Video: Ed Stetzer Interviews Michael Carpenter in Rome

Jet Set: Rome, Day 2

After breakfast of espresso, croissants, and a glass of sour green juice, we hopped on the Metro to attend mass at St. Paul’s Basilica (Cathedral). The church building is quite plain on the outside, but the inside is ornate with mosaics, friezes, gold leaf, and statues. The altar is flanked by immense statues of Peter and Paul in menacing poses.

The service was exactly what you’d expect- white-haired priests in robes sing-chanting the reading, prayers, and blessing. We sat, stood, sat, stood, and pretended to kneel along with 500 others; tourists, local visitors, and regular churchgoers, but mostly tourists. The service was in Italian, with some Latin thrown in for transubstantiative effect.

Afterword, we gathered around under a shade tree in the church’s courtyard to discuss Catholicism, Roman culture, and ministry in a post-Christian context. Some of the guys are former Catholics and were able to share from their experience. It turns out that there is some disagreements among missionaries that work with Catholics- some call new believers out of the Catholic Church, while others encourage them to stay connected and assign new meaning to the rituals. We decided that there’s probably not one right answer. We’d love to hear your thoughts if you have experience working with Catholics and cultural Catholics.

After lunch, we put ourselves in the shoes of an immigrant to Rome. We bought our lunches at a little Italian grocery store, and to help us see things from an immigrant’s perspective, we limited ourselves to spending only 5 euros. We ate out under the shade of the train station, and heard the first-person stories of those who had left their homes in search of a better life in Rome. Immigration brings lots of opportunities for ministry to people who would otherwise be inaccessible.

The afternoon was spent touring the Colosseum, drinking coffee, and talking shop with church planters working here and pastors from the States. We ended the day with a fine meal of pasta and fried fish at a traditional Romano restaurant. One of our hosts is fiends with the owner, so we got a special sampling platter of desserts. Oh, and then more espresso.

Our conversations among the group have uncovered some very different understandings of what it means to be a church and the best way to get to that. I hope we get the chance to continue our discussion. We’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

What’s a “Vision Trip?”

The Jet Set vision trip to Rome and Marseille is officially underway. Some of you might be asking: “What’s a ‘vision trip,’ anyway?”

Every year, we invite church leaders to come with us on week- long trips. We arrange meetings with church planters, national beleivers, and nonbelievers. We talk about worldview, cultural translation of the gospel, and missions strategies might pave the way for a church planting movement.

Sure, we could do all of this back home in the U.S., but there’s something about walking the streets, sitting down to coffee, and interacting with people on their terms that allows you to really get a feel for the need and opportunity overseas. Church leaders can see first-hand how God might use their churches to engage the nations missionally.

The best part is the fun we have. Hanging out, taking theology, technology, and every other – ology we’re not qualified to discuss. We see the sights, visit the cathedrals, tour the ruins. We pray for the people.

These trips change you. They ruin your perspective and re-calibrate your opinions. Please follow along as we chronicle the trip. Feel free to comment, as questions, or express your jealousy. Please pray for us. That God would guide our steps and conversations, and that it would be His vision we gain here in Rome and Marseille.

Minus the Patrick

You may have seen on the Upstream Collective Twitter feed, but we wanted to let everyone know that Darrin Patrick is having ot change his plans to go with us on the Rome/Marseille trip. The Journey Church will be sending someone else in his place. We’re sorry that Darrin couldn’t come along, but he can still keep up with the details of the trip right here on the blog or on our Twitter feed (theUpstreamC).

Some of us have already left, others asre leaving now. Please pray for safe travel. Ed Stetzer and Larry McCrary will join us tomorrow evening. Pray that they don’t get lost. Larry has a tendency to forget where he parked. Ed has a tendency not to like wandering around parking garages for hours and hours.

