April 18,2008

Greetings from Yucatán!

Today is my birthday so I thought I would write and say thank you to all our supporters. Martha and I are very grateful for your keeping us on the mission field these many years.   As I hit the senior category (at least on paper) I realize more and more just how rare what Christians do in regards to missions really is. Rarely do we give money away to our friends and even less so to people we have never met, and yet Christians support their unseen brothers and sisters around the world with great love and many kindnesses. I find this very special. The funds you send keep us serving in Mexico where the Presbyterian Church is quite weak, even after a hundred years of continuous work! And when we remember that in many places around the world the work is only just beginning or under dreadful stress or persecution, then we understand why a mission is always a long-term endeavor.

The mission of the Church continues until our Lord returns so I am not too fond of talking about short-term missions. Perhaps we should say instead, short-term commitment. I said in the Presbyterian Church in Mexico is still weak even after over a hundred years of work, this is for several reasons. For example, church growth has been flat for about five years. This is in part the result of the many new independent or Pentecostal groups splintering the older Presbyterian congregations, and Presbyterians in Mexico are now mostly city folks who work long hours. A generation ago, the majority of members were farmers who had time in different seasons to go and begin new missions. So far, Presbyterians here have not figured out to navigate with these new waters.

But beyond the lack of growth there are two important areas I have been concerned with. First, the individualism that is so much a part of our culture has nearly broken the back of Reformed ecclesiology. For the Reformer, we serve the Lord Jesus by loving and working for the Church. By baptism we are incorporated into His body and to the degree that we as individuals become less and less dominate (willful) in our own lives we become, so to speak, His eyes and hands and feet.

The second concern logically follows, when we do find the one in a thousand or one in ten thousand Christian who is indeed ready to make their self a living sacrifice, does the Presbyterian Church today know how to nurture them towards such a noble goal? What lifelong challenge do we make? My take on these challenges is that the model of church we offer is too limited. We have one way of being the church; we gather on Sundays and disperse. The assembled body of Christ is visible for a few hours, basically paying attention only to itself, and then dissipates. Much can be done in those few hours on Sunday and certainly much is done during the week by committees and commissions and study groups.  But these only challenge us to give a part of our lives to the work of the Church, not our entire life. What would happen if Presbyterians had a second model to add to the first, a model wherein the brothers and sisters give their lives to the Church all day, every day?  In the Reformed Churches of Holland, France, and Germany this model is called a “diaconate community.” It is a residential church because the members of the congregation live and work at the church full time. In this way, they can take care of all kinds of people who need extended care, addiction recovery, education, and spiritual direction. This model has not yet jumped the Atlantic, but it is never too late to try. A residential church in each region would be a blessing to the local churches, as the members would be living reminders to us of how much more we have yet to give to the service of the our Lord. If you have any thoughts about these things I would love to hear from you.

Family news

Martha is in Lubbock to help Valerie for a couple of weeks. Valerie was getting tired from too much school, keeping an apartment, teaching, acting in a school play, etc. Pray that Valerie learns to pace herself.

David is driving more and more, and it is a hard lesson of faith for me each time he takes the car out. We went to Cancun for his ACT test, but will not get the score for a few weeks yet.

Mission briefs

I am teaching a new course of Spiritual Direction with several pastors. I have not taught it for a couple of years, and when I ran it by the seminary faculty they asked me to expand it, so I will now have four sessions of 12 weeks each! I am also teaching ecclesiology and helping a bit with a class in liturgy. I enjoy both of them but the scheduling is tough. We meet for only 90 minutes once a week so it difficult for the students to follow from one lesson to the next.

I received an email yesterday that the Evangelical Church of Chile is going to try to send two students to our seminary if they can get visas to Mexico. I am very pleased about this because it is the result of presentation I made in Antofagasta in January. I had thought they had forgotten all about us! The Lord willing, Dr. Wortham and I will be going back to Chile in January to teach new courses in spiritual direction.

The Casa Missionera in Tumbala, Chiapas, is doing fine with sister Pricilla as the leader. She now has a chol-speaking sister with her so they can do a lot more.

We are still praying about the timing for purchasing a new parcel of land near Ocosingo, so there can be a Casa Missionera in the Tzeltal-speaking areas.

The retreat center in Chablekal is getting steady use by different churches.

We are planning for the General Assembly of the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico in July, which will meet in the Door of Salvation Church, where I am currently pastor. This is a big event, so please pray that we get everything organized.

We are also happy to have several work teams scheduled to visit this summer and a summer intern from Columbia Theological Seminary will be working with us as from the end of May to the end August.

If there is someone reading this who likes investigative research I have a project for you. It would be wonderful if someone would make a list and try to find all the books Presbyterian missionaries have written about the work in Mexico. The few I have found have all been out of print for some time, mostly from the period 1950-1960, when there were over 120 U.S. missionaries in this country. However, Presbyterians have been serving in Mexico since 1872 so there are bound to be many that I don’t know about.

If a small group in your church would like to field test a retreat or workshop (it can be used either way) I wrote called, “The Authentic Christian Life,” let me know. I can email it. Basically, it is guided study of chapters 6 to 10 of Book III of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.

May the Lord keep you and bless you, may His face shine upon you and give you peace.

En Cristo,

Don and Martha Wehmeyer
Valerie, Kristen and David

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 256