps Apostle. Two different approaches, two different personalities. And because in the history of the church we have emphasized Pastors and Teachers, carers and explainers, we find it easier to talk about stuff rather than doing the stuff. We don't actually expect that things will change, even though we might talk about change. A way of doing things like Warrens book describes, or any other way really, requires the whole church to change in a quite profound manner. It's hard work.

But it seems to be that it's work that needs to be done if churches are going to evolve and grow. We're trying to do that now. slowly introducing new ways of thinking, showing them, repeating them a million times, because that's what it takes. We don't use Warrens model, but we have a pretty clear picture what we want to see, and talking about is just one part of the process, practicing it is the key.