Healthy Churches in Latin America are Vital to the Great Commission

Healthy churches around the world are the nations’ best chance for hearing the gospel. If the billions of people who have never heard the gospel are to receive it, it will be because the global church––strengthened and matured by the very gospel it proclaims––continues to send workers into the global harvest.

But the task is enormous. The harvest is simply too vast. In the New Testament, Paul’s missionary coworkers came from the local churches that had been planted around the Roman world. The same is true today. Ongoing investment to bring churches to a place of health in regions like Latin America exponentially increases the global church’s capacity to send more laborers to nations.

Not as Reached as You Might Think

But isn’t Latin America already reached? Why should the North American church invest in a region where many churches exist?

Many have commented on the devastating “global theological famine” that plagues the majority world. This is “not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). It’s a widespread lack of access to sound biblical teaching, theological resources, and trained church leaders. This scarcity has impacted the Latin American church.

This means that although Latin America is often labeled reached and painted green on unreached people group maps, much of it is Christian in name only. In many areas—overrun by Roman Catholicism, the prosperity gospel, radical Pentecostalism, and syncretism—many so-called churches don’t possess the true gospel. They have received false gospels (Galatians 1:6–7). They are, in reality, misreached.

To clarify, there are areas of Latin America where there is a true gospel presence and true churches do exist. However, the lack of church health in much of Latin America makes it difficult to make mature disciples and plant new healthy churches, much less send workers into the global harvest. These areas are underreached.

Green Dot Churches

One of the most devastating deficiencies in the Latin American church is the lack of trained leadership. When churches don’t have qualified leaders, they can’t produce new leadership. Because they’re unable to raise up their own leadership, they must look outside the church for new leaders. The lack of “pastors and teachers” who “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12) leads to a vicious cycle of leadership shortages: the lack of trained pastors leads to theological famine, and the theological famine results in a lack of trained leaders.  

This is where the Western church can most effectively serve the church in Latin America by strengthening churches through leadership training. The goal here is for churches to be capable of raising up leaders for themselves and for the nations. These are churches that are net exporters of gospel workers—what some have called green dot churches—rather than net importers of workers.

This is Paul’s vision in 2 Timothy 2:2: church leaders are called to entrust to faithful men what they’ve received so that those men can, in turn, train others. This biblical process cancels the vicious cycle caused by theological famine.

The Global Harvest

The Apostle Paul provides a good example of what ongoing investment in the global church might look like. A survey of his missionary travels shows his ministry moving between planting new churches and strengthening existing ones. His care for already established churches—both ones he planted and ones he didn’t plant—shows how important church strengthening is to the mission. This means that investing in churches that lack health is not outside the scope of the missionary task.

Healthy local churches promote the health of surrounding churches. Networks of healthy local churches inevitably begin to develop their leaders and send out qualified, well-trained gospel workers. And as we see more healthy churches in Latin America raise equipped leaders, we will see an increase in the global church’s sending capacity.

After twenty years of working in Latin America, I’ve been enormously encouraged to see the ongoing investment of missionaries there grow the church’s ability to send laborers into the global harvest. In some cases, I’ve seen native Latin Americans sent by American churches go back to Latin America to church plant or revitalize, resulting in the formation of new sending churches. In other cases, expat missionaries have partnered with existing struggling churches to help bring them to a place of ecclesial vitality. Sometimes, missionaries with specialized training or knowledge can help healthier churches leverage their existing health to train up new leaders and send them out in ways previously not possible.  

What all of these examples have in common is that gospel partnerships and investment in the Latin American church is one of the best ways to increase the global church’s missionary sending capability. Latin America needs both planters and waterers—those who can break new gospel ground where the true gospel hasn’t arrived and those who can cultivate fruit where gospel health is lacking. A strengthened and equipped Latin American church can become a mighty force for the spread of the gospel among the nations.