Welcome To WorldWidePastor!

Welcome to WorldWidePastor!

This new blog has been created to share the ups and downs, the ins and outs, and the good, the bad, and the ugly of international ministry. This blog is designed to help pastors and ministry leaders who are looking to expand their outreach internationally, and it's also designed to share the lessons learned from doing ministry outside of one's native country.

I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and now I am the Campus Pastor of Flamingo Road Church in Lima, Peru. It's a long way from Boston to Lima, with many cultural and social challenges along the way, but this experience has been priceless in terms of showing me how to do - and how not to do - ministry internationally and cross-culturally. This is part of what I will be sharing with you in this blog.

Flamingo Road Church is based in Cooper City, Florida, USA, which is about 3,000 miles and a whole continent away from us here in Lima, Peru. As modern technology has made the global village much smaller and more easily accessible, however, we have been able to leverage said technology to reach people across the globe. We here at the Lima campus of Flamingo Road Church meet in a 300-seat movie theater in a major commercial rotary that also features a Chili's, TGIFriday's, McDonald's, and Starbucks, and with KFC, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, and Dunkin' Donuts not too far away. We use the same teaching as is presented in Cooper City, which is FedEx'd to us on DVD. We use the same contemporary worship music, including secular songs on occasion when the lyrics work (U2 is great for this). We have created the same lively, creative, and contemporary environment in Lima, just as it exists at Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City and at its other South Florida and Internet campuses.

In fact, since we mentioned Starbucks already, we can use them as an example of what we are doing. If you go to a Starbucks in Fort Lauderdale, and then to a Starbucks here in Lima (where there already are 20), you'll notice that the stores are about 95% the same. The stores look the same (although in Lima they tend to be larger than Starbucks in the US). The environment feels the same. The coffee tastes the same. In the Lima Starbucks, however, there are certain drinks and snacks that you can purchase which are not available at Starbucks in the US.

It's the same with regard to Flamingo Road Church in South Florida and Flamingo Road Church in Peru. FRC-Lima is probably about 95% the same in terms of environment and atmosphere and style, in comparison with the FRCs in South Florida, but we do have certain distinctions, mainly due to cultural and social and economic differences between Peru and South Florida.

Those differences, and how to best leverage them in order to have a successful international ministry, is what we'll be talking about on this blog. We're glad that you are along for the ride. Be sure to check back frequently!