‘Sleeping giant’: Evangelical missionary movement in Latin America continues to grow

Jan 25, 2024 by Dave Doveton

From: Christian Post.

When Carlos and Ana married, they had a dream: to serve God as missionaries somewhere in the world. Both had grown up in Evangelical churches in Colombia and had felt God’s call to share the Gospel with other cultures. However, they didn’t know how to make it happen.

“We had no resources, no support, no experience,” recalls Carlos. “We thought missions were only for foreigners coming to our country.”

But one day, Carlos and Ana heard about a Latin American mission agency that offered them training, orientation and sending them to different fields. They enrolled in a missionary preparation course, and after a year of study and practice, they were assigned to a project in Central Asia, among a Muslim ethnic group that had never heard the name of Jesus.

There, along with other Latin American missionaries, they have been serving for more than five years, learning the language, adapting to the culture and sharing the love of Christ with their neighbors.

“God has been faithful, and we have seen fruit amid difficulties,” says Ana. “We are happy to be part of what God is doing in the nations.”

The story of Carlos and Ana is just one example of the growing Evangelical missionary movement that has been taking shape in Latin America for several years now.

According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, until recently there were more than 10,000 Latin American Evangelical missionaries serving in more than 100 countries, especially in places where access to the Gospel is not easy, such as the Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu worlds. This figure represents an increase of more than 300% since 2000, and places Latin America as the third region in the world with the most Evangelical missionaries, after North America and Europe.

In 2007, a report by Lausanne World Pulse stated that almost 25 years before, Latin America formally joined the world missionary force. It shows how this has been a trend that started earlier and is continuing today.

Read here.