Mar del Plata - an incredible evening in an magnificent setting!

Yesterday morning we had a meeting with the Ministers Union (Council of Churches, or Pastors' fraternal, depending on your context) in Buenos Aires. It was a an incredible meeting time! About a hundred leaders of denominations, Church groupings and ministry organisations gathered for the meeting. We had a chance to share about the Global Day of Prayer, and the Lausanne meetings in Cape Town. We also had a chance to talk about some possibilities in the local context to address systemic poverty and challenge the Church to become a significant, strategically aligned, agent of societal change.

After that meeting we got on a little bus for the 5 hour drive to Mar del Plata, on the coast of Argentina. Mar del Plata reminds me so much of the East London waterfront area near Victoria and the Quigney! It is quite steep, it has a similar climate (top temperature of about 15 degrees today), but it is beautiful!

A short while after our arrival we went to the city square to participate in a intercontinental television broadcast that was intended for Christians from the Southern tip of South America to the most Northern tip of North America! It was a magnificent time! It was freezing cold, but the latin American worship band was so energetic with their latin worship beats! I couldn't believe how electrifying and the latino eat was, within minutes the two thousand or so people on the square were hopping up and down!

The two most significant aspects of the 2 hour broadcast were the incredible testimonies and stories of those who shared how they had applied their faith in Jesus, and their commitment to justice, transformation, and God's renewing will for individuals and societieis, to bring huge changes in their sphere of influence (among them a chief tax collector from Ghana, a Prison administrator from Mexico, a Mayor from a North American City, Graham Power (my 'captain') a business person from Cape Town, a high school principal from Hawaii, a cardiologist from Iran... etc., etc.) For most of these people it was a simple, yet courageous, decision to seek God's will and enact God's will in their sphere of influence!

The second significant influence for me was a moment where a Lutheran and an Anglican leader prayed prayers of blessing and forgiveness for one another, and the Churches that each serve. The false divide between Catholics and Protestants in Latin America (and of course so many other places in the world) has been the cause of much inefiecency, lack of effectiveness, and even strife and hurt! And, what is so sad, is that God looks at all of God's children (all denominations, and yes, even all religions! God loves ALL people) and God longs for them to be loving, caring, a blessing, and to courageously enact God's loving will in society - this is not just the work of one Church, or one denomination, or even of Christians only! God wants to use every person, every institution, ever sphere of society, to bring about God's healing and renewal in all the world!