As we clearly saw in Part 3 of our ministry philosophy, Jesus did not spend equal amounts of time with all of those that followed Him (this would include the multitudes that followed him, the 70, the 12 and even the 3). How can we expect to do more than our Master? Jesus is our supreme example on how to make disciples and so we must be careful to follow in His steps. We really will have two general goals for the discipleship ministry in our churches (I say churches because our desire is to establish multiple churches throughout Spain and the regions beyond). On the one hand, we share the same desire as the apostle Paul in Colossians 1:28, “that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” The only problem with that, of course, is that not every Christian in our church is going to cooperate with us in that process. We want every born again believer to love God and be actively involved in carrying out the Great Commission, but we know that unfortunately many “Christians” will remain spectators (from the outside looking in) of what God is doing in and through the rest of the church. This will not impede us from trying to present perfect (complete, mature) in Christ Jesus as many as possible. On the other hand we find Paul writing to his disciple Timothy in 2 Tim. 2:2 and he says, “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” Here we are commanded to train faithful men who will become disciple makers themselves. In other words, these men will become the future leaders and pastors of our churches. As we have heard many times, “The cream always rises to the top.” This group of people will receive more one on one time with us because they are faithful, proven men that are hungry for more involvement and responsibilities in the church. It may seem like we are playing favorites but that is far from the truth. As soon as someone is saved in one of our churches we will immediately seek to involve them in the discipleship process. Already in this phase we will have people that will refuse to receive even basic discipleship lessons. But many others will begin learning the basics of the Christian life and start growing and maturing. They will start learning how to read and study God’s Word, how to pray, how to give biblically to the work of God etc…. But once they reach a certain level of growth many will refuse to take that extra step into service and teaching others. Only a select group will want to go further and become disciple-makers. This group is not content with sitting  on the sidelines while others get the work done. They want to be like Christ in every way possible. Not all of these believers will become pastors and missionaries but they will all have a very important part in the ministry in Spain. It is only natural that we will spend more personal one on one time with them.  It would be a mistake for us to beg and plead the others to move forward for Christ (we can’t force people to serve) when the faithful men (and women) are willing and desiring to take the next step. What’s amazing is that the more mature and faithful  Christians will begin to impact and influence the rest of the congregation so that some will venture out of their comfort zone and begin to do more for Christ.

I do want to be very clear that although Christ is our model to follow in discipleship, we are only humans and as such we have many limitations. We will be very careful to not make disciples of ourselves, but of Christ. It is very easy to center our ministries on ourselves and forget that our goal is to “present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” When a new convert enters into a student-teacher relationship with one of us, he is going to naturally want to imitate everything that we do. While this is inevitable, we must remember that our ultimate goal is to point them to Christ and not us. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Cor. 11:1, “Be ye followers of me, even as I am also of Christ.” It would be easy to say that this verse proves that people are supposed to follow us, but I believe that the emphasis of the verse is, “Even as I am also of Christ.” We want those that we are discipling to imitate those areas in our lives that are Christ-like, but certainly not every facet of our being. If that’s the case then our children in the faith would possess our strengths as well as our weaknesses. When we begin to disciple someone we want them to understand that we are not perfect and that we will make mistakes. If we point them to the Bible and ask them to judge all things through the light of the Scriptures then they will learn what areas of our lives are truly worth imitating. I am very thankful that God gave me an earthly father that was not a dictator. Although I was expected to obey him in everything that he commanded, he made it very clear to me that he was not perfect. Many times I remember my father coming into my room and apologizing because he had not been a good example in a particular matter.  I learned that although my father was appointed by God to direct and mold my life, he was only a vessel intended to lead me into a personal relationship with my heavenly father, who is perfect in all things. He taught me that God’s word (not his own) is my ultimate authority.  Because my father pointed me to Christ I have an anchor that will keep me safe in the fiercest storms. Ministries that are centered on men will never survive after the death of their earthly leader. We want the men that are trained under our ministry to depend on Christ and not on us. Please continue reading. We will get into church-planting in the next article.  

Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends,

“For from you sounded out the word of the Lord...so that we need not to speak anything.” (1 Thessalonians 1:8) Most of you have noticed that our website is www.thatallmayknow.net. We have named our ministry in Spain thatallmayknow ministries. The reason that we have chosen this theme is because we believe that this is ultimately God’s heartbeat. Our team members have recently started a church in Parla, Madrid with the vision to aggressively and proactively find a way to reach every single household and individual in the city with the gospel message. Like the church at Thessalonica we want to make a profound impact for the honor and glory of God.

Although the church has not been officially inaugurated, many exciting things have   already taken place! Our team members have been unable to obtain the permit which allows them to place a church sign on the building. This has made it difficult to pass out invitations for the church and no official service has been held to jump-start the church. In spite of all of these setbacks we are thrilled to announce that the team in Spain has been able to personally present the gospel to several individuals and two souls have already been saved. Praise the Lord! Not only that, several people have visited the church and many have shown an interest to visit in the future. 23,329 gospel DVD's have been distributed making the gospel available to 69,987 people. Over 2,000 people every month have visited our evangelistic website and many have requested free Bibles. One person has already been baptized and very soon another will follow. We are thrilled about those that have been saved and baptized, but it is wonderful seeing those same people faithfully attend church services and begin the process of discipleship.

Since our last prayerletter we have had 7 new churches partner with us and we are currently at 85% of our needed support. Based on our average support we only need 18 more churches to take us on for support for us to reach our goal. We have already turned in our passports to the Spanish consulate. As soon as they return our passports with the stamped visas (this should take one more month) we will have 3 months maximum to leave the U.S. for Spain. We are still on track to leave for Spain December 1st. Since we already speak the    language fluently and we have a team in place on the field, as soon as we arrive in Spain we will be busy with what God has called us to do. Thank you for your faithful prayers and support.

As we mentioned in our last prayerletter we will be keeping you updated about our Setup Fund. We have great news! We received two special gifts towards the fund for $500.00 and $100.00. So what we still need to raise is as follows:

 

Container: $5,900.00 ($100.00 already raised. Praise the Lord!)

 

3 Airplane Tickets: $2,400.00

 

1 month of rent: $1,200.00 (We have found a home to rent and have put 2 months down already but we still need to pay one more month in advance when we arrive in Spain)

 

Vehicle: $9,500.00 ($500.00 already raised. Praise the Lord!)

 

If you would like to be a part of helping us with our Setup Fund please send all gifts to:

 

David Velasquez

c/o M.W.B.M

P.O. Box 519

Braselton, GA 30517

Designated to:

006 Shipping/Travel

While the evangelization of Spain is our ultimate objective (really our vision is for the whole world but we will be starting in Spain), the biblical method to accomplish that goal is discipleship and church-planting. I would like to discuss discipleship first and then get into the matter of establishing churches. It really doesn’t matter which subject we discuss first. It’s like saying, “Which came first the chicken or the egg?” What matters is that we obey God in both of these areas. In Matthew 28:18-20, which is probably the fullest expression of the Great Commission in the Bible, we find our Lord’s command to evangelize (this is implied because we cannot make disciples if we don’t evangelize), establish churches (although we don’t find a clear command in the Bible that says, “go start churches;” obedience to the great commission necessitates the establishment of churches), and disciple the converts (“teaching them…” Verse 20). It really doesn’t matter what our opinions are regarding world evangelization because God has already chosen the method for His mission to be carried out.  We are not going to attempt to reinvent the wheel (that is what we are doing when we ignore Christ’s instructions) because we have the biblical model and it works! It may appear the obvious choice, but how many times are these commands completely ignored in our churches today because some “new” method has been discovered. We are in trouble! Bill Hull quotes George Orwell in his book The Disciple-Making Pastor and leaves us with an eye-opening declaration, “We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” In other words, the obvious has become revolutionary. We are not discussing something new, but simply restating what has already been clearly delineated in Scripture. Faced with these truths we can either ignore them or obey them. As a missionary team we have chosen to obey and trust God for the results.

