Northern Mexico Update
ONE YEAR
It has been more than one year since the Covid-19 changed many things in our lives. And also, it may be a year since my last prayer letter; I am sorry. The Lord has been so good to us as family and in our work.We give thanks because we have been without Covid. We give thanks because the Lord has opened new opportunities to share the gospel through bible studies on line (Mary has 3 with women), and I have others. The on line services of the church has reached out other people with the gospel.
The other side of the coin is that a lot of churches have been struggling to support themselves. A lot of people are very confortable not attending the church even when they can do it. One question that constantly remains is how to be a real community in the gospel with social distancing.
MEXICO CHURCH PLANTING CHALLENGE
Every 10 years Mexico does a census. One area that is asked is religious affiliation. One interesting highlight of the 2020 census is that there are the same number of Protestants or Evangelicals compared to people without religion or religious affiliation, 11% each. The difference is that the churches grew around 50% from 7% to 11%; that is not bad. Meanwhile skeptics grew more than 100% from 5 to 11%; in the last 10 years. From 2000 to 2010 the non-religious group also grew at 100%. If this trend continues by 2030 there will be more than 20% who have no religion or religious affiliation. This is without counting all those who claim to have a religion but in practice and in truth do not live their faith or their beliefs. Mexico needs urgently the gospel because our many religious Roman Catholics do not preach the gospel of grace and now a significant number in our cities are skeptics. The challenge is to preach the gospel that appeals to both groups.
One of the big challenges is that we haven’t been able to walk with our church planters in their sites of work. All of them they have been alone working, struggling and staying faithful. On-line coaching and mentoring have been good but are never is the same as spending time a face to face. Thanks for your support and prayers for us and our movement.
PRAYER REQUEST:
1. PRAY FOR THE TWO NEW CHURCH PLANTERS —MARCOS VALERA IN CULIACAN, & BENJAMIN ROMERO IN LA PAZ, BAJA CALIFORNIA.
2. PRAY THAT PEOPLE COME BACK TO OUR WORSHIP SERVICES.
3. PRAY FOR KATIA’S SUMMER INTERNSHIP IN ISAIAH 55, AND FOR SUPPORT RAISING.
4. PRAY THAT OUR ON LINE TRAINING, MENTORING AND COACHING CAN BE EFFECTIVE IN OUR CHURCH
PLANTING MOVEMENT.
