Evangelization in the context of Latin American culture is a hot topic for the emerging churches of South and Central America. Each is reaching out to people unfamiliar with the gospel story, building communities of faith from scratch. New Methodist work has begun in Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras. There is little unity among evangelical Protestant churches in these countries. Methodism brings a spirit of Christian unity. In El Salvador, for instance, the four-year-old Evangelical Methodist Church included representatives from eight other denominations in its anniversary celebration.
| Advance Numbers | Colombia | El Salvador | Honduras | Nicaragua | Venezuela |
The leaders of the new church initiatives also spoke of the resonance that Methodism is having in
their respective countries. "Methodism brings together a strong commitment to personal
salvation and at the same time addresses the real needs of the community," said Zabdiel Arenas,
president of El Renuevo, a ministry in Venezuela that sponsors three new Methodist
congregations. In addition, El Renuevo sponsors literacy and health ministries among people
living along the rivers of southwestern Venezuela.
Zabdiel Arenas, president of El Renuevo, a ministry in Venezuela
"El Renuevo" is the name given to a ministry of Appropriate Technology and Community Development located south of San Cristobal, Venezuela. It is related to the US-based organization SIFAT (Southern Institute for Appropriate Technology/Servants in Faith and Technology), which was founded by former GBGM missionary Ken Corson. SIFAT provides training in programs aimed at helping improve the quality of life in rural communities (e.g., creation of land fisheries, cultivation of humus, solar and water purification, and sustainable agriculture). It is supported primarily by United Methodist Churches in the Southeastern Jurisdiction. A Venezuelan supported by SIFAT, Zabdiel Arenas, trained at Auburn University in Land Fisheries Technology and became director of SIFAT programs in Venezuela, where he returned to work in 1995. While studying at Auburn, Zabdiel became a member of the Auburn United Methodist Church. A lifelong Christian, whose father was a Pastor in the Christian Alliance Church of Venezuela, Zabdiel found in Methodism the unity of socially responsible ministry and personal commitment to Jesus Christ he was looking for. "I was not familiar with the Methodist Church prior to coming to Alabama," says Zabdiel. "When I discovered its beliefs and principles, I realized that I had been a 'Methodist' my whole life but had not been aware of it." As an outgrowth of the ministry of El Renuevo, Methodist congregations have been established. As of 1996, three congregations were worshiping in three separate communities. The buildings for El Renuevo and the incipient Methodist congregations were built with the help of Volunteers in Mission groups coordinated through SIFAT in the US.
Zabdiel attended the ELADE (Latin American School of Evangelization) in October 1997 in Panama City along with his brother, Abimael Arenas, and Yurima Alvarez, who works in Christian Education and adult literacy ministries.
Abimael Arenas attended the Latin American School of Evangelization in 1997
Pastors Ismael Essis and Fernando Mendez represented two young congregations located in a low-income neighborhood on the outskirts of the city of Maracaibo, Venezuela. The ministry started in 1986 when a group of Christians decided to live in a southern neighborhood of Maracaibo. They wanted to deal with peoples' needs. Very much influenced by St. Francis of Assisi and John Wesley, they worked in literacy. They did not think of starting a congregation but rather a service ministry. They did, however, hold worship services. People started coming to their services. In 1990, they met Bishop Paulo Lochmann and the idea of becoming Methodist was raised. They started the process. Various Methodists from Brazil and Chile visited them. In 1993, in Cuba, they were accepted as a fraternal church of CIEMAL. They began working with GBGM at the same time, relating to executives of the former Latin America Office of the World Division. In 1993, at the invitation of GBGM executive Nora Boots, members of the Maracaibo group visited Jamkhed, India, to learn about community-based primary health care. As a result, they opened work in three neighborhoods in health ministry. Now there are two congregations, with 25 adults in each, 10 adolescents, and 20 children. One of the congregations is pastored by Gloria Gonzalez and the other is pastored by Fernando Mendez. Both congregations worship on Sundays. Each congregation has an evangelization team which visits house-to-house and offers discipleship classes on what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be a Methodist. Pastor Essis has been designated to start a third congregation.
