Walls' Latin-American Mission

Greetings!

On Saturday, December 4th, our church in Santo Domingo had the privilege of being one of the five founding churches of the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches in Ecuador. Many of us from the church were at the celebration of the first general assembly where each church gave a brief report of the work that God has been doing in their churches and the ways we could pray for them. I was greatly struck by two needs shared by each of the five churches: (1) the various ways they were seeking to reach other communities, (2) and the need for more trained men. Each church was involved in evangelism in their own communities or neighboring communities or they were helping Christians from other cities who had reached out to them for help in growing in their faith and establishing sound churches where they live. However, not only did they all mention the need for these various communities, but they all also mentioned the need for more men who were trained and prepared to serve God and his kingdom in this way. We are so thankful for this reminder that the ministry we are doing in Ecuador is precisely what so many communities in Ecuador need. We have a great harvest of souls who want to know more, to be more faithful to Christ, and to see a church established in their community, but the laborers are truly few.

“Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’”

(Matt 9:37-38)

As we are entering on a new year, I want to reflect back on the things that God has done in this past year of 2021 towards meeting these needs. Specifically, I want to talk about the renewed focus in the Pastor School, the practical ministry in the local church, the new relationships with which the Lord blessed us, and the new resources published by our publishing ministry, Legado Bautista Confesional. 

Renewed Focus

This past year has been a huge blessing for the spiritual state of the Pastor School program. We have found a renewed focus. Since the very beginning of the program, we have sought to emphasize not only the importance of doctrine, but also the importance of that truth changing our lives. But, it is so easy to lose that balance, and unfortunately many seminary programs in the US and in other countries have lost that focus. However, in this past year we have seen a type of spiritual revival in my own heart and in the lives of the students. At the beginning of the year we had lost some of the practical focus, but the Lord helped us to renew this focus and to establish it as much more of an integral part of the program. This spiritual revival has sparked three main changes in the program that will continue to be a part of it for years to come.

The first part is the importance of practical godliness in all areas of life. This first began in my own life as I began to realize some of the issues in my own marriage and how important being a godly husband and father is for pastors. In fact, being a godly father and husband is part of the requirements for being a pastor (1 Tim 3:4-5), is part of the work of a pastor (1 Pet 5:3), and not doing it can make the work of a pastor impossible (1 Pet 3:7). Seeing how this is such an important part of being pastor, I came to lament the fact that our program had no formal time to teach on this part of being a man and pastor. For this reason, we took about two weeks in August of last year to study what it means to be a godly husband and we developed a plan for holding ourselves accountable in this area. Since then, the students, pastor Jorge, and I have sought to give account to one another and remain resolved in being godly husbands. In fact, this practical module later became a 5-part Sunday school series on marriage that I was able to give to our church. Please pray for me and the students as we seek to remain faithful in this area of our lives. 

To help maintain this focus on piety, we want to be more faithful in being involved practically in each other’s lives and to give an account to each other, but also to have regular practical modules addressing important issues of the Christian Life. We have modules planned for this new year on parenting, counseling, spiritual disciplines, prayer, etc. True biblical wisdom is not only in the mind, but rather it is a mind that is accompanied by a life lived in God’s presence. We want this to be a reality in our own lives, and in the life of each of our students, and in the church. Pastors with this type of heavenly wisdom (James 3:13-18) is what God’s people need, and for this reason it is the type of men we want to train, and we want our program to foster and fuel this type of piety, and in no way be a hinderance to it. 

The second part of the spiritual refocusing has been on the devotional aspect of the program. We have started a plan of beginning each day of class with about 30 minutes of devotional. We take turns giving a 5-10 minute devotional on a passage from the book of Romans, and we hope to finish the whole book by the end of 2022. Then, we spend the rest of the time praying for a few members of the church and for each other. This has been such a sweet time to remind us of the goal the program has in forming pastors and men who care for God’s people, and it has been a wonderful opportunity to share our own burdens with one another and to be more intimately involved in the lives of each other.

This has also led to the students addressing sin that we have noticed in each other. For example, during some of our classes, especially Greek, the students had become very competitive and were trying to be the best in the Greek exercises that we had. But, the Lord used this time of spiritual refocusing to help us address these issues and remind us that the goal is to serve God’s people, edify one another, and bring glory to God. The attitude of the students in this time has helped me in many ways to consider my own faults as a teacher and to become more Christ-like and focused. 

The third part of the program is biblical interpretation or exegesis. The program was originally designed to follow a logical and systematic order. We wanted to emphasize the foundational role of the Bible so most of our Bible classes were in 2020 at the beginning of the program and finished early 2021. But then, the rest of the program focuses on Church History and Systematic Theology, with practical classes and ministry practicums being a constant. But, this year we realized that the most important thing that our program can do is produce men who are pious in their practical lives and who love the Bible and can interpret it well and clearly. For this reason, another constant in the program will be exegesis. The students not only have around 8 classes on the Old and New Testament, Biblical Theology, and Hermeneutics, but they also will have constant practice throughout the life of the program in exegesis. This will be through opportunities to preach to the other students, in the various church plants we are working with, and also through the regular practicums and the daily devotionals. We want the students to be constantly steeping in the word of God, and we hope that the rest of the program will make them more familiar with the Bible and more comfortable in preaching and teaching from it.   

These are three of the ways in which the program and we ourselves have matured in this last year, and we are looking forward to seeing what this new year has in store. 