5. PRAY THAT THE LORD’S MERCY CONTINUE BEING WITH US TO KEEP US HEALTHY.
6. PRAY FOR A NEW CHURCH PLANT PROJECT IN NUEVO LAREDO, A BORDER CITY WITH JOSE LUIS VILLASANA.
7. PRAY THAT THE LORD RISE A CHURCH PLANTER FOR THE CITY OF CHIHUAHUA.
8. PRAY FOR WISDOM.
In Christ,
Jorge Aleman
Mexico Update
Yes, 2020 has been the year of the Lord. It has been a year of challenging our faith, however, we have grew in the knowledge of God. Almost 10 months isolated, not being able to have face to face worship services or trainings and only having extremely little personal contact with my Latin America team, church and relatives. It is unbelievable for new churches to survive in these circumstances. It is now when all these scripture verses that I teach constantly, came to make deep sense to my life. Our dependency on God, his wisdom, his will, his care for my church and family have become more real in my life and the life of pastors and planters. Still in the midst of the pandemic, we are able to minister, to plant churches and to develop leaders in Monterrey and Latin America only because the church is Jesus’ church. We are not the Holy Spirit, I understood that before, however, I experienced this reality through the pandemic. We are not able to be side by side with my own people and family when they are suffering, however, the Holy Spirit has been with them. I could not walked 35 steps across the street to comfort my neighbour who lost her husband due to Covid, but I understood that the Holy Spirit, the real comforter, was there. I have been not able to hug my mom for 10 months, but I know that God is hugging her all the time. It is amazing how the Lord has been working through the pandemic to even make us to see how to be more missional. Most of the churches thought that without face to face worship services we lost our sense of being a church. At the end of April pastors and leaders were despair to come back to gatherings, and that is correct, however, when I asked the motivation to come back they gave me what I think are not correct motivations. Some of them were; “we are not worshiping the Lord”, “we are losing tithe and offerings”, “we are not able to disciple them,” etc, etc. After several months we realized that this situation will take longer and we started to reflect on our convictions about being a church. Face to face worship service does not define the church of Jesus Christ. We ought to have face to face worship, but like the persecuted church, we are not able to have it and we understand that it does not define us, but the very presence of Jesus in our lives and the unity in Christ and to each other through different means. We are united, we are worshiping together as one local church in many different places in the city. We understood that even though, face to face worship is very important to practice church, if we cannot, we still need to look for the essentials to continue being the church. Discipleship is growing, worship is going deeper in and from our houses and the mission of Christ has now more opportunities than ever. I have three couples in remarriage counseling, some individuals asking questions about Christianity, a couple of families asking when are we opening services to come, and all of them have come from our digital worship services. They started connecting in the midst of the pandemic and now they are a part of our church. The lord land of our rented building gets connected every Sunday and he is unbeliever. These are the experiences through out Latin America. Our CTC planters or pastors have had similar experiences and growth in Christ. We give thanks and the glory to God.
CHURCH PLANTING
Can we plant churches in the midst of a crisis? That was the question at the beginning of the pandemic. By the grace of the Lord as a CTC Latam, we helped to start 6 churches in Monterrey, Mexico City, Quito, Cartagena and Valparaiso. So, yes, it is possible only because Jesus is in charge to build his church, not us. We are instruments in his hands.
CITY MINISTRIES
The fact that we use online means of gatherings and communications, we were able to start 4 initiatives for the whole region; Faith and work, Catalytic leaders, Couches and Trainers. These initiatives for leaders gathered in 2020 around 85 key leaders from 18 cities and 12 countries in Latin America from Mexico to Argentina and Brazil.
TRAINING
One of the biggest challenges for our ministry has been the question of how to do an effective training online when one of our main blessings is to build a community of the gospel through that? Well, in line of our new reality we re-designed all our trainings for an online version. We created a couple of city labs and a new training in response to the pandemic. This new training was called “INDUCTION.” The purpose was to respond to many of the main problems for ministry that the pandemic brought. By the grace of the Lord, two incubators started and five induction program were developed. We had almost 300 leaders in training trough these programs.
PRAYER REQUEST
• For my family protection.
• For the 300 leaders in training. For them to be encourage by online services and trainings.
• For San Pedro Church, as this church deals with the pandemic. This is my church which is a flag ship church in Mexico.
• For the 6 new churches we started in 2020.
• For my team, in order to work in unity and wisdom facing the pandemic.
• For my support account in MTW. I lost some sponsors and has been a difficult year.
In Christ,
Adres
Missions Trip • Durango, Mexico
Wanted to share a piece of what happened down in Durango on our mission trip to help Vida Iglesia nacional Presbiteriana de Mexico, the only Presbyterian church in Durango, and the one Good News sponsors.
Our group helped with their VBS. The first day we had around 20 kids show up at the park where it was held. By the end of the week, we had reached over 40 kids. Noe, a pastor leading VBS, who is also trying to build a congregation to open the second location for Vida church, spoke with our group and told us that he had been trying to build a congregation for over a year and had been holding a Bible study out of his house, but over the last month or so, he said he had started to question if this was really Gods will or not for him to start a church. He said after seeing the support he got from us coming there, the increase of children attending VBS, and being able to talk to numerous parents dropping their kids off and people walking through the park, he was able to get 6 more people to start attending his study. This experience with us he said, had renewed his faith in this being Gods will to continue building a congregation for a church.