Since 1990, GBGM and the Council of Methodist Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean (CIEMAL) have established a relationship with the Christian Methodist Community of Colombia (CCMC). This church has two places of mission: the John XXIII and San Luis neighborhoods of Bogotá, Colombia. The pastor and leader of CCMC is Luis Castiblanco.
Luis was part of a group of Pentecostal pastors who sought affiliation with the Methodist Church as early as 1978. During the '80s, this group broke away from relationships with GBGM in order to link itself with the United Methodist Mission Society. The lone exception to the breakaway was Luis Castiblanco. It was he who established the CCMC and its relationships with GBGM and CIEMAL. Thus, in Bogotá there are Methodists who relate to the United Methodist Mission Society and those who relate to CIEMAL and GBGM.
CCMC runs a daycare program with help from the municipality. Seventy percent of its budget is subsidized by the government and the rest comes from monthly fees charged to the parents. There are 45 children at the Methodist headquarters (in a long multipurpose room and kitchen) and 15 children in each of 15 houses in the neighborhood.
VIM groups from United Methodist Churches in San Antonio and North Carolina helped build a parsonage on the CCMC property. Luis Castiblanco and his family moved into the parsonage in October of 1996.
Another group calling itself Methodist in Colombia that was present at the Panama City ELADE is led by the Reverend Manuel Grajales of Armenia, Colombia. Grajales spent 43 years outside his country serving as a Minister in Chile, Peru, and Texas (as part of the Rio Grande Annual Conference). Upon retiring, he returned to Colombia. At 75 years of age, he began new Methodist work in the western region of the country. He was joined at the ELADE by Gladys Acero, who along with her husband, is pastoring a new Methodist congregation near Cali. Altogether there are four new Methodist churches in the Armenia-Cali region of the country.
The Nicaraguan Methodist Church sent two delegates to the ELADE training. It has three communities, all in Managua, and is led by an International Person in Mission, Ruben Pak of Argentina. All of the congregations are located in working-class communities. Methodist work started in 1993. The church, which includes a commission on integral health and another on evangelization, directs a project on potable water for 64 families. In another neighborhood near Managua, the church began a ministry with children and a nutrition program. In the three communities it serves, it has ongoing health projects, which promote the use of natural herbs and offer workshops on malaria and diarrhea. The church has organized a Sunday school and a preaching ministry.
Francisco Mayorga and his wife, Araceli, fled El Salvador during the civil war in the 1980s. They were received by a Methodist Church in Hempstead, New York, where they became active members of the congregation. Upon returning to El Salvador, Francisco vowed to bring United Methodism to his native country.
On the 19th of January, 1994, the Evangelical Methodist Church in El Salvador (IEMES) was founded. It started with 14 people, most of whom had come from Pentecostal churches. They were visited by Barbara Pessoa of GBGM and Isaias Gutierrez of CIEMAL. Some of the people who started with Francisco have returned to their original churches, but new folk have come. In the church today, there are 60-70 adults, 15 youth, and 30 children. Francisco Mayorga attended the ELADE school along with his young adult son, Paquito.
The Mayorgas report that the Evangelical Methodist Church in El Salvador has a women's society, a men's society, and a youth society, all with their own governing boards. It has a "pre-jovenes" group--children 5 to 12--that meets during the worship service of the Sunday school, which takes place before the classes. On Thursdays it conducts a "Theology School" to teach people Wesleyan tradition. On Mondays it trains new believers. On Tuesdays it holds house churches.
This church is full of vitality and is growing rapidly. The goals of IEMES are to construct a church building and a school (presently it rents the building it uses for worship) and to start new congregations in other areas of El Salvador. There is keen interest on the part of IEMES in serving the social needs of the greater community. In the past it has helped distribute food to the needy (thanks to an UMCOR donation). It would like to start a school in the neighborhood of the church.
The Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas (MCCA) has been engaged in ministry in Honduras for more than 50 years. Its focus has been primarily on work among English-speaking people transported to Honduras from other areas of the Caribbean. In 1996, the former bishop of the Cuban Methodist Church, Armando Rodriguez, traveled to Honduras to explore possibilities for new Spanish-speaking Methodist work. The primary encouragement of this initiative came from GBGM. CIEMAL relates secondarily to the initiative. The Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas is a partner to this new initiative, as it too is engaged in new Spanish-speaking work in the eastern costal region of Honduras.
In 1997, GBGM approved a project to support a full year of evangelistic activity on the part of Bishop Rodriguez in Honduras. Bishop and Alida Rodriguez arrived in Honduras in August 1997. Their responsibilities include: (1) Learning about the idiosyncracies of the people and identifying areas to establish Methodist congregations and community ministries. (2) Establishing preaching points. (3) Generating plans and recommendations for the development of community ministries and congregations in collaboration with the assigned persons from the ECG and CIM program units. (4) Implementing those plans approved by the proper General Board of Global Ministries authorities.
The funds approved for Honduras so far only provide for personnel and such personnel-related costs as international travel. Funds are urgently needed to cover program expenses such as meeting space to develop communities of faith, promotion, Christian education literature, transportation expenses in the country, and development of community ministries. Individuals and local churches can give support through the ADVANCE (project # 000472-5RA).
The ministry of the Rodriguez' is under the guidance of the GBGM staff group working in
collaboration with CIEMAL. The supervisory team is composed of (1) Rita Oliva, general
secretary of CIEMAL, (2) Lesley Anderson, Superintendent of the Honduras-Belize District of
the MCCA, (3) Douglas Ruffle, Executive Secretary for Evangelization and Church Growth ,
GBGM, (4) Germán Acevedo-Delgado, Assistant General Secretary, Community Ministries,
GBGM.
| Colombia | El Salvador | Honduras | Nicaragua | Venezuela |
Through the Advance, individuals and local churches can help support the emerging ministries in Latin America. The following table shows approved projects of the Advance that relate to these ministries.
| Project Name | Country | Amount approved | Years Covered | Advance Code |
| Comprehensive Community-Based Health Care | Colombia | $12,000 | 1997-98 H&W/UMCOR | 506245-4 |
| Community Education Program | Colombia | $8,000/year | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 012184-2RA |
| Community-Based Health Care, Bogotá | Colombia | $8,000/year | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 011910-8RA |
| Dressmaking & Life Skills Workshop | Colombia | $7,000/year | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 012185-3RA |
| Children's Feeding Program | El Salvador | $6,000/year | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 012209-4RA |
| Church Construction and Transportation | El Salvador | $85,000 | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 012210-6AN |
| Scholarships for Young People | El Salvador | $7,200/year | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 012211-7RB |
| Women's Program | El Salvador | $18,060/year | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 012212-8RA |
| Developing Ministries and Congregations in Honduras | Honduras | $20,000 | 1997-2000
GENERAL ADVANCE |
000472-5RA |
| Evangelism and Church Development | Nicaragua | $8,500/year | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 011610-5RA |
| Evangelism and Church Development, Construction | Nicaragua | $54,960 | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 011611-6AN |
| Comprehensive Community-Based Primary Health Care | Venezuela | $15,000 | 1997-98 H&W/UMCOR | 770203-5 |
| Community-Based Health Care, Maracaibo | Venezuela | $10,000/year | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 011907-4RA |
| Vehicle and Equipment, Maracaibo | Venezuela | $15,000 | 1997-98 GENERAL ADVANCE | 011908-5AS |
The photographs are courtesy of Douglas Ruffle.
| Advance Numbers | Colombia | El Salvador | Honduras | Nicaragua | Venezuela |
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