On the 28th of February 2001, Buck and Luciene moved to the Amazon Basin of Brazil. We lived in Macapá, right on the equator. Why would a web designer give up his career and take his family from their comfortable life in Columbus, Ohio, USA, to live on the Amazon River? We came with a vision to save the Amazon, to tell people about Jesus, and plant a Vineyard church. We have planted a church, and we are turning it over to the national leaders, heading back to the States in Sept. 2009.

 
I have not been able to get online except at night, if at all. I have some kind of weird radio interference with my telephone line. I have tried everything that I can think of, changed all the wiring in my house, bought a telephone line filter, I've had the phone people here and the ISP people here, and they all just wring their hands, and say that yep, it seems like there is some kind of radio interference. I wondered if it may be shortwave, but I think it is just conventional radio.

I can usually get online if I try before 7:30 am, and at night, sometimes after 7pm, sometimes not until 10pm, or midnight, or later. There are times when I cannot connect for days at a time, one time I went four days not being able to get online. Needless to say, this has been a real pain.

If any of you ham/computerhead gurus has any ideas about this problem, please share them with me, at holylamb(at)pobox.com.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately, about missions, about what missionaries do, how to plant churches. I just recently read “The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church” by Roland Allen. It was just what I needed, at the time I needed it. I would highly recommend it, especially to anyone that is involved in missions. I am still waiting for the boxes of books that I sent from the States to arrive.

I have been trying to form a philosophy of ministry and church planting. Things like what is really necessary and what are things that are maybe imposed from our western culture, establishing rules as opposed to letting the Holy Spirit be the guide, money and who controls it, how much control or freedom should a new church plant have, should a national church planter have a salary or work in a secular job until the church is established enough to pay his wages, etc.

I have also been reading about house churches at sites like http://www.house2house.tv and trying to think through the whole building rental thing, instruments, etc.

I mean, what is really essential to plant a church? If we need huge amounts of money to be invested, then how transferable is that? I want to develop a model of church planting that does not require huge sums of money from North America to fund church plants in South America. It seems to me that starting a church that reproduces is much more efficient and economical, like the difference of planting something that seeds, and the next year expands all on its own, and something that is grafted, and can never expand unless a branch is cut from it and grafted into another plant. Thousands of seeds with one plant, or one graft from the mother plant, do the math. If the goal is expansion and growth, the seeds are much more efficient. They will grow and adapt to the environment, and many of the plants will look much different than the mother plant due to their surroundings. Adaptation and expansion

If the goal on the other hand is cookie cutter Christians that all mumble the same slogans and agree completely with the head pastor, and churches that are exact clones of the mother plant, then the only way is grafting.

Our goal, our vision is to reach the vast reaches of the Amazon with the gospel, but just how in the world will that happen? What does it look like? It can never truly reach every tributary of the Amazon, as well as expand throughout the world if it is dependant on American dollars, like most missionary models I have seen in Brazil. An umbilical chord is useful for a season, but there is a point when it must be cut, and the baby must grow, and mature, and reproduce without it. Then another baby can be formed and birthed somewhere else by that mother church.

There are also issues such as the local church spending large sums on the rent of a building, instead of really doing the kingdom work of feeding the hungry, and taking care of the widows. Starting house churches may free up the resources for the church to carry out ministry to the surrounding communities. But I know from experience that people eventually want a building to meet in, and bring all the little churches together for a weekly celebration. There is something to the dynamic of corporate worship that is vital to our growth.

Anyways, there are a lot of issues to work through. This business of saving the Amazon can get messy sometimes :-) Share your ideas with me at holylamb(at)pobox.com, would love to discuss these issues further.

posted by Eduardo Buck at Thursday, May 15, 2003