Jet Set: Rome and Marsaille w/Ed Stetzer and Darrin Patrick

The trip has filled up- twenty of us will be heading to Rome in just a couple weeks. Besides the usual preparations, the group has begun to meet people online in advance of the trip. The idea is to meet up with our new cyber-friends as soon as we get into town. These personal connections make all the difference on a Jet Set; sitting down to coffee with local people gives us cultural insight and lots of great travel advice. We’re going to see if we can get Darrin and Ed out on the floor of a Trastevre discoteca.

If you weren’t able to join us on this trip, we’d encourage you to follow this space as we live-blog the trip. You can also follow our Twitter stream at TheUpstreamC. We’d love to hear from you! Questions are always welcome, and if you’ve ever been to Rome, we’d appreciate any advice on what to see and what to avoid.

Please pray for Ed and Darrin and the group as we prepare. As fun as this trip is going to be, it’s about getting a vision for these great, lost cities. We want to see with spiritual eyes where God is working and how He might use us to build His kingdom. The trip is also about connecting with the work that’s already going on there. We’re looking forward to hearing the stories of the missionaries, church planters, expatriates, and national believers we’re scheduled to meet.

¡Caio!

A successful first Jet Set Tour

It’s been a couple of days since our first official Jet Set Tour wound up, and the funny thing is that the tour participants are still on that side of the pond, while the Upstreamers are the ones who have left Barcelona and Madrid! Eric, John and Barbara are enjoying some vacation time in Spain since the tour’s conclusion.

The final couple of days in Madrid were pretty packed. They included everything from city mapping and prayerwalking to meeting with language exchange partners. I (Tep) enjoyed seeing the tour participants really dive into their surroundings in Madrid, whether it was hanging out with new friends, striking up conversations or learning to navigate the city.

Tuesday we primarily sent the group out to explore and prayerwalk on their own in various parts of town. When the day was done, we learned they had covered a university campus, a large neighborhood in the northern part of the city and even another part of the city center! Talk about being troopers!

After lunch, the team met up with Larry and a couple of his friends to learn more about church planting going on in a northern suburb of Madrid, as well as some new work with local high schoolers. So add two more perspectives into what God is doing among Madrid’s people!

Tuesday night, all five of us gathered for some traditional pintxos, a Basque type of finger food, and we debriefed the day and talked about some next steps for Eric, John and Barbara and their churches. I think we came away with a pretty good plan to stay in touch and keep dialoguing about what their churches’ (and personal) involvement can look like, even if it’s totally different from what they’ve seen this week.

We closed out the first Jet Set Tour that night with prayer and a commissioning of sorts for all of us as we go back to our respective circles. I think we’ve all seen a lot over the past week, and our prayer is for God to show us exactly what He wants us to do as a result.

We’re taking notes on the group’s feedback about this first tour and will be incorporating their ideas into future trips. Thank you for praying about this first Jet Set Tour. Watch The Upstream Collective Web site for updates on future tours, and let us know if you want to get involved!

Monday

It is Tuesday morning. We are staying in a hostal on the west side of the city in an area called Moncloa. It does not have a restaurant or even much of a front desk but there is restaurant/bar at the side of it. They must be getting use to be being there. I walk in this morning and by the time I walk up to the bar to order my cafe con leche he already was the milk into my coffee. I could get us to this.

Three things have been consistently happening on this trip.

First we are logging about 7 – 10 miles walking per day. We don’t even really know it but one of the people in the group brought one of counters  and by the end of the day we can actually feel like we have been walking that far. We only use public transportation. We did not rent cars or vans but we bought a metro pass that is good for the entire time while we are here and we simply jump on a bus or go underground to the metro and pop up wherever we need to be. Madrid is a city that is well connected with the metro and you can get most anywhere without a car.

We are also logging long hours. The days here in Spain can be long. We start around 9 am in the morning and we have been pretty much been going until 1230 or 1 am without much rest.  Yesterday we met with some people who minister amongst  immigrants who live in the city. Many of these come from Muslim backgrounds. Europe is the home of millions of people who come from places other than Europe and from places where many traditional mission agencies focus their work on these peoples. The great opportunity believers have in Europe is that they can openly  share their faith here amongst these people.

