Dan Alcantara

Category: Ministry

  • i got stopped by mormon missionaries today

    Greenock has both an LDS and JW presence in it but we’ve had no interactions with them until today. I had just finished a pastoral visit and was checking my phone to put some music on while walking to get lunch and do some work when a pair of Mormon missionaries stopped me. One was from Australia but the other didn’t say a word.

    They could tell that I’m American and then knew that I would have some familiarity with their beliefs. The chatty one asked me if folks from our church engage in any outreach work. I shared about our mall outreach events and the work that various people do in prisons and with Good News For Everyone.

    The missionary then asked why we do this work and that was easy to answer. Because we love Jesus. He explained that they do their own missionary duty to obey the command. While I can understand that we have a mission to obey, it felt telling that there was no affection in his voice as he explained why they do what they are doing.

    One of the big things that I am enjoying as I keep reading and rereading 1 Peter is that everything Peter speaks about is in relation to the Christian’s identity as a part of a chosen and precious people. It’s such a blessing to know that that is to be our starting place, not an empty sense of duty.

    I gave the two missionaries my card. I didn’t have enough time to chat with them but I really do hope they get in touch.

  • Ministry & Family Update – September 2024

    Ministry & Family Update – September 2024

    Another month, another newsletter! I’ve been busy behind the scenes trying to get things set up so that I can do this in a sustainable way and have hopefully settled on the right home for it.

    September has been a strange month. I shared briefly about experiencing a mysterious grief while away on a ministry training residential. Family members in the States are going through tough health issues while I am here unable to go there to visit.

    At the same time, it has been a month of milestones. I began my third year as pastor at Ardgowan Square. We have now lived in Scotland for four years. We have continued to see change and slow growth at the church. A number of new people started coming at the beginning of the summer and it’s been great to see them continue to come as summer ends and autumn begins.

    A particular highlight of the month has been the success of running the church’s first proper, all-age service called All-Together Sunday. Previously, the last Sunday of the month would have been an all-age service but it was geared especially toward children and was taught by a visiting speaker. This time around, we have set a precedent for the regular teaching of the Word to continue. Rather than break the series in order to slot something new in, the preaching team and I are now doing the work of taking that week’s passage and learning it well enough to teach to an inter-generational congregation.

    That means that yesterday, as I write this, everyone at the church from age 3 up to 90 was learning together what Peter had to say to the elect exiles in modern day Türkiye in 1 Peter 2:4-10. The clear point of that passage is that God’s people are one chosen, special people who have come to Jesus to worship Jesus and proclaim Jesus. To help drive the point home, we built the corner of a “house” using boxes to show that the only reason why the walls can stand is because they are built on the chosen and precious cornerstone of Jesus.

    Tracy and I have also had the opportunity recently to help potential and incoming AT3 apprentices by sharing our own story. Those who have been following along with us from the beginning will remember that we have had quite the rocky journey to get to where we are now. It’s been a joy to be able to take our own ministry story and use it to encourage others who are pursuing the same path. Our shared hope is that more workers would be placed in Scotland, particularly in the west of Scotland.

    Prayer Requests

    October is looking to be a busy month as I try to get my head around teaching plans for the new year, meeting with various people, and continuing my training with PTC. Because we’re on the brink of the final quarter of 2024, this month’s prayer requests are very much on the topic of planning and preparations.

    • Please pray that the preaching team would be united and of one mind as we plan next year’s sermons. At the moment, we are considering doing a Bible overview in order to help the church join up all the odd bits of Bible that they have heard but can’t connect to a cohesive whole.
    • It’s a few months away, but I have a visa renewal process to begin in February. As someone who has experienced quite severe visa trauma, the months leading up to the actual application are quite intense, so please pray that I would remember that God has placed us where we are.
    • Pray for us as we plan what to do as a family this Christmas-time. December is a crazy month for ministry stuff and last year we began a tradition of taking a couple of days away as a family as our main gift together.
  • August Family Update

    August Family Update

    Another month has nearly come and gone. But more to the point, it’s been a while since there was an actual update on things from us.

    The summer is officially over now that the kids are back in school and my training course is getting ready to start a new term. Our summer was mostly spent indoors because of the rain, but we still managed to get away for a holiday.

    Ministry updates

    Our church’s series called The Christian Life at home/in the world was really well received and generated a lot of feedback. While a good number of our church members have been Christians since before the moon landings, they’ve never heard about things like work or mental health being addressed from the pulpit.

    For the last few weeks I have been preparing to preach 1 Peter. I finally began actual sermon prep today (26 August) and I’m really looking forward to us spending the next three months in this short book. It’s been quite a change from what we’ve been doing for the last year because we spent so much time in Genesis covering quite chunky passages1.

    Nearly every church member has watched Scotland go from being a place where theologically conservative, evangelical churches were full, to it now being the most socially progressive nation in the United Kingdom. That kind of change happening in a lifetime can make it seem like everything is falling to pieces, but I hope that our time with Peter will show all of us that these things are to be expected.

    Family updates

    The kids have all moved up years in school. When we left the US, Sophie, our eldest, was eight-years-old and now she is fourteen! Time has gone by so fast. Our greatest joy over these last few months, though, was witnessing all four of our kids come to faith in Jesus. The most exciting thing for us is that, while there were some big conversations that happened to lead to this, the big work was spending time together after dinner going through John’s Gospel with The Word One to One.

