Transformed In Paraguay

         In January of 1987 I went on a short-term mission trip to Paraguay. I have nothing but fond memories of that trip, the Christians that I went with and the people that I met there, but there is one memory that stands out and I purposely come back to it often.
       As a team we had visited a number of Pentecostal churches in our free time. I remember of these services that there were no 'gifts of the Spirit' displayed, as the Pentecostal would define them, and I was told upon questioning this that this was normal. The services were lively with a small band accompanying a worship leader and a worship team, depending upon the size of the church, and I have fond memories also of those services for these were indeed brothers and sisters in Christ.
       It was on an evening after dinner. The temperature had reached 100 degrees just about every day of our stay for it was their summer. Three of us were strolling in a small town adjacent to Asuncion, Paraguay's capital, and there was a lot to take in with the music in the streets, the storefronts and the architecture. I remember glancing off to my right and set back about twenty or thirty feet from the sidewalk was a small church. The front door was open and I could see about a dozen people sitting in fold-up chairs in a circle with bowed heads and an open book resting in their lap. I was fixated on this scene and the others had walked on not knowing that I wasn't with them. A sign on the front of the church identified it as Baptist. I had been Pentecostal since I came into the faith five years previous. I had seen so many of what I thought of at the time as exciting things in the churches but seeing this little group of believers is what transformed me somewhat on this trip.
         I wanted what this group had. I wanted words written in a book more than I wanted songs to sing. This, in my opinion, is what the Christian church in America needs today. We have more books than one can count but unfortunately most of them are nonsense or at best .....non-penetrating as to the cross of Calvary, our sin and our redemption. We have our Christian television screens filled with what essentially is entertainment and motivational seminars disguised as Christian teaching. Many in today's church are 'excited' at the perceived coming Rapture oblivious to what comes before it. Many spend much more time reading the sports pages than reading of the race that we ourselves are in, of the wars of this world rather than the war that we as believers are soldiers in, and far more time studying America's founding fathers than the Reformation's founding fathers. Many, if not most, mistakenly believe that this coming election can change the direction of America.....but it cannot, for without a reformation in the church and a general awakening of the American public, all of this time spent will be for naught.
       I now know that I didn't have to travel to another continent to see what I saw in that small church in Paraguay, and I also know that those type of churches litter the American landscape today and if one looks hard enough they can be found. I attend a church like that. It doesn't have to be small but it does have to be...".sober-minded....and watchful."