November 2006 Update

November Prayer Letter for the Phillips’

Steve Goes to Argentina
On the 23rd of October I left on a 12-day trip to Argentina to participate in a Christian conference. I was invited by a missionary by the name of Don Donell who is serving as a church planter along with his wife Gail, in Carlos Paz. The conference which is called “Palabra Fiel” or “Faithful Word” is held annually in Carlos Paz and has as its purpose to call Christians to a high view of Scripture and Reformational theology.

It has been said that Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep in Latin America. In my brief stay in Argentina I got something of a picture of this. There have been a lot of conversions in Argentina lately and there have been many churches planted. All this is very exciting. However, Argentine Christianity seems to be particularly plagued by some more extreme forms of Pentecostalism which does not always act according to knowledge. Don Donell shared with me that the trend is for many of the pastors in Argentina to promote themselves to “apostles”. For some this may not mean much more than what is traditionally associated with the term “senior pastor”, but for others it is sounds like a step toward becoming a little pope in their congregation.

It is for this and other reasons that the topic chosen for this year’s conference was the “Solas” of the Reformation: Faith Alone, Grace Alone, Christ Alone, Scripture Alone and to God Alone the Glory. It was a blessing to participate in the conference as well as to meet many brothers and sisters who from Argentina and Chile. I was invited to give a total of 6 talks and I am thankful for the positive response I received.

Defining Moments
In less than two weeks I will up for my reaffirmation as the pastor of our church. Originally I was under the impression that such a vote necessary under our new church constitution and so when we approved our new church constitution last June, I announced that this fall it would be time for the church to vote on whether or not to keep me as their pastor. It was later explained to me that technically I am not up for such a vote for another 5 years because the constitution was just passed and this means that I don’t need to be reaffirmed for another 5 years. I met with my deacons and ministry leaders and they advised me to wait another 5 years for such a vote.

However, while I was in Argentina I became convinced that it would be good to allow the church to vote on my reaffirmation now as I originally announced. The reason for this is two-fold: (1) The folks here at Vilassar have never had to approve of my being here in any official way. When I was installed as their pastor 6 years ago I believe that the decision was made either directly by the former pastor or by the mother church. Waiting another 5 years would mean that I would have been here possibly 11 years without this local body ever officially voting me in. (2) I decided that it was an opportune time to clarify my views on doctrine, practice as well as my vision for the church so that the church would only vote to keep me if folks want to go where I would like to lead them.

Our general church business meeting will be held on Saturday, the 25th of November. We would really appreciate your prayers about my vote of confidence as well as the other items we will be dealing with. One of the other items which is very important is the decision the church must make as to whether or not to recognize the group which David and Elizabeth Barceló are leading in Barcelona as a church plant with oversight from our church here in Vilassar. This is a very exciting prospect for us for lots of different reasons and we pray that the Lord would give us guidance regarding these and all the other decisions we must make on the 25th.

Family
As you can imagine, my vote of confidence which is taking place in somewhat turbulent times in our church has not been easy for us to cope with. It has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster at times imagining that starting the 25th we could have to start looking for another place to live and minister. We have had days where we have been unable to do anything else but trust these matters into the Lord’s care and pray that His will would be done. It is during moments like these, of course, that the Lord reserves the most precious of his lessons for us to learn. "Many sorrows shall be to the wicked; But he who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall surround him. " (Psalm 32.10).
This has also been a great time for Naíme and me as a couple. It has brought us closer to each other as we have been forced to draw near to God. I am very thankful for her wise and gracious support during what has been my greatest trial in these 6 years of missionary life.

Thank you all again so much for your prayers and support,
Steve Phillips

November Prayer Letter for the Phillips’

October 2006 Update

October Prayer Letter for the Phillips’

Greetings from Vilassar de Mar!

Family
Our children started their new course at the public school a month ago. We have been enjoying the process of learning to write and read in Catalan. Sebastian (6) and Stephen (5) are always paying attention to letters on cans, cereal boxes, clothing, and now they are reading to us, slowly but surely. Naíme (3) also likes to pretend she’s reading, repeating what her brothers say. She is becoming pretty articulate in Catalan, and doesn’t seem to be very interested in holding a conversation in English. Steve and I speak English consistently to them at home, but we can tell how comfortable they feel when they switch to Catalan.

Our oldest son is our little evangelist. We have seen how bold he is in asking boys at the park if they know about God, and how God is good and powerful to take care of us, and about heaven too, and the mansions Jesus is preparing for those who believe in him. A couple of weeks ago, he got two vaccination shots, and he was brave enough not to cry. Immediately after that, he said to me in front of the nurse and the doctor, “Mom, it didn’t hurt much. Imagine how much it hurt Jesus on the cross!”

