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HFC EXPLORING NEW FIELD IN GUATEMALA
In January, Ricardo Ayala (Field Coordinator in Chicago) conducted a church planting workshop in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Almost thirty pastors gathered at Seminario Biblico Guatemalteco to explore a different model of church planting based on making disciples from the harvest and then gathering them together into a group for worship. Most church planting in Guatemala begins with a Sunday service, following the model of the many mega churches in the country. Ricardo spent the day training, leading them in role playing for starting new groups, and providing a lunch for the pastors to fellowship together.
The interest in this model was great and several leaders have taken the concepts we teach and run with them. We are now taking additional steps to work with leaders in El Salvador and Guatemala to establish a strategy and philosophy of church planting for these countries. This is very exciting because it is developing naturally with indigenous leaders. Our role is to encourage and train these pastors without creating any dependency on outside financial support for the continued expansion of the work.
We will continue to communicate with the leaders in these countries and return in the summer to follow-up on how successful they have been at applying the principles we taught.
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION AMONG HISPANICS
HFC is involved at many levels with theological education for Hispanic pastors. At the highest level we are supporting two of our Field Coordinators as they pursue higher education. Tony Campos (Sacramento) is working on his M.Div. at Sioux Falls Seminary and Paco Damian (Mexico) is working on his M.C.L. at SETECA. This will equip them further to fulfill their calling to train pastors.
At another level, Geoff Hartt and Pastor Marcel Mitchell (Temple Baptist, AB.) will be visiting Eduardo Buldain at the pastor’s training center (CCP) that he operates in Buenos Aires in March. We will attend a Pastor’s Conference and explore how we might further support the work of CCP. We are also exploring how to duplicate the CCP in other Latin American countries.