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Church leaders gain new vision for multiplication
QUARRYVILLE, Pa. – Alejandro Colindres never planned to start a church. Twenty years ago he came from Honduras to New York City seeking medical help for his daughter and picking up survival work in a restaurant.
“But I couldn’t help myself. I had to plant churches!” Colindres told the multicultural group of over 200 church planters at School for Apostles (SFA), July 24-28, 2006.
This annual Eastern Mennonite Missions-sponsored retreat for U.S. church planters in the U.S. has always included simultaneous translation from English into Spanish. This year, for the first time, Colindres gave the four major teaching sessions in Spanish. Antonio Ulloa, another Honduran who serves as a church consultant with Eastern Mennonite Missions (EMM), provided translation into English.
Colindres began with his story. By age 22, his gambling, drug-and-alcohol-abusing lifestyle had landed him on the streets. “But no one loves you on the streets,” he said. “When I heard that God loves me, it completely changed my life!” Since that time 25 years ago, Colindres said he continues to have a burning passion to tell others about God’s love.
Before coming to New York, Colindres served as a cell group leader with Amor Viviente, an EMM partner in Honduras. He never thought of himself as a church planter, but he had what he calls a “spiral vision” for cell multiplication.
He explained that people who are used to meeting in cell groups right in their own homes or neighborhoods shouldn’t have to go more than 15 minutes to attend a larger worship service or celebration. Then as cells keep multiplying and “spiraling” further from the center, new celebrations get organized.
After helping to start churches in Long Island, Bronx, and Brooklyn, New York, Colindres took a group from New York to preach on the streets of Stanford, Connecticut. This outreach grew into a cell group that in the last six years has spawned 60 cell groups involving 500-600 people.
From this base church/celebration in Stanford the movement is spreading to other cities in the state -- Norwalk, New Haven, and Bridgeport. They’re also “spiraling” north to Spring Valley, New York, and west to Trenton, New Jersey.
Although he’d been part of Amor Viviente USA, Colindres has organized this new U.S. network of cells and churches into Ministerio Fraternidad Cristiana.
“At first I was primarily focused on people from Honduras,” Colindres said, “But at SFA I noticed how multi-cultural the U.S. is. It taught me to be more sensitive to different cultures. Now I’m teaching my leaders those same sensitivities. Currently we have people from 15 different countries involved in our churches. We use Spanish, English, and Indonesian in our worship services.
“Also, I used to only want to work with cell group churches, but at SFA God gave me a fresh vision of his whole Body. I got introduced to resources like Natural Church Development. I learned how to use technology. I got ideas for leaders’ conferences. I caught a vision for how our churches can send out missionaries. SFA has stretched me to see beyond the local church.”
“We’re very practical people,” Colindres added. “SFA isn’t just another notebook to put on a shelf. One year we heard someone speak on ‘How to Impact Your City for God.’ We went home, and God gave us the idea of having praise and worship services at City Hall. We asked – and they gave us permission. Another time all the cell members took an evening to fan out and visit their neighbors – offering to pray for them.”
“We see 10-25 new people beginning to attend our cells and churches every week. Each cell group has a vision to multiply. We give discipleship classes every week. After new believers complete three levels of discipleship training they can lead cell groups.”
Colindres interwove stories of the church planting movement in New England with stories from his childhood in Honduras, where he grew up without shoes or a decent education. “I had an inferiority complex,” he said. “But then I saw that I was a church planter.”
In his village, Colindres grew up drinking from a spring that feeds the Choluteca River, which eventually runs into the Pacific Ocean. “A cell group is like a spring,” he said. “Take care of your spring/cell and some day God may call you to swim in the ocean.”
In addition to input from Colindres, Daniel Smiley, a Navaho leader from Chinle, Arizona, shared a powerful session on “moving towards wholeness and healing” from his own experiences as pastor of a congregation of the Anabaptist Native Fellowship of Churches.
Jimm and Kaylene Derksen, along with the Wilmington (Delaware) Vietnamese Mennonite Church worship team, led in morning and evening worship times. Various church planters shared testimonies drawn from their experiences.
SFA participants represented a wide variety of networks – the Spanish Mennonite Council and Philadelphia District of Lancaster Mennonite Conference (LMC), Good News Fellowship, Harvest Fellowship of Churches, Koinonia Fellowship of Churches, Ministerio Fraternidad Cristiana, Anabaptist Native Fellowship of Churches, New York Mennonite Conference, and Franklin Mennonite Conference.
There were also international guests from Albania and Eritrea, EMM missionaries to Kenya, EMM associated missionaries serving with Wycliffe, EMM Board members and staff, and LMC church planters, pastors, bishops, and staff in attendance. During the closing rally Colindres reflected on the big revivals of yesteryear that swept New England birthing universities and flinging missionaries around the globe.
“Today there are huge, empty churches – filled only with pigeons. But the population of New England has continued to grow. There was great vision, but the vision has died,” he said.
In his inimitable, grassroots style, Colindres said, “As I was starting to prepare these messages for SFA, God gave me a vision – a farmer had many cows and a good dairy business. He even expanded overseas. But he didn’t know that cows don’t last forever. They need to be fed. They need to reproduce. If the cows are done, the business is done. No one paid attention to raising up the young.”
“Many of us came here as new immigrants. We must rise up and prophesy life for this land. Churches in the U.S. are closing, and we’re comfortable? Just as missionaries came from EMM to bring us the gospel, we must pray for this nation.”
Then Colindres called the group to pray for the EMM staff – and the U.S. He knelt at the feet of EMM President Richard Showalter and said with tears, “The blood of the Mennonite martyrs has produced us – your fruit. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Because of your suffering we’ve been blessed. As a representative of the Body from Latin America, we want to pray for your mission efforts.”
In closing Showalter responded, “This has truly been a missionary convention – for missionaries to this land – from Honduras, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Germany, Vietnam… Let’s move out from here to a place of blessing and intercession for this nation.”
“We’re all potatoes, from different places,” said Colindres quipped. "But we’re getting mashed together – as a meal for the world.” Not a bad analogy from a church planter who got his start in the kitchen.
- Jewel Showalter
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