An ongoing outreach to pastors in Mexico, The Growing Kingdom conference (scheduled for November 16-18, 2022 in Ixtlahuaca de Rayón) ran into an unexpected problem. One of the scheduled speakers, Dr. Ron Smith, pastor of The Church of the King in McAllen, Texas, was temporarily sidelined due to serious health issues. As a consequence, Chalcedon’s vice-president and resident scholar, Martin Selbrede, was asked to deliver four lectures at the conference on fairly short notice. The opportunity to plant Kingdom-oriented seed with church leaders hungry for the whole counsel of God was impossible to resist – especially with a conference theme like The Victorious Kingdom of God.
Martin doesn’t speak Spanish and the pastors didn’t speak English, so the gap was bridged with some highly impressive teamwork. Martin not only had a different translator providing sentence-by-sentence translation of each of his four lectures, some of the translators had the equally difficult task of translating all of Martin’s PowerPoint slides into Spanish in advance of the conference (so that the scriptural reasoning presented could be grasped and applied by the attendees). A robust question-and-answer period followed each of the 90-minute lectures to solidify the Biblical picture of the Kingdom’s growth and the duties that its growth entails.
These conferences, spearheaded by Glen Dunn and his team, are on a fairly aggressive schedule (roughly three per year, each in a different region of Mexico) to reach those pastors with ears to hear. Also speaking at the conference were Dr. P. Andrew Sandlin (who is well-known to Chalcedon’s audience), and Dr. Wayne Barrett, also from the United States. Ignacio Solis, a gifted Mexican scholar, was able to reach the gathered attendees without need of a translator. Each lecturer provided a distinctive emphasis in their messages, making for a conference of wide scope and significant depth. If this series of conferences is any indication, God is moving in a big way in the minds and hearts of Christians in Mexico. Aside from Martin’s investment of time, Chalcedon donated thirty copies of the Spanish version of Institutes of Biblical Law for distribution at these conferences. You can’t expect a harvest without planting the requisite seed.
- Martin G. Selbrede
Martin is the senior researcher for Chalcedon’s ongoing work of Christian scholarship, along with being the senior editor for Chalcedon’s publications, Arise & Build and The Chalcedon Report. He is considered a foremost expert in the thinking of R.J. Rushdoony. A sought-after speaker, Martin travels extensively and lectures on behalf of Christian Reconstruction and the Chalcedon Foundation. He is also an accomplished musician and composer.