The third cool thing that has been happening  is every day we are meeting new people who are willing to talk.  We call these divine appointments.  I think God sets these up for us. I think these can often be  an opportunity to share the good news.  The Lord has given us opportunities like this all week on the trip. We are grateful for these chances to tell people about how Jesus has changed our lives.

Today we are off to more miles walking and on the metro. We have quite a few appointments in the afternoon. We pray that God will give us some divine appointments where we tell people about Jesus Christ.

 

to madrid

We flew from Barcelona to Madrid on Saturday evening. We arrived in Madrid around 11 pm just in time for supper. Yesterday we went to Immanuel Baptist Church in Madrid which is an international Baptist church. Immanuel is a multi cultural church led by pastors David Dixon and Tim Melton. We went to lunch with a group of people from the church and then went over to some spanish friends house for tapas last night and talked about religion in spain and various aspects of what it means to be a follower of Jesus here.

Today some of us have intercambios. We are also going to an immigrant section of the city here in Madrid and learning about work amongst some of the different people groups of Madrid. Of course we will have lots of great coffee.

One thing I (Larry) am enjoying is reconnecting with some of our friends who live here.

more about friday

Friday was our first full day in Barcelona though we accomplished a lot on Thursday afternoon. I am having computer probles and it has taken me a day to have them sort of resolved.  After some orientation around some good Spanish coffee we hit streets.  During dinner I (Larry) received a phone call from one of the guys that I had been emailing over the last weeks. He wanted to meet for an intercambio that evening. I was pretty wiped out but I could not resist the opportunity. I went to meet him and we talked for about 1.5 hours. His English was not great so we stayed in Spanish most of the time. It certainly got me back into the language. These intercambios (where you speak for some time in English so they can practice English and then you spend some time in Spanish so you can practice Spanish) can be interesting. In this intercambio there was not a lot of interest in exploring deeper questions outside of travel, weather, sports. Often I think it is more about my lack of being able to ask good questions. I thought a lot about that conversation as I laid in bed the next morning.

We are staying in a hostal. I am rooming with one of the guys on the trip and that is great but I think the rest of the rooms in the hostal are quite full of tourist who decide that 530 or 6 am is the time to get up. So Friday morning I tried to sleep in but woke up at 6 and finally just got up at 630 and went and found some coffee. Several cups.

Our group walked through the “Mercado” (market) in Barcelona located just off of the Ramblas. We then took a turn and walked through some neighborhoods where we found many immigrants from all over the world living. We did some prayer walking in this area. We talked about how could one minister in this type of area? How could a church in the states adopt a neighborhood and prayer for it, come and visit it and be salt and light in such a place.

At 1 pm I had my second intercambio. This time John and Barbara from San Antonio came with me. We met a great guy. His English was much better than my Spanish. He is between jobs and needs to have perfect English to land the job that he wants here in Barcelona. We talked about more substantial things.  He talked to us about Barcelona and his language Catalan. He talked about the history of Spain and Catalan. We talked about politics and religion and about spiritual matters that move beyond simply religion and talked about a relationship with Jesus.

I may write some more on this day. Saturday we finish up here in Barcelona and then go to Madrid. Pray for us as we travel. Thanks

 

 

 

Follow Along

It’s Eric again. It is Saturday afternoon, and we’re in the airport waiting for our Vueling flight to Madrid. Barcelona was amazing, but I know that God has even more in store for us in Madrid.

I just wanted to post a link to my Google Map, so you can see some of the places we’ve been and a little bit of what we’ve been up to. Our days have been long and filled with tons of amazing things, and our internet time has been very limited – so I’ve tried to do my best to recall some of the main spots. I intend to go back and fill in some of the details of the trip and add photos, so remember to check back, follow along, and pray that God would use us for His will.

Adios for now