Semana Santa (Holy week) is a special time here in Argentina. To some, it is one last opportunity to go to the beach before it gets too cold. For others, it is a time to spend time with family. For anyone with any religious background or considering God and eternity, it is a time to either worship, sacrifice, or spend time thinking about who Jesus is. We hope to take this opportunity and use it to explain what the Bible teaches to anyone and everyone who will entertain the truth. For us, it will all start tonight. We have a special service to emphasize the death of Jesus. We have a guest preacher who will be preaching. We already have several families who have committed to being with us. We are looking forward to it. We will continue celebrating the resurrection with our special Easter service on Sunday. These next few days will be wonderful days at Faith Baptist Church.

One of my favorite things in the ministry is discipleship but it is also one of the most frustrating. Why? Because I lack patience. Inevitably, we want to see the person we are discipling grow at a much faster rate than he/she is actually growing. We want to see great strides instead of baby steps. But one quick trip down “memory lane” will remind us that we didn’t take great strides either but rather that God worked patiently in us. Even when we fell or reluctantly took the next step, God was patient and continually guided us.

Even though this is true, I find it easy to forget my own “baby steps” and grow inpatient when others I am working with aren’t growing in their Christian walk by leaps and bounds. There is a time for babies to drink milk and a time for them to grow into eating more solid foods and the same thing is true for new Christians. We cannot expect them to be “dining on spiritual steak” any more than we can expect a newborn to be “gumming a T-bone”. As the father of an 8 month old girl, I know that it takes time for this baby to learn to crawl, walk, talk, etc. There is definitely a time for babies to “leave the milk” and move on to “solid foods”, but it takes time. The same is true with new Christians. We must have patience.

This Sunday should be a really big day for us. This Sunday we will be having a special service we are calling “Levi’s Banquet”. When Levi met Jesus in Luke 5, he threw a big banquet and invited all of his friends so that they could meet Jesus. That is exactly what we are trying to do. We will have a big lunch after the 11 am service. I know one family who will be coming (they have not yet visited the church). We have several of our faithful attenders who have invited others as well. Please pray with us that God would work in the hearts of those who attend, that they would understand the Gospel and believe on Jesus as Savior.

In life there is opposition, and in the ministry there certainly is opposition. Working against the grain means their will be resistance. Therefore ministry is full of opposition because we are naturally sinners living in a sinful world, and of course Satan is at work seeking to devour whomever he can (1 Peter 5:8). That being true, we need patience. I think the dream and hope of any new ministry is to grow quickly, which is very rare, and when it does happen, it brings on a new kind of opposition. The desire to grow quickly, but starting out very slow is the normal and it takes patience. This can be true in growth as well as maturity. We must have patience.

One of my favorite verses on this subject is 1 Corinthians 16:9, “For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries.”. Most people (myself included) would have said, “For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, but there are many adversaries.”. But Paul used the word “and” instead of “but”. Why? Because he knew there would be opposition and had patience to serve, love, and reach out through the opposition to win people to Jesus, have them baptized, and to disciple them. The truth is we need patience in the ministry.

God has been so good to us here. We have seen people saved, we have already had the honor of discipling a few, and we have 4-5 people that are interested in being baptized. God is at work in this very young ministry (at the date this article was published, the church is not even a year old). We are seeing great strides and we are seeing resistance. In Jesus we can labor patiently knowing that He is at work among us!