Church
Matt and Nuria have left for Salamanca where Matt is both studying Spanish as well as starting his doctoral work. We miss them a lot. I am now acting as sole pastor again. Not very fun J. All this makes me think that we need to ask the Lord to raise up some elders in the church.

We are going through some growing pains as a congregation. As many of you know, our church is quite a diverse mix of people. I would say that the diversity that has been most challenging is not doctrinal, although that is part of it. The challenge is more along the lines of practice. How to conduct the Lord’s supper, who should participate, what our worship services should be like, etc. I pray that the Lord would not allow Satan to hinder the progress of the Gospel here over issues which, while requiring attention, are really seconary or tertiary in the grand scheme of things.

That is not to say that all is bleak. We have our challenges, but we also see great things that the Lord is doing among us. Particularly, we have seen a number of “back-sliders” come back to the Lord in a powerful way. Two women, “Claudia” and “Fatima” had not been walking with the Lord for many years and the Lord has brought them back to himself and has brought them to our church. The transformation we are seeing in them is a testimony and a much needed reminder of God’s power to change lives.

Argentina
This afternoon I leave on a trip to Carlos Paz, Argentina to participate in a conference on the Reformation. I have been invited by an ARBCA missionary, Don Donell and his wife Amy. The name of the conference is “Palabra Fiel” or “Faithful Word”. Along with some other speakers I will be speaking on the Solas of the Reformation. I look forward to this opportunity and would appreciate your prayers both for me as well as for my family as I will be away from them for 12 days.


With Love in Christ & gratitude to you all,
Steve & Naíme

August 2006 Update

08-10-2006

Dear friends and family,

Family
The children have been out of school now for about 5 weeks and things have changed quite a bit around our house. Naíme and I both had a routine that worked around the kids’ school day, but that has become a thing of the past. The solution we have come up with to keep these energetic children busy while preserving mom’s sanity is to homeschool them during this summer. Naíme took the initiative to buy some summer workbooks that our local public school recommends and she has been using them with the boys to keep them mentally active this summer. This has been a great experience so far and we look forward to keeping it up until mid-September when school starts up again.

We are also trying to spend more time this summer focusing on character issues. Since the boys are at home all day during the summer months it gives us increased opportunities to both recognize and work on some of their weaknesses.

We came back two weeks ago from Mallorca after a two-week vacation. You may remember that about two months ago I was the guest speaker at a family retreat of one of the churches from Palma – the church where David Barceló grew up. A family there offered their house, pool and car for us while they went out of town to enjoy their vacation. With little money we were able to enjoy ourselves and get to know this little Spanish island. Stephen preached at the church in Palma three times, and we were blessed by the brothers and sisters there.

Church
We our general assembly this past June… and it was a lively meeting. As I am somewhat unaccustomed to these meetings in which people intervene and speak their minds freely, I was caught off guard at times. There were some awkward moments as things were brought up that we did not foresee as pastors. Nonetheless, the Lord gave us grace and I believe that the meeting generally speaking was a success.

One of the things we were able to do in that meeting was to approve 2 deacons for office. This was a challenging process for different reasons, but we are thankful to the Lord for Toni Massons and Bladi Díaz who will be serving the church as its first deacons. We pray that the Lord would help them establish the deacon ministry in our church and that soon we would be able to recognize others to work along side them.

Another important result of the general assembly is that we passed our new church constitution which holds to an elder rule with church consent form of government. This represents an important change with reference to our original constitution which placed the governing responsibility on the whole congregation with the pastor being more of an administrator/teacher without any governing authority. Another change along similar lines is a change from the single-pastor model to a plurality of pastors. This is already a reality in our church as Matt Leighton and I share the pastoral ministry, but now this principle is reflected in our church constitution.

Please continue to pray that the Lord would give us greater unity as a church. The diversity of backgrounds and theological convictions continues to be a challenge. However, we are comforted to know that God is knows what He is doing as he brings people together into the membership of a local congregation. No one is here by accident—not even the pastors.

We love you all dearly,
The Phillips family

April 2006 Update

April 11, 2006


Dear family and friends,

After a couple of months of silence we are finally getting around to writing another update. We trust that you are all doing well and enjoying God’s many blessings!

Family:

We are also getting over a bout with chicken-pox. These have been some tough weeks for mom as there have been many days when she hasn't been able to get out much. Thankfully we are now over it and life is back to normal.

It is interesting to see our children learn the three languages they’re exposed to. We try to speak English at home, but it is becoming more and more of a challenge as the children are now becoming more fluent in Catalan. Because Sebastian and Stephen are immersed in Catalan five hours a day, it is becoming their dominant language. They speak Catalan with virtually everyone they know and they now speak Catalan to one another. So about the only English they hear is from mom and dad. Fortunately, we have a pretty good collection of books in English which helps expand their vocabulary.

