Ninety Miles from Home
Marshall Brock
July 1, 1998
In May, my brother Krue invited me to go on a trip 90 miles from home. You might expect that we would end up in Atlanta, 90 miles from our home in Chattanooga, Tennessee—but instead I found myself on a plane leaving the United States. Sitting in Nassau, Bahamas—American citizens cannot fly directly to the Republic of Cuba—I read everything from Jimmy Buffett to encyclopedia articles, trying to understand the land I was about to visit. Dois Rosser—a long-time friend of my father—had a successful career in business, raised a strong family, and contributed much to the life of his church in Virginia. Now, at 75 years old, he has founded International Cooperating Ministries, which helps build networks of churches in countries that are closed to Christianity. In May, he invited a few of us to join him on a visit to Cuba, one year after ICM first made contact there. We went to evaluate the progress in bringing small, widely separated congregations together in mutually supportive networks, and to allocate funds to help them grow. ICM has clear criteria for selecting churches to receive financial support—at least they are clear until you are face to face with a church in need. A representative story was Tomas, a young pastor with a congregation of about 20 persons. He and his very pregnant wife live in the back of the building in which his church meets. Because churches cannot buy land in Cuba, most churches are "house churches" in one way or another. Because of Tomas's youth and lack of local support, we encouraged him to get involved with an older pastor and try to join another local church body. We felt it would be inappropriate to encourage his present situation—with only 20 members, his church was not financially viable; without ...
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