Much has been written about the Pauline method, but why not go directly to the Master (Jesus Christ) and discover His method for evangelizing the world. Jesus did many things while he was here on this earth. He preached several sermons, He rebuked the Pharisees, He healed the sick etc…, but if we carefully read the gospels it is plain to see that Jesus spent the majority of His ministry investing His life in twelve men. Although many others followed Him, His earthly work was centered on the twelve. If we viewed His ministry through the prism of the majority of today’s church-growth experts, we would have to conclude that the time that our Lord invested training the twelve was in vain. Yet every single Christian today is a result of those twelve men. The early church went from 120 members in Acts 1:15 to 3,000 in Acts 2:41 to 5,000 men in Acts 4:4 to the point that they “turned the world upside down.” (Acts 17:6) So what is the difference between the first century church and the 21^st century church? That the first Christians actually believed and obeyed our Lord’s command to make disciples and they evangelized the world (Colossians 1:5, 6, 23). We must go back to the Bible if we will ever accomplish such a feat in our generation. We believe strongly in working as a team. We will be working in Spain with my parents Julio and Andrea Velasquez and with my sister and brother-in-law Jeffrey and Deanna Andrews. Our desire is to see more families join us. We know that God has given us different gifts and abilities that we will be able to use for the furtherance of the gospel. Although God has blessed us with a team that will work together to obey the great commission we cannot evangelize Spain alone. We can only do so much before the task becomes insurmountable. We plan to disciple and train those that are saved so that they can join us in the mission. We must reproduce ourselves in other people so that our labors can be multiplied. If all we do as a team is personally add new converts then our reach will be limited. But if we make disciples of men (and women) that are able to disciple others who will reproduce themselves into others etc…then we could begin to multiply and train an army that will turn Spain and the world upside down. Our goal in discipleship is “that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (2 Timothy 3:17). The true measure of success in discipleship is not the number of people attending the church services each week, but the quality of their love for God and dedication to His cause (World Evangelization). We cannot expect the preaching from the pulpit or the Sunday school lessons alone to get the job done. We must follow Christ’s example and invest our lives in people in order to produce fruit that will remain and produce more fruit. This form of discipleship goes beyond written discipleship lessons (we certainly will use discipleship materials to start the process) and into what has been called, “life-on-life” discipleship. Our Lord Jesus Christ lived with the twelve, He ate with them, spent countless hours teaching and preparing them for the awesome responsibilities that would come. You may be asking yourself, “How will they personally spend one on one time with every Christian in their church?” The answer is simple, we can’t. Jesus had great multitudes that followed him; He had the 70 that were a little closer to him and of course the twelve that spent the majority of their time with Him. Even more specifically he had 3 disciples that formed His most intimate circle. Please continue reading next week as we continue on the subject of discipleship. We will get into church-planting as well. 

The theme verse for our ministry is found in 1 Samuel 17:46, “…That all the earth may know that there is a God…” Most of you have noticed that our website is www.thatallmayknow.net. We have named our ministry in Spain ThatAllMayKnow Ministries. The reason that we have chosen this theme is because we believe that this is ultimately God’s heartbeat.  We want to be reminded every day of what our main responsibility is in Spain. The central theme of Scripture is “that thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations (Psalm 67:2). Whether we read the Old or New Testament the message is the same: the redemption of mankind through Jesus Christ.  In the Old Testament God had chosen the nation of Israel to be a light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6). In the New Testament God has chosen the church to carry out His master plan. You may be wondering when I am going to mention church-planting and discipleship. I will discuss both of these topics in great length but I believe it is important for us to keep our focus on the ultimate goal. We are commanded and taught in Scripture that we are to establish churches (“baptizing them in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Ghost” Matthew 28:19b) and disciple the converts (“teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded” Matthew 28:20a) but the objective is to evangelize the world. Discipleship and Church-planting are the method and vehicle that God has chosen to accomplish the task.

