If you asked me about my earliest memories in the Dominican Republic (DR), I’d list being sandwiched between two then-seminary students farthest afield (Chile and Spain) in an airless backseat, a steeply inclined road with a sheer drop-off on one side, neon-colored chicks, and a little boy nestled between his grandmother’s legs in prayer posture.
These snippets can only add up to one thing: visits.
Like all new missionaries, I was invited to accompany an afternoon of community home visits. I remember craving context, needing to know everything. Who decided whom to visit? Did homeowners know to expect us? How often could a particular individual expect to receive a visit? Was there a spreadsheet? So. Many. Questions.
Recognizing that grads often step into grassroots situations, the DR’s Concordia the Reformer Seminary (CMSCR) forms students into shepherds, teachers, and evangelists. From day one, they’re assigned a fieldwork congregation, with duties that expand in proportion to related coursework but always include visits. Students learn church planting from supervisors who are, by day, their professors; oftentimes, deaconesses or lay members accompany visits too. There are no vicarages; instead, students put in something like two and a half vicarages’ worth of sweat equity. This practical component distinguishes CMSCR in the Latin American theological education sphere.
Visits aren’t random—far from it. Church planting teams in each congregation carefully plot out and pray over each week’s visitation schedule: members who have a health concern or other situation demanding special attention, friends or family of members, lapsed or estranged members, catechumens, neighbors, contacts turned prospects from some outreach event. Visits almost always commence at the end of the workday. A typical route might include two, three, or at most four stops, neatly wrapping up a couple of hours later (unless your visitee especially needs a listening ear). Families are consulted in advance, so they’re guaranteed to be home…unless they’re not. There’s even a templated liturgy of sorts. Seated on anything from cushioned wicker rockers to overturned buckets, those gathered shoot the breeze for a few minutes (as in EVERY interaction, even electronic), recite an invocation, read a portion of Scripture (usually a Psalm), share a meditation, and close with a prayer and benediction. More often than not, dog-eared copies of Acompañamiento Pastoral (Pastoral Care Companion) emerge from back pockets and backpacks for recommended readings and scripted verbiage around a given life situation ensconced in gold-embossed black pleather. Equally as often, there are tiny cups of high-octane coffee with a heavy-handed dose of azúcar crema (cream sugar).
All missionaries are invited to go on visits anytime, but I admittedly take my pastor up on that offer less often than I’d like to. Whenever I do, ignoring everything that’s in the way, I’m extraordinarily blessed by hearing young men who’ve sacrificed much for the sake of the Gospel, boldly and reverently yet lovingly proclaiming it in truth and purity. Planned or unplanned, the readings they choose and the homilies they prepare have an uncanny way of being utterly apropos.
I most often go on visits when hosting volunteers, especially church work students. Even if grouped with all non-English speakers, North Americans can glean much from observing homes and communities, and nonverbal interactions and can intercede specifically on behalf of the families whose patios and living rooms they grace.
As an LCMS international region, Latin America and the Caribbean believes so strongly in this ministry of presence that we habitually gift copies of the Acompañamiento to mission education teams of future pastors, such that they might have a toolkit for reaching out to the diverse subsets they’re certain to encounter as they enter the ministry. Visitation is a practice facilitated by a culturally pervasive warmth that’s lacking in the twenty-first century United States. Yet the theory has value for all times and all places: meeting people where they are with Scripture’s—Christ’s—living and active words (Hebrews 4:12) spoken over them and the circumstances in which they find themselves.
I remember the hill and the dyed hatchlings from my enigmatic first visit experience, but I also remember the people. All three households were near the church I didn’t know at the time would later become “mine”; two were home to Críspulo and Negra and Justina, with whom I gather weekly around the altar and pulpit to receive Christ’s gifts. Only He knows the untold others He will bring into His fold, all because someone took the time to share a cafecito (coffee) and a few life-giving words from a pocket-sized black book, tattered from humidity and use.