Local Church Ministry

From start to finish, the local church is central to our training program: from a training program set in the context of the local church, teaching centered on God’s people and their mission, and a goal to see God’s people sanctified and more sound biblical churches established. In our second year of training, we are already starting to see the fruit. 

First of all, I have received the great privilege of teaching and preaching in the local church this year. I have been preaching regularly on Sunday evenings. I finished a series on 1 Peter earlier this year, and then more recently I began a series on Christ’s High Priestly Prayer in John 17. Also, in October I taught a Sunday School series on the history, theology, and practical applications of the Reformation. And, in November, I taught a five-part series on marriage. In addition to the regular teaching ministry, we have also had the privilege of serving the church in other ways by getting to know the people more, praying for them, and doing counseling. 
One thing for which we ask your prayers is that the church is now in the process of considering me as a pastor. This would be a blessing for the pastoral training ministry (as we want it to be pastors training pastors), and also the church needs other elders since we would be one of only a few churches that we know that have a plurality of elders. However, we are also aware of the great responsibility that it is, and it is something we do not want to take lightly. As of now, we have received unanimous support from the church, but as a family we are still praying and seeking the Lord as we make this decision. Please join us in prayer. 

Second of all, the Lord has blessed our local church with two opportunities to help plant churches. Through the pandemic when many churches went to online services, it sent many people searching the web for other sermons or church services. Through this, many came to Reformed theology through sermons by Paul Washer, Sugel Michelen, many others, and our own church. Then, as they looked for churches near them, many people reached out to us for help in their spiritual growth and they also expressed their desire to see a church planted in their area. We have received significant interest from two cities: Quito, the capital; and Atacames, a smaller city on the beach, both of which are about 3 hours from Santo Domingo. About 10 different people contacted our church from Quito, and some even began to come regularly the three hour drive to be with us on the Lord’s Day. Another family from Atacames reached out to us and even offered to use their house as the location for a Bible Study and an eventual church plant. 

In both of these cities we are currently working with the church and the students to see biblical churches planted. In Atacames, the students are taking turns each week going, preaching, and teaching a discipleship program as we begin to see the desire of true Christians to commit to a local church. Also, in Quito there are currently two Bible studies on either side of the city led by a local pastor, Roberto Espinosa, who is working together with us on this project. In the next couple of months, the believers in these two Tuesday-night Bible Studies will rent a central location where they will meet for Sunday morning worship.

Third, the students too have received a lot of practical ministry experience. They have been very active serving the members of the church with regular visits, evangelizing their lost family members, and preaching and teaching. In one of our classes we did an exegetical study of Jude on the basis of the Greek text, and the assignment for the class was that the students took turns preaching through the book of Jude. Also, for the past few months, two of them have been regularly preaching and teaching in Atacames where we hope to see a church established, and currently they are all three taking turns there. Now that we are here in the US for a short time, they are also taking turns preaching in the evenings. It is amazing to see how they have grown in these past two years, and to see the local church’s approval of them. The members have been very encouraged by their preaching, teaching, and example. Many members have even nominated them to be considered as elders in our church. 

Our program has one more year remaining, and we hope to see our students more involved in the church planting missions or in other communities. There is one student, Oscar, who will be going back to his sending church, where he still serves through virtual correspondence and regular visits. He will be ordained as a pastor there and will serve in his home church. We are praying for the other students, and ask that you join us, as the Lord guides them in this next year on where they are to serve. Some of the options they are considering are, becoming the pastor at the mission in Atacames, remaining in Santo Domingo to help as another elder and also to help in the next cycle of the pastor school, or going back to their home town of Guayaquil and planting a church there. Please commit to pray for them in this new year as they seek guidance from the Lord on where they can best serve him and his kingdom. 

New Relationships — HeartCry

Another important change that happened for the work in Ecuador this past year was a new partnership with HeartCry Missionary Society. Early last year we began a relationship with HeartCry through the publishing ministry (see below). We began to work with HeartCry to revise the Spanish translations they had of the discipleship manuals written by Paul Washer and to work on translating the ones yet to be put in Spanish. We have since then published the first two discipleship manuals and will be publishing the third in the next couple of weeks. The other manuals are already in the works as well. This was just the start of a much more intimate partnership that would benefit the work of reformation in Ecuador as well. 

Around August/September of 2021, we had a visit from the Latin America Coordinator of HeartCry, Luke Nash, who came to examine our local church and to see the state of the work of God in Ecuador (the video report of the trip can be seen here). Through this meeting, our local church in Santo Domingo became the local church connection for HeartCry to Ecuador. HeartCry has since then begun supporting some of the pastors of our sister churches in the association (see the testimony of Isaias Velandia who is one of the pastors of the association now supported by HeartCry) so that they could devote themselves full-time to the ministry. This also gave the opportunity for one pastor to move to the city where he pastors and now he no longer has to drive over an hour every weekend to serve in the church. They are also planning on supporting other men the future as the Lord opens up new opportunities and we see churches planted in the cities mentioned above. 

Another amazing fruit of this partnership is the support HeartCry has extended to the students of our Pastor School program. They have joined with you to ensure that the our students are able to commit themselves to their studies and then also to be supported for their first years in ministry. We are so blessed to have this partnership with HeartCry and we give God thanks for it. We have greatly benefited from their advice and experience, and we are very excited about the fruit this partnership will produce in the future of our ministry in Ecuador. Likewise, it provides greater security to our students both now and for years to come as they transition from their training to their time in full-time ministry. 

Please, give thanks to God with us for this partnership, and continue to pray for God to raise up more men and more churches who will partner with us and the work that God is doing in Ecuador.