September 01, 1986 by Doug Smith

Latin America More Open to the Gospel than Ever

Latin America has never been more disposed to the Gospel than it is now. The Holy Spirit is doing things above and beyond what has been our fondest expectation.

In 1950 and '79 when I was in Argentina, there was an overwhelming sense of superiority and aloofness on the pan of the Argentines, but with the loss of the Malvines (Falkland) war, the Argentines' backs have been broken. Now, all of a sudden, they have no confidence in their government, their money, their future.

As they are suffering under inflation and finding they cannot meet their obligations on the international financial markets, all of a sudden there is a sense of expectancy and dependency upon God that has been lacking until now.

Openness

All of a sudden, the 700 Club is penetrating the skyscrapers of Rosario with the Gospel of Jesus Christ When CarIns Anaconda went 'a Rosario and started to preach in a tent, people came out of those skyscrapers and completely inundated his tent. The churches in Rosario are so full of people they don't know what to do with them. There aren't enough Christians to follow up on all the new converts and disciple them adequately.

I met with Milton Pope. He showed me what he's been doing in Buenos Aires, lie's been renting secular high schools in order to offer classes to young people who believe they are called by God to work as missionaries. Imagine: he has 600 students from secular high schools from Buenos Aires to Rosario coming every week for these classes! In five years, God has done something in Argentina which we feel is an indication of what He can do in the rest of Latin America. We could go on country by country and illustrate how He is suvereignly using this time of stress and crushing to bring out a sweet. new and refreshment from his people. A whole new generation is rising up saying, "We do not have time to waste in secular careers? Instead of going to secular universities and putting their income into "bags with holes in them," they are deciding that this is the time to risk investing their lives in the Kingdom,

New Mission Courses

In 1980, young people in Brazil told me God had given them a vision for packing up their backpacks and preaching the gospel to every creature. "But," they said, "where can we receive training? All the seminaries and Bible schools are training pastors for the pastorate, not missionaries for the mission field!"

It was that plea that gave birth to the idea of developing a mission curriculum.

During the past several months we have been traveling throughout Latin America seeking to teach the biblical theology of mission, The response has been phenomenal The Mission Association  of Ecuador, for instance, thought that perhaps 20 students would be motivated to come to our course. Last year (1985) they had no students. But instead of 20 students, we had 60.

This experience is being repeated throughout Latin America, There is a groundswell of interest, but no expertise to be able to offer such a missions curriculum in the existing Bible institutes and seminaries.In fiscal '85 we had 303 students, In '86 we expect 1003. If we can use video tape and printed syllabi along with the Perspectives course, we expect the kind of training we ale offering will soon be enjoyed by 10,000 Latin American students each year.

Of course, the big problem is how to fund this new army of missionaries.

Adopt GPD

As I have been using the Global Prayer Digest and sharing it on my trip, I have been overwhelmed by the commitment and interest of denominational leaders. They have all said, "We want to commit ourselves to a customized edition and sponsoring Frontier Fellowships so we can channel funds to our young people whom God is calling to be missionaries."

It seems to me we could have a million copies of the Global Prayer Digest in Spanish and a million copies in Portuguese going out every month within the next five years.

If we could obtain subscriptions on a pay in advance basis through denominations, and if we could get a million Portuguese and a million Spanish families to pray, this would generate funds for these new missionaries who are wanting to go, but who currently lack the funds.

Sandinistas Assailed by Comrade Turned Christian

Humberto Befit, former editor of the world famous newspaper La Pretoria, is also a former Sandinista Marxist. lie is flow a conservative Christian. The Sandinista government of Nicaragua, he says, has a brutal record as a tolerator of religious pluralism.

Miskito Indians, who were Christianized more than a century ago by Moravians, had 55 churches seized by the Sandinisia army between 1980 and 1982, he says. Cuban teachers were then imparted to reeducate the Miskitos in Marxism, and Moravian Miskitos who resisted had their pastors jailed or beaten. Some pastors simply disappeared, and many missionaries were expelled.

Belli believes that about one third of the Contra rebel forces are now made up of Miskito Christians who have been displaced by Sandinisla efforts to reeducate and relocate them.

In Managua last year, Belli reports, the Sandinislas grabbed the facilities of Campus Crusade for Christ, though its leaders had meticulously stayed out of polities. The government also arrested some lCO "lay leaders of Christian churches throughout the capitol." He said that many of these were tortured.

Belli says that the evangelicals, who comprise perhaps 12 percent of Nicaragua's population. "don't want to have anything to do with poliucs." Their pastors do not publicly denounce the government, yet neither will they promote the Sandinistas. For this reason, they are persecuted.

He says he is aware of 27 evengelical church buildings that were taken over by the government in Managua alone in 1982.

