josh whitehead

Last week was an awesome experience working with Terry DuPont and Open Eyes Ministries in Costa Rica. Our job was to train church leaders and pastors in discipleship strategy and church administration in 3 hours! Although we did have some great free time, most of our days were full of travel with our sessions. For instance on Tuesday, we left the house before 7am and returned after midnight. That included 6 hours of teaching and a lot of driving! We taught in four cities in three days: Nicoya, Puntarenas, Liberia and Canas.

Here are some things that I noticed about the church in Costa Rica:

• The leaders and pastors that Terry works with seem very willing to help one another.
• The buildings are poorly furnished and not very nice, but the people that fill them appear happy, eager to learn and very gracious. Most of them appeared to be very humble.
• Many of the issues facing the church in Costa Rica are similar to the US church – church structure plagues them, lack of vision, lack of leadership development, etc. The pastor’s there try to do it all instead of delegating responsibility and empowering their people.
• The churches are scrambling to meet the needs of the community and are overwhelmed by the extreme poverty in their areas.

There are obviously tons of challenges facing the church in the US. What do you think is the greatest one?