Last week I shared about the development of UWM's "Training Hubs" focused on the long-term preparation and discipleship of leaders within the Latin Church as well as equipping the next generation.
This Latin America wide project begins with 5 primary initiatives:
Church Planting: Throughout the major cities of Latin America one can often find a "church" (or multiple) on every block, but because of the lack of pastoral training which I addressed in our previous newsletter, many of these churches present a distorted if not heretical gospel, often focused on a "prosperity doctrine" with unbiblical promises of health and wealth. At the same time, most of the rural towns throughout these countries have little or no presence of the gospel, much less healthy and biblically sound churches.
Years ago, while serving in Chile, I had the blessing of surveying towns in the Altiplano (Andean high planes) on the Bolivian boarder in order to confirm the need for healthy churches. Many of these towns had at most one historic catholic church that a priest would visit once a year. No discipleship, no regular Biblical teaching, and no presence of a healthy, biblically-sound church. The catholic church buildings were used as community centers & markets for much of the year, and in some occasions even saw attendees regress to pagan sacrifices within their very walls. (For more on this "syncretism" and blending of beliefs, see 10/28/21 newsletter).
As with the mountain villages of Chile, rural Central American & Caribbean towns are in desperate need of healthy church plants, preferably by nationals trained in the Gospel and then supported by an ongoing network of pastors.
No comments:
Post a Comment