We have recently started a church in Parla, Madrid and our focus is to get the gospel to every person in the city. We didn’t want to have a Field of Dreams philosophy from the onset (if you build it, they will come) but a biblical approach, “…Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in…” (Luke 14:23b). We cannot expect people to take the initiative and search after God or our church. Romans 3:11 clearly states, “…there is none that seeketh after God.” We have to aggressively and proactively find a way to reach every single household and individual with the gospel message. We will personally go soul-winning (house to house, in the parks, in the streets). We will try to build relationships with people in order to break down barriers and share the gospel with them. One of the things that we are interested in starting, in the near future, is English classes. We think that this is going to be a fantastic way to make friends and meet potential converts. We will systematically get the gospel, in one way or another, into every home. Because of this goal we have started the gospel DVD project. Spain has certain unique challenges that we don’t find in the U.S. (especially in urban areas). Most people (especially in the main cities) live in apartment complexes. The population of Parla is approximately 150,000. It would take us several years to knock on every door in the city and present the gospel to every person (we are certainly going to try to personally knock on every door). Even if we gained entrance into every apartment building (that isn’t always possible) most likely not everyone would be home or even interested in listening to us. That is why the gospel DVD project is such a useful tool for us. One thing that you can do in Spain, which is illegal in many other countries, is personally place material in their mailboxes. All of the businesses in Spain are able to advertise their products in that way. All you have to do is ring any doorbell from the apartment building and when they ask, “Quien es?” (who is it?) You simply reply, “Correo informativo” (informative mail) and they will let you in, no questions asked. Once you are inside the building you have access to every single mailbox. The DVD’s that we have produced have a three minute story that catches their attention and a five minute clear gospel presentation. Through these DVD’s we can gain access to many more homes in a much shorter period of time. Because the average household in Spain is comprised of three people we have made 50,000 copies of the DVD. If you multiply 50,000 by 3 the total is 150,000 which is the population of the city. At the end of the DVD we invite them to visit our website, estudialabiblia.com (studythebible.com). This website has all sorts of resources for them to study. Through the website they can learn about our ministry as well as request a free Bible or a personal Bible study. We want to distribute these DVD’s into every household at least once every year and we hope to make new DVD’s in the future. You may be thinking, “What about the people that don’t own a DVD player?” Although the vast majority of people in Spain have the necessary technology in their homes, we don’t want to exclude anyone. Because of that fact we plan to distribute, in addition to the DVD’s, New Testaments, invitations to the church, gospel tracts, gospel CD’s (the gospel message on CD) and much more. We have already placed one billboard about our church in the entrance of the city and would like to put up more. We would also like to advertise the church through the local newspaper. I hope to make it as clear as possible that we will not rest until every person has the opportunity to make a decision about Christ. We must use every tool at our disposal. I know that in the future we will try new things that we haven’t even thought of now. But regardless of the means, the message and our purpose will never change. I have much more to write on this subject. I would like to talk about discipleship and church-planting. Please continue reading.

Psalm 103:2, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:” Most of the time when we think of benefits or blessings, we think of all the good things that happen to us. When something good happens or when times are good we say how much the Lord has blessed us. Does that mean that during times of crisis and hardship and when things aren’t as good, that the Lord is not blessing us or is even punishing us? Is our perspective of blessing and benefit the same as God’s perspective? Psalm 103 gives great perspective of what God’s blessings and benefits really are. Notice a few verses: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;” His forgiveness, healing power, redeeming power, lovingkindness and tender mercies are examples of his benefits and blessings to us. Because he has saved us, redeemed us and shown us loving kindness and mercy, we are blessed beyond measure. Even in the midst of crisis and heartache, we can remember the benefits that he gives to us.

I briefly want to mention 4 things in our life and ministry.

