What images come to mind when you hear of Latin America? Exotic places, spicy food, salsa and tango dancing, football or drugs?
The region consists of 20 sovereign states, stretching from the southern border of the United States to the icy seas of Cape Horn. Its geography includes the Amazon jungle, glacier-covered mountains and some of the driest deserts on the planet, as well as huge megacities.
Spontaneous growth
It can be dangerous to generalise, but most would agree that one feature of the continent is the disparity between those with great wealth and the majority in deepest poverty. Linked with that situation is a history of violence in many countries, fed by frustration at the inability of inept or corrupt governments to improve the lot of the poor.
Christian readers will know that in many countries of Latin America the church has grown in recent years. From a background of allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, but much conditioned by indigenous religions, the evangelical church began to penetrate the region at the beginning of the 20th century. Initial growth was slow, but by the 1970s there was a boom in many countries. Generally speaking, this was not spearheaded by established denominations, but through ‘spontaneous growth’ from independent, often pentecostal or charismatic groups.
Off-kilter teaching
The growth of the church, testimonies of transformed lives or communities and a passion to contribute to world mission, are all reasons to give thanks to God. The impression may be given, however, that the church in Latin America can be left alone, to mature and to contribute to world evangelism, with no need of further brotherly help from the global church. Look beneath the surface, however, and talk with Latin American church leaders and you will discover that the situation is a little different.
While much church life is genuine and life-changing, at the same time there has been a boom in off-kilter teaching, prosperity teaching and plain heresy. The situation has come to such a head that, in many countries, ‘evangelical’ has become synonymous with the abusive or aberrant.
Several factors contribute to this worrying scenario. One aspect is that, in general terms, these are religious cultures with many sharing a common belief in the divine in some form. In many areas, belief has been used to uphold the status quo and push down the poor. So a church that breaks that tradition, offering religious belief in a way that permits all to be involved on an equal footing, is a powerful force. Even secular sociologists recount examples of the impact of churches in impoverished communities that have restored addicts, remade broken families, turned lives around and brought social change, all by the power of the gospel.
At some point, however, some churches started to swing their focus from the life-changing and community-impacting gospel – which often did lift people out of poverty – to the wealth itself, and then to the so-called ‘prosperity gospel’ which is no gospel at all.
Diminishing zeal
In the years that we have spent in Latin America, we have witnessed the diminishment of evangelistic zeal, so apparent in the 1980s. One fallout from the growth of prosperity theology – which has had a huge popular appeal, fed by tele-evangelists and the media, but which patently doesn’t work – has been a disillusionment with the gospel itself. There seems to be a lack of confidence in the power of the gospel and what it means to live a transformed life, feeding on the Word of God in the power of the Spirit.
Disorientated and superficial
Shifting fascination with novelty in church life, from spiritual mapping, slaying in the spirit, laughing in the spirit, birth-pangs in the spirit, vomiting in the spirit (sad but true!) and so on, has left many church members and pastors in a state of disorientation. Superficiality is now a common feature of church life. Being an evangelical has become a social option, to define a person as non-Catholic, but without an expectation of renewed life and character.
Samuel Escobar has spoken of ‘spiritual anorexia’ in the continent, as the Bible has been pushed to one side by gimmicks and has dropped from the normal spiritual life of the Christian. Preaching in churches has been given ever less time, if any at all. Expository preaching can be hard to find. Sunday schools are often little more than extended crèches to occupy the children while the adults participate in a long multi-sensory ‘worship’ meeting. With poor spiritual food, it is not surprising that Christians are weak and susceptible to disease.
What hope for the future?
What hope is there for the church in Latin America? Formal and residential theological education has always held a limited role in the continent, in part because of the independent character of many churches, in which leaders develop by following their pastor in a sort of apprenticeship model. There are good examples of residential seminaries doing excellent work, despite many struggles, also brilliant examples of non-formal and non-residential theological education, working through local groups, distance learning and to some degree the internet.
One great strength and opportunity in the continent is the very high level of literacy, for the vast majority in Spanish or Portuguese. Thanks to the work of the Bible Societies the Word of God is broadly available: the challenge is not so much to get the Bible to people, but rather to help them read it. Books have been available in Spanish for decades, but in most cases, until recently, these have been translations. Many have been life-giving, but others are badly translated or simply testimonies from other contexts. Thankfully, there is fresh life in the growth of books by Latin American leaders, rooted in the Word of God, in the language of the people and related to their needs.
So, Latin America. A place of extraordinary contrasts and challenges, but where God is indeed at work through ordinary Christians, leaders, pastors and churches who are seeking to be faithful to the Lord, follow him in service and share the true gospel, even in the toughest situations of violence and poverty.
Pray for Latin American leaders who are effective communicators and who can express biblical truth in a culturally relevant way, not only through speech but also the written word. Pray too for the ministries across the continent that are producing materials to reach those pastors and leaders who may not have received formal training, but who are hungry to deepen their knowledge of the Bible and of how to serve their communities.
Bible-based and culturally-rooted churches and ministries need our prayer and our support, as well as the fellowship of brothers and sisters from the global church who will work alongside them, often in specialised or technical roles. It has been our privilege and delight to have served for many years, ‘elbow to elbow’ with Latin American brothers and sisters. You never know, the Lord may have a place there for you too!
