When I left for Peru, I was expecting some things about the ministry there, which excited me. When we met them and heard their vision from straight from the pastors, my impression went from amazed, to skeptical, to challenged, to hopeful.
The church is a Christian Missionary Alliance church in Callao, a low to middle class suburb of Lima. About half of their members are middle class, a quarter are lower class, and another quarter are very poor. Alongside the church, their pastor, who had grown up on the streets, also started a ministry to street children called Corazones Felizes, or "Happy Hearts", which helps them with education, food, medicine, and mentoring.
The first day, our team attended a church service, which was full of energy with music and dancing, passionate preaching, and a warm welcome and prayer for us in front of the church (they also asked how many of us were single. That was a little strange to me...). That afternoon, the pastoral team presented the church's vision and strategy. Their vision is to reach and restore whole families from the surrounding area, many of which are broken from addiction, adultery, poverty, and more. Their strategy has been to target seven zones around them for church plants, followed by seven cities in Peru, and eventually, send missionaries to seven countries. Each zone begins with in-home Bible studies, led by the main church's home-grown leaders, and their growth culminates in a church plant. Currently, they have churches in four of the seven surrounding neighborhoods, apart from their central church, with varying numbers in each, from around 120 in the most recent plant, to over a thousand at their central church. One thing that struck me was their commitment to raise up leaders from their own congregation. Marcos, the 23 year old son of the family I stayed with, is finishing his journalism degree, but also works with the youth and would like to be a pastor eventually; there were others like him.
The church had many hopes for their new building, which would go from their current building with tiny second floor up to a five story headquarters. A major challenge to expansion is the small piece of land they own. They hoped for a larger capacity in their sanctuary, classrooms for children's ministries/bible studies/pastoral training, a dining area, offices for the pastors of each area, room for the Corazones Felizes ministry, and a studio for the radio broadcasts they've begun broadcasting. The scale of their dreams far exceeded what I had envisioned, and challenged what I had thought both they and God were capable of. In fact, God has already provided a connection with a large church in Wisconsin that has promised to help fund their expansion. Still, a large need remains, but I’m confident God will cover it.
Our team was an amazing group of people, and we worked together quite well. The lead structural volunteer, Sutton Stephens, a professor at Kansas State, is very experienced. Thankfully, I was able to be helpful to him most of the time, and did some translating between the team and the church members as well.
Friday, we presented the church with preliminary plans that have extended their sanctuary, added a balcony, the classrooms they wanted, a multipurpose room with a kitchen capable of serving over a hundred people (which they do regularly now with a tiny kitchen), pastoral offices, a recording studio, and finished it off with a small soccer field on the roof enclosed in netting (which a couple of other churches we saw around Lima have). When we presented the plans to the ministry, they were very excited how we had accommodated everything they asked for, refined some ideas to function better, and considered needs and requirements they hadn't thought of. The engineers that attended their church were very busy with their jobs, but were able to provide some very helpful guidance to understanding construction in Peru and to the church’s needs, and were very knowledgeable. We will continue to refine the design and create the plans over the next few months. When we are finished, local engineers will make any minor changes to go through the Peruvian approval process, but the plans as we deliver them will be detailed enough to build from.
I really enjoyed the time we spent with the church members, and they treated us with incredible warmth and hospitality. We stayed with host families that sacrificed their rooms for us to stay in, cooked for us at the church while we worked, and hugged us so tight we could hardly breathe. Every meal they fed us was piled high with delicious Peruvian food, which is second only to Argentine food in South America (in my "humble" opinion). We got to know them, heard some of their testimonies, and left feeling so encouraged by their passion, service, and love. I myself would love to return in a few years and see where God has taken them. I’m sure I’d be amazed.
