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Latin Anabaptists gird for mission
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras – Forty church and mission leaders from eleven Latin American countries, and several representatives from the United States gathered here April 16–25 for a regional conference on global missions.
This representative gathering for the 50,000-strong Anabaptist communities of Central and South America and the Caribbean stood on the back of earlier meetings of the Global Mission Fellowship (GMF) of the Mennonite World Conference and the International Missions Association, a partnership of mission agencies networked with Eastern Mennonite Missions (EMM).
Javier Soler, chair of the Amor Viviente missions department and member of the GMF steering committee, served as convener. “The purpose of this gathering is to cultivate mission vision and encourage networking in the world harvest,” Soler said.
In a smaller meeting last fall, Soler and other mission leaders recognized the need for a gathering such as this to build mission capacity through additional organization, networking, and financial planning that goes beyond “inspirational sermonizing.”
Citing the fact that 44,000 Latin American missionaries have joined the evangelical missions movement, Soler, said, “We also have workers from our Latin American Anabaptist churches who are serving abroad in North America, Europe, North Africa, and Asia. Many are hoping to go to the world’s least evangelized regions.”
Each morning, special resource person David W. Shenk, global consultant with EMM, taught from the book of Revelation. In the afternoons participants heard reports from conferences such as Amor Viviente and the Nicaraguan Mennonite Church, which are leading the way in international missions. (Amor Viviente has missionaries serving in ten countries. Nicaragua has sent workers to Bangladesh and Thailand.)
Participants shared a renewed call to reaching the unreached ethnic groups within their borders. The Venezuelans noted, for example, the Amazon people groups within their nation which have never heard of Christ, and the K’ekchi’ of Guatemala recalled a large unreached K’ekchi’ community in neighboring Belize.
The group also looked at Anabaptist identity and broke into nine focus groups to discuss the 2006 Mennonite World Conference statement on core Anabaptist commitments.
Many of their churches have emerged in contexts of injustice, poverty, and violence. Many are first generation Christians. The Spanish culture, with its legacy of intimate interaction with Islam during the 800 years of Muslim dominance in Spain, can be excellent preparation for engagement with Muslim peoples.
Steve Shank, representative to Latin America for EMM, reported that each participating conference was encouraged to take steps in forming regional mission commissions and calling forth and equipping laborers for the world harvest. About a dozen of the participants were young people already committed to global missions. They had come with their conference leaders to continue discernment about next steps for engagement in missions.
On the closing evening of the conference, the international participants joined the Amor Viviente hosts for street meetings designed to help launch a new growth group.
“We walked the streets inviting people to the event,” Shank said. “The songs, the puppets for children, the youth dramas, the testimonies, the invitation to Christ, and the announcement that all are welcome to the newly-opened house church in the community provided a hands-on experience in creative Spirit-inspired outreach.”
After the formal meetings, Amor Viviente invited the group on additional field trips. “It went beyond discussion to vivid exposure to the ways Honduran Anabaptists are seeking to fulfill the Great Commission.
“The model of Jesus undergirded this whole event: ‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field,’” Shank said.
Most national conferences represented at this conference had fraternal ties to EMM or Rosedale Mennonite Missions.
-Jewel Showalter
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