Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Crown in Cartago, Costa Rica

Finally, looks like Meyling and I are going to be able to facilitate a Crown group in her home church in Cartago, Costa Rica. This is something we've been wanting to do for 8 years now! Pastor Esteban and his wife have been very supportive of our efforts and plan to be in the first group. This past Sunday, Aug 26th the announcement was made in front of the church. From that announcement, we got a list of 26+ people. I was told that even more we're interested but for some reason, failed to get their names on the list because of miscommunication or something.

We have a problem here but it is a good problem. We can only have 12 to 14 people max in a group. Because of so much interest I want to do 2 groups. The Crown office in Costa Rica has already told us that they cannot provide additional facilitators, but they can provide us a 4 hour leadership training session. Two 'leader' couples have already shown some interest in doing the study but I have not approached either one of them yet about facilitating a group.

My idea right now, is to try to get both couples to lead a group together with Meyling and me giving them some support while Meyling and I facilitate a group ourselves. I'm overwhelmed in a good way not in a bad way. I'm overwhelmed at how God just dumped all of those people in front of us. I thought after the announcement that we would have 4 or 5 people in a group. Frankly, I'm just shocked at how many people are wanting to do this.

The size of the church is about 350 members. They had about 200 adults there last Sunday. This also just happened to coincide with Pastor Esteban being voted in as the official pastor of the church.

In case you're wondering what Crown is, it is a 10 week Bible study about money. It covers many topics some of which are debt, savings, work, tithing, retirement and training children. The general philosophy of Crown is that our money and our possessions are not ours but in fact belong to God and are on loan to us from God Himself. Therefore we are not owners but actually stewards and must administer these things in such a way that is pleasing to God.

Dave Ramsey has a similar course. See the following links:

http://www.crown.org

http://www.daveramsey.com

1 comment:

Joel Odom said...

I would suggest going ahead and starting with the large group in a classroom type setting. I bet you'll find that after two or three sessions, the group shrinks down to the ten or so people who really want it.