The National Association of Evangelical Pastors, a coalition of conservative Protestants, represents most evangelicats in Nicaragua yet it has no linkages with the outside world. By contrast, he says, U.S. media misrepresent the Protestant leaders of the Cenzro ale Promocion y Desanollo (CEPAD), a much smaller and far wealthier organization supported by the National Council of Churches (USA) and praised by Marykaollers and the World Council of Churches, as spokesmen for Nicaraguan evangelicals.

In fact, he says, these men are liberation theology revolutionaries who reject traditional Christian beliefs in favor of a pantheism which views Jesus as the spirit of social reform, through violent revolution if necessary.

As editor of La Prensa from 1980 until mid 1982. Belli said he had "one decree after another" come down from government headquarters telling him and the other editors what they might not publish. Miskito Indian issues were forbidden immediately. Economic problems and labor strikes, too, were soon off limits.

Aware that "a good deal of misinformation" about the Church and civil liberties in Nicaragua was being promulgated in the United Slates, and seeing that "the Church was in great need of solidarity from people abroad." Belli says he came to the United States in 1982 to establish a base to aid his people. That base has become the Puebla Institute in Garden City, Michigan.

"American Christian churches (need so) speak up every time a Nicaraguan pastor, priest, or minister gets expelled (or) hauled to jail," Belli said. This, he believes, will cause the Sandinista government to be 'very much restrained in attacking Nicaraguan churches." lIe feels that if the Sandinista government realizes it will have to pay a high political cost for its persecution, it will back off.

Crossway Books last year published Beth's Breaking Faith. The Samainista, Revolution and Its Impact on Freedom and Christian Faith in Nicaragua.

COMIBAM Impacts Latin American Missions A Year Earlier Than Expected

Planned for November 1987, the Ibero American Missions Congress (COngreso Misiontro IBero  AMericana —COMII3AM) is impacting Latin American missions more than a year before it conies to pass.

Luis Bush, president of the COMIBAM executive committee, reports that in preparation for the larger meeting "national committees have begun functioning in almost all of the countries' to be represented.

'These committees establish theft own agendas for stimulating mission vision,' he said. "As a result, mission agencies are being organized and national mission centers and crosscultural training schools are being formed."

The key thrust of COMIBAM will be the role of the local church in missions. Theologians who met in June in order to help define terminology and, hopefully, to focus discussions at the Congress said they met in order "to contribute to the development of a missionary conscience of the church."

"Our missionary action needs to begin in the local church with her own resources, without excluding the possibility of cooperation from churches in other parts," they said.

"The missionary responsibility is primarily the task of the local church."

Missionary agencies, with their greater specialization, help the church fulfill her task ... a task which implies a spirit or sacrifice."

The COMIBAM executive committee met in Guatemala early this June to make plans and to work on an organizational manual for the congress. Among other things, the committee established quotas for participants. Seventeen hundred pastors and denominational leaders; 550 young people; 350 women; 250 laymen; 30 people from other Third World countries; 75 Western missionaries serving in Latin America; ad 200 observers are expected to be in attendance.

In anticipation of the congress, research on the status of the Latin Ameri can harvest force and harvest field is being conducted (see cover feature on the Global Mapping Project, Mission Frontiers, August 1986), and Latin American missiologists are working on II mission books.

News Shorts

Coca, the plant from which Cocaine is synthesized, is not the only thing growing prolifically in Bolivia, Union Cluistiana Evangelical churches grew from 400 in 1981 to 700 in 1985.

Says the president of the body, related to SIM tnternational: "The whole church planting movement here is basically a lay ministry. A big reason for this is that about 80 percent of our churches are led by lay Christians. They don't have full time pastors."

Young people of one church in Cochabamba have helped to start 10 new churches in the last two years.

Books are past of the toll of  3,000 percent inflation in Nicaragua: they are affordable only by high officials and intellectuals. Private bookstores can't survive. Government run bookstores offer only Soviet and Cuban book& at subsidized prices.

Guatemalan Church Grows Despite Violence

Violence against Christians in Guatemala seems to beon the rise again. Virgilio Zapala, president of the largest Christian school in Latin America, recently reported that 12 evangelical pastors have been kidnapped and tortured. They are still missing.

In one rural village the local priest incited his congregation against the Protestants. As a result, the people attacked the pastor, chased him into the church, and killed him.

Despite this, the Church grows on at a double digit rate. Zapata reports that 24 members of his school's recent graduating class are enrolling in seminary. At a recent service, 60 night school students committed theft lives to Christ.  CNEC Farmers Update

Hispanic Population Challenge to U.S. Evangelicals

Twenty percent of the U.S. population will soon be made up of Spanish speaking people. How the U.S. assimilates these people into its society and how Christians evangelize them is of strategic importance.

Seventeen million people of Latin descent now live in the United States, Ten million of these are Mexicans. Another five to ten million are illegal aliens who have crossed the border from Mexico in recent years.