It is also quite interesting to see little Naíme in her acquisition of the different languages. She has very little exposure to Catalan at this point because she is still at home. But we have found that she is picking it up quickly from her brothers. It is fun to hear her mix the languages up in an attempt to make herself understood.

Church:

One item for prayer would be our worship services on Sundays. We have noticed a general lack of enthusiasm especially in our time to sing songs. There are probably a number of different reasons for this and it is a complex issue. Our church here faces a lot of similar issues that most churches face in trying to find the right kind of worship style for its members. But we also have the unique challenge of trying to find a good balance between songs sung in Catalan and songs sung in Spanish. Without going into more analysis of the possible factors, we would simply like to ask you to pray that God would visit us with His presence and quicken our hearts so that we might offer up to Him a worship in both spirit and truth. One good thing that I believe is emerging from this situation is that folks are becoming aware of the mediocrity and are desirous to see the Lord intervene and change things.

As I believe I’ve shared in a previous update, we are still working on getting some deacons recognized. This has proven to be a more lengthy and delicate process than we expected. I honestly thought we would have deacons recognized and functioning by now, but it is not the case. We are still in a process of interviewing people and are trusting that the Lord will guide the process so that the right people and the right mix of people will soon be serving the Lord and this congregations as deacons.

We are still working toward planting a church in Barcelona. David Barceló is labouring diligently toward that end. My family and I had the chance to attend their service last Sunday morning and their meeting place was quite full. This is a pretty critical time in terms of taking steps to recognize this group as a church plant and not just a growing small group. In the coming weeks David Barceló, Matt and I will be meeting with those who attend the meetings in Barcelona regularly in order to find out their level of commitment to this project. We see a lot of very promising signs that this group might become a “daughter church” in the next few months. Among other things, this would give them the green light to start meeting every Sunday and even to start mid-week meetings if they like. We would ask you to pray that they might find a suitable meeting place. Right now they meet in an apartment, but it is inadequate for their needs.

Christian School:

In my last prayer letter I explained a bit about our desire to start a Christian school. Since then I have had the opportunity to attend a conference called “Evangelicals and Education” near Toledo. Originally Naíme and I were planning on both going to this conference. We had arranged to have our children stay with Núria’s mother and it was going to be a little get-away for us, but all three children came down with chicken-pox. So in the end I had to go alone.

It was a very interesting couple of days. I was able to meeting folks from different parts of Spain and find out what families and churches are doing regarding the education of their children. I maximized my time there to talk with many different people and I got a lot of good information.

During my train ride back to Barcelona I spent time praying and weighing the pros and cons of starting a Christian school. By the time I reached Barcelona I came to the conviction that given the present circumstances and needs of our church a school is probably not the most reasonable option for us. It is not that I have lost faith in God’s omnipotence. Nothing is too big for Him. But starting a private school in Spain is a very big undertaking. I spoke with two different people at the conferences who had been involved in three different attempts to start private Christians schools (two of which were attempted near Barcelona) and all three failed. One of the biggest factors in coming to this decision is that a number of people would really have to be 100% behind the project and be willing to invest a tremendous amount of time, energy and finances in it. Although I believe that the project is viable, I also realize that my primary calling is the pastorate.

We are now considering a number of other possibilities and we will be sharing more about these in future prayer letters. I can say that the conference in Toledo opened my eyes as to some options that I had not previously considered. I also came away with a bigger burden than ever for the need for Spanish Christians to invest their lives in their children. While there are notable exceptions, I simply don’t think that parents are taking the ministry of the family as seriously as they should. I know that this sounds like the kind of generic statement that could be made in any context, but it seems to me that parental involvement in the lives of children is simply rapidly declining here due to a wide variety of factors. I trust that the Lord would give us wisdom to know how we might approach this issue both as a family and as a church that would best all things considered.

Recent Visitors
We thank the Lord for sending some of you out this way once in a while. We were privileged to have the Newheiser’s and the Thornburg’s out our way. Visits like these are a real blessing to us and help us feel more closely connected to you all in between furloughs.

We miss you all very much. Thanks for your prayers!


Love in Christ, Steve

February 2006 Update

February 4, 2006


Greetings from Barcelona! We praise the Lord for His great mercies to us! He is continuing to provide for all of our needs and daily gives us the encouragement we need in order to press on in the work.

Our family
The boys are doing fairly well in school and their Catalan is becoming quite good. It is fascinating to see how children pick up languages. The boys and I are continuing to swim on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is good bonding time for us and great exercise for all three of us. While we are gone from home, mother and daughter have their own special time together.

