We have shared many communications over this past year regarding how we are adapting to the constant changes going on here in Colombia, and around the world. This process of adaptation has been mostly positive for us and for those that we live and work with. As with you, we have met many SURPRISES – both joyful and disappointing; many CHALLENGES – that have been met with degrees of success and failure; and many ATTEMPTS TO RECOVER “NORMALITY” – that we are now pretty sure will never happen (nor do we want to happen).
Yet, last Saturday, we participated in a moment that we never thought would happen – the FIPEC (Colombia Covenant Church) Annual meeting was stopped before it really got going.
How did this happen? We had good representation with almost 50 delegates in virtual attendance. We started on time with the Welcome and Opening prayer being shared. The next agenda item was the verification of quorum. Here is where FIPEC wanted to repeat its “normal” practice of determining quorum.
Being an “official, active” church in FIPEC means keeping up to date with legal documents, being able to navigate bureaucracy and pay the required fees. This isn’t easy for many of the FIPEC churches who don’t have the means or the experience to fulfill this requirement. What would appear to be a positive pattern of inclusion and grace in establishing quorum by adjusting the requirements so that all can have voice and vote, has proven to be unhealthy.
As last Saturday’s “roll call” stretched into almost two hours, most of those in attendance believed that some resolution would be arrived at and we would get on with the business of the meeting including national elections and annual ministry reports. This would have once again repeated the unhealthy pattern.
The moment came when the consensus was that it was time to STOP and NOT GO ON. A NEW NORMAL began. The decision was to figure out how to resolve this point once and for all, with the hope of establishing a new normality of gathering together officially as a Pacto family of churches and ministries.
The fact that a STOP took place is a good thing. Being tasked with figuring out how to do something different going forward, puts the FIPEC Annual Meeting right in the middle of the COVID-19 reality—how to live forward, not being defined and stuck in the past in order to fulfill God’s vision for the Pacto in Colombia, not just as individual, autonomous churches, but as a strong, unified Body of Believers.
Thanks for praying with us as we look to trust the Lord’s words in Isaiah 43:19, “Listen carefully, I am about to do a new thing, Now it will spring forth; Will you not be aware of it?”
May the Lord give us all eyes and ears to see and hear well what he is doing and what he is saying in whatever personal, work, or ministerial situation we find ourselves in.