1. The Building

For the most part, the building is done. Because there are several things I want to mention in this letter, I will save the pictures for the next letter. Also, check out our blog at: www.thatallmayknow.net as I will be posting pictures of the building soon. We will open the building to the public very soon.

2. New Ministry Website

I wanted to mention a new website that I have created. This website has articles about the Bible, family, salvation, etc. so that unbelievers can learn more about the Bible. There are also Bible studies that they can download and do on their own. I have also put up a form where they can request a Bible and a personal one on one Bible study. My original goal for this website was to use it as a tool in helping to build a contact base as we plant our church. My vision was to one day see it reaching other Spanish Speaking countries. Since the inception of the website (about 2 1/2 months ago) I have received several requests per week from about 10 or 11 different Spanish Speaking countries outside of Spain. I am amazed at how the Lord is using this site. Here is the website: http://estudialabiblia.com/

3. Baptism

On Feb 7th, I was able to administer my first ever baptism. Not only was I able to do my first baptism, but one of the people being baptized was my own son. It was a great joy to baptize my son as he demonstrated his obedience to the Lord through baptism. He understood that baptism is not part of salvation, but a step of obedience toward our Lord that represents His death, burial, and resurrection. You can view the baptism here: http://www.thatallmayknow.net/blog/My-First-Baptism-Feb.-07-2010.html

4. Adoption

Our adoption process has been moving along. The Lord has taken us down a winding road and we are now in the process of a domestic adoption. We had to come back to the States for a few weeks to do a Home Study. We have basically been approved and our now in the waiting stage. Please continue to pray for the Lord’s direction upon each step of this process. You can stay up to date with what is happening by going here: http://www.thespiritofadoption.org/

Tonight was a memorable night, one I will never forget. The Lord allowed 2 great blessings in my life. I was able to administer my first ever baptism and I was also able to baptize my own son. On top of that, it was our first baptism in our infant ministry.  There will be many more baptisms in our ministry but I will never forget this one.

We thank Missionary Marvin Robertson who allowed us to use his baptistery. My father-in law preached and gave a clear message on Salvation and Baptism, explaining that Baptism is not a requirement for salvation but instead, a step of obedience in following the Lord. Later, I had the privilege of baptizing Isabel and my son Aaron.

You can watch the video of the Baptism below.

We have begun holding bible studies at my in-laws house. Our first official bible study was last Sunday and one lady came. Yesterday, we held our second bible study and had 2 people. In the picture above, the man on the right side is named Fernando. He trusted Christ as Lord in Argentina and came to Spain 8 years ago. However, he has not been a part of a church since he came to Spain. He recently enrolled in a correspondence course that requires him to be a faithful member of a church. So he came for this reason. We are praying that he will continue to come, but that the Lord will work in his heart about being faithful to the Lord out of love for Him instead of doing what is required to do. The lady sitting next to him is Isabel. She started attending the church in Madrid that Deanna and I were working in. She was very faithful to the services. She use to take a bus from where she lives to the church that would take over 2 hours one way. The town where we live is much closer to where she lives. She was with us last week for our first bible study. During the last family camp, she put her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as her Savior. She now wants to be baptized so we may hold our first ever baptism very soon. We are very excited. Pray for the work as we move forward. We have not even started our big "push" with the DVD project and the Lord is working. It is His work and not ours and we are just excited and honored to be a part of what He is doing.

God has been truly blessing in our lives. We are excited about the ministry here and our future ministry as well.  Listen to our lastest ministry update and find out details about our team members, the people who have been saved and baptized in recent months, as well as some future plans that we have for starting our church.  Enjoy!

Click here to listen to our audio update.

Last week, I posted a blog about the Baptism Service that we had.  You can view the post here if you missed it. 

I was finally able to finish editing the video.  I have put up the video on our church website here in Spain.  The video is able to be viewed in segments or you may view the entire service.  It is in Spanish but I know you will still get a blessing out of it.  You can view the videos here.