My wife is always very busy. She is involved in our children’s Sunday school program and enjoying it thoroughly. She has also been helping me out by teaching from time to time in the ladies’ Bible study. Whenever she teaches it is a blessing to the ladies (I think they would rather have her be their regular teacher than her husband J). Naíme is also taking a survey of the Old Testament this year that is being taught by Matt Leighton in our church one Saturday a month. I am quite sure that she is among his most diligent students. And apart from that, she finds time to practice regular hospitality. She’s quite a gal!

Recently we traveled to the Basque country to visit one of our members who is residing there temporarily for work purposes. That was a fun trip for us. The Basque people are very well known for their food and we can now confirm that their reputation is well deserved. It was interesting to go to another region of Spain and not understand one word of what people said while speaking Basque. The other thing that is striking is the open support in some sectors for the Basque terrorist group. While walking down one street we saw posters with the names and faces of mainly young and middle-aged people. When we inquired as to who they were our suspicions were confirmed: members of ETA serving time in prison for their link to terrorism, and yet, here in this quarter of town they were hailed as heroes for the cause.

Spiritual Indifference
The spiritual atmosphere is very challenging at times. There just seems to be a general hardness toward Christianity in general. Folks don’t tend to be rude or belligerent when you talk to them about your faith, but their hearts seem so impenetrable. Everything is true; nothing is true. If your faith works for you, that’s fine. What a joy it is to know that it is in God’s hands to open unbelieving hearts. Ours is but to lovingly preach His Gospel.

This generation is paying a high price for its unbelief. Divorce and broken homes is becoming the status quo. For all the ills of a Catholic dictatorship there was a stability in Spanish society that is giving way to a disoriented narcissism. And yet, with all the despair, ruined lives and discontent there is a prideful resistance to recognizing that they might be in the wrong, that there might be a God who can give them the quality of life that somewhere in the recesses of their souls they truly long for.

A Christian School?
In thinking about how we might build bridges with the society around us, I have often thought that a Christian school of academic excellence and a healthy emphasis on moral standards, could be a good be such a bridge. Schools here, even from the perspective of unbelieving educators, are going downhill fast.

As many of you know, we have been thinking and praying about this issue virtually ever since we arrived over 5 years ago. This project is now officially beyond the dreaming stage as we are beginning to take specific steps to see if the Lord would open the necessary doors for our dreams to become reality. This is both a prayer request as well as a praise because the Lord has been giving us at least a bit of confirmation and encouragement to press on with this project. Just yesterday I had the opportunity to discuss the project with the mayor and another town official. They were very interested in the project and it was a positive step toward spreading a vision for a private Christian school here in Vilassar.

There is still much groundwork that needs to done before we can start “operations”. Fortunately, I have been able to do some networking that is proving very valuable. No reason to re-invent the wheel. The Spanish Ministry of Education has very stringent rules regarding private schools. When I first received a copy of all their building requirements alone I almost gave up on the project. The whole process has been an exercise in faith and perhaps our greatest confidence is the fact that God doesn’t keep His children praying in the same direction for extended periods of time for nothing. So we continue to commit these matters to Him. He is our mountain-moving God.

Another request regarding the school is for an upcoming meeting we will have with our church members. At this meeting, among other matters, we will be addressing the idea of starting a Christian school in the hope of beginning to spread the vision to our church as a whole. We have been able to talk with individual members about this desire, but have never addressed in a church-wide meeting. Matthew Leighton is busy preparing an outline on why Christian education is important. We expect to have a question and answer time and hope that this will go a long way toward gaining the support of our church family here in Vilassar. This meeting will be held on the 10th of this month.

Elders and Deacons

As some of you will no doubt remember, in our last general assembly the church approved a motion to recognize Matthew Leighton as an elder/pastor. This was a historic step in the life of our church as it represents the transition from a single-pastor model of church government to a plurality of elders model. In God’s grace we will celebrating an ordination service for Matt on the 19th of this month and expect a good turn out for this blessed occasion. We especially look forward to having Jim and Caroline here for this special service.

But there remains the task of recognizing deacons. This is one of our priorities now. We have started trying to spread a biblical vision for deaconal ministry here and are hoping that in a month or two we will be able to recognize several deacons. We plan on dedicating the first part of our church meeting on the 10th to addressing this issue of deacons as well. Because of the diversity of backgrounds we are realizing that there are many different views regarding the qualifications for and nature of the office of deacon. By God’s grace we hope to clarify these issues in our meeting on the 10th and from there we would initiate a process of recognizing those whom the Lord has been preparing for this vital ministry.


Thank you all again for praying for us and supporting us in our ministry here. We have sensed the Lord’s help in so many specific key moments in the life of our church here and there is no doubt that the Lord answers prayers.

Yours in Christ,
The Phillips’