    Seeing the Word at work as they wrestled with big questions and realising Jesus was really calling them to believe in him was just remarkable. It turns out, it’s really exciting to watch someone come to recognise Jesus for who he is.

    Prayer requests

    This coming Sunday (1 September) marks the beginning of my last year of training. Time has gone by so quickly but there is still so much to be done. With that in mind, please be praying for these things:

    1. Tracy’s role with AT3 has shifted again. She is now the manager of operations and mobilisation, which means she’ll be overseeing the entire process a potential apprentice will go through (from application through to being on-field). This is an exciting thing but also daunting as it means increased hours and responsibilities within the organisation.
    2. It feels like there is quite a lot of our future riding on the outcome of the next year. I have funding through the end of August 2025. We are hoping and praying that we will be able to continue on here at Ardgowan Square but it does require there to be enough funding in place for the church to keep me on. Pray that we would focus on doing the work in front of us and that God would give us clear direction for continuing ministry.
    3. January and February are quite big months because it is tax time and it will be time for my next visa application. Please be praying in advance of those things. Having gone through visa (and tax) trauma before, it is always a period filled with anxious, sleepless nights.
    1. Like covering the entire Flood narrative in one sermon! ↩
  • spending time outside the church

    spending time outside the church

    We were incredibly blessed over the last year as a church as two other churches donated comfortable chairs which have replaced our pews.

    One of the things I’m focusing on more during the coming year is working on stuff outside of the church. For the last two years, my focus has been on internal things. Setting up preaching so that the church is getting a balanced diet from Scripture. Taking the prayer meeting through the New City Catechism so that those who attend have a stronger grasp of why we believe what we believe. And making our Sunday morning gatherings as good as they can be with the people we currently have.

    We’ve been blessed as a church to have some new people join (even getting ready to welcome 5 new members to the church) in the last year. But beyond that, our numbers have remained mostly stationary.

    And so my focus for this third year with the church is on evangelism and doing what I can to try and bring people in. An unfortunate side-effect of being in ministry is that you end up spending almost all of your time with Christians. This is good for obvious reasons but it does make “doing the work of an evangelist” a lot harder to figure out. So to help, I’m looking around the community to see what sorts of things I can get involved in. Things like joining a local writers’ group and language learning class and the local ParkRun.

    We are beginning to do actual outreach events where people from the church set up a table at the local shopping centre with big yellow banners and copies of gospels and church invitations to give away.

    And my prayer is that we would find people filling the seats that we’ve been gifted. That people would see us living out 1 Peter 4:10-11:

    As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

  • Preaching on mental health

    I had the privilege of preaching on mental health this week (you can find the sermon here). It was quite a challenging topic to handle, especially when there is so much misinformation in the church despite the wealth of biblical data on the subject. It is already the sermon that I’ve received the most feedback on and has already resulted in a few pastoral conversations.

    This may come back as a specific sermon series or a teaching series in the future because there are so many questions I didn’t even begin to address.

    What about Jesus’ instruction not to be anxious? What about Paul’s? What about spiritual depression in particular? What about neurological conditions that may result in these things?

    Those questions didn’t come up in my chats after church today, they are definitely things that I want to teach on in the future.

    My goal for this particular sermon was simply this: to present an understanding of mental illness which is faithful to the biblical data and a correction to the lack of teaching or false teaching that my particular congregation will have received in the past.

    My working theme was this:

    While mental illness is a result of living in a fallen world, Christians can have real hope to endure as they seek God and the help he provides.

    In my own notes, this is two separate sentences but I combine them into one in my sermon. My primary text was Psalms 42-43, though I also reference Job, 2 Timothy, and John’s gospel.

    Helpful resources

    My preparation for this sermon took place over a number of months and included referencing my time receiving (and studying) biblical counselling. There is more that I have but it’s a bit all over the place.

    Walking With Grace

    I have been reading Grace Utomo’s blog for a number of years. She writes very powerfully of her experience with a genuine psychotic disorder (she developed a rare form of schizophrenia after a car accident) while continuing to keep her faith. Some of her experience will be distressing for some to read as it describes some difficult themes.

    David Murray

    The US-based, Scottish pastor and author David Murray has written much on Christians and depression. The most helpful of his works for me has been Christians Get Depressed Too. His book touches on the reality of the problem as well as a realistic assessment of the causes and he helpfully synthesises arguments from varying perspectives into a coherent whole. It is also, blessedly and deliberately, short. He also provides a number of films showing five stories of recovery from depression as well as a helpful guide to how to pray while depressed.

    Martyn Lloyd-Jones

    Martin Lloyd-Jones is one of the few pastors to have written and preached on this topic. He writes addressing spiritual depression in particular, but he does so from the perspective of one who trained in medicine. I read his sermon, Fear of the Future but it’s also available in audio form. Of all of the material that I read, I found this the most challenging personally because it addresses real fears that I have (mostly surrounding visa issues and tax stress as a result of having to file taxes in two different countries).

    I hope that whoever reads this will find it helpful. It’s a topic that is getting more mention in the church but there has also been some very unhelpful stuff said about it recently.