Wise Counsel

A quick keyword search through the Wisdom Books at BibleGateway, produces this:

1. Proverbs 1:5
   A wise man will hear and increase in learning,And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,
   Proverbs 1:4-6 (in Context) Proverbs 1 (Whole Chapter)
2. Proverbs 12:15
   The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,But a wise man is he who listens to counsel.
   Proverbs 12:14-16 (in Context) Proverbs 12 (Whole Chapter)
3. Proverbs 19:20
   Listen to counsel and accept discipline,That you may be wise the rest of your days.
   Proverbs 19:19-21 (in Context) Proverbs 19 (Whole Chapter)
4. Proverbs 24:6
   For by wise guidance you will wage war,And in abundance of counselors there is victory.

One of the things I've appreciated about our ministry's approach, albeit far from perfect, is that we do our best to avoid a paternal approach to missions. What that means is that we do our best to avoid the "We're superior and the source of missiological knowledge because we're from America" attitude. The past two days, we've tried to live this out. First, yesterday we met with Raul Justiniano, (pictured on left; Jorgensen on right) a very respected international leader in Latin America. He's clearly a visionary and a man full of wisdom. He explained at some length how the church should and could respond to what appears to be a left-leaning political movement in Latin America. His response was totally biblical. We traded information and listened carefully for his wise counsel.Today, we spent a good deal of time with Tito Ramos. He's Campus Crusade for Christ's Bolivian National Director. When we went to meet him we found him here.

This is a small sea or university students at the largest university in Santa Cruz, and probably Bolivia. He was giving a lecture on business and marketing principles to these students. Most of it geared towards starting your own venture since employment is difficult in this economy. At the end of the lecture, he posted a slide and said, essentially, the following, "None of these marketing and business skills matter unless you have character. Where do you learn character? Where do you develop your personal character? Would you like to learn how God can held you develop your character?"

Then about 15 CC student workers passed out sheets of paper for the students to put their contact information on for follow-ups. In these follow-up sessions, the gospel will be presented clearly.
After this meeting, we sat down with Tito to ask his advice on how to form our national strategy in Bolivia. The Lord has blessed e3 in the areas we've worked in, but the Lord has burdened our hearts for a national church-planting strategy and, of course, for a church-planting movement to break out!

Tito immediately caught the vision and provided valuable advice we'll heed. How do we get 5,000 Bolivians trained in how to use the Evangecube in a matter of months? How do we reach every region of Bolivia? How do we find out where the unreached people groups are? Let us pray that we'll be wise in listening to good counsel.

Tonight, the training begins ...