Evangelical Missionary Movement in Latin America is Growing Substantially, “A Sleeping Giant”

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The Evangelical missionary movement in Latin America has grown so remarkably in recent years that it has been likened to a “sleeping giant” arising to plant needed Gospel-based churches in the region, Christian Daily International (CDI) reports.

There has been a reported 300% increase in the number of Latin American Evangelical missionaries since 2000, CDI reports. More than 10,000 Latin American missionaries are working in 100 countries, including nations with rigid Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu societies. Latin America now ranks third in the world for the most Evangelical missionaries, after the US and Europe.

In a website statement, Daniel Mee, Colombia field team leader with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) said: “The Latin American church is like the sleeping giant that is awakening to plant gospel-centered churches all over Latin America, to reach the pockets of unreached within their own borders, and to send missionaries to the hardest places of the world.”

In a separate statement, Scott Russell, ABWE Executive Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said that church leaders in the US tend to think Latin America has already been “reached” with the Gospel and there is no need to focus on the region for missions and church planting.

Russell said this is not the case: “We have 200 million people in Spanish-speaking South America, 200 million people in Brazil, and 200 million people in Central America and the Caribbean. We have not saturated the continent.”

“We need to send laborers not only into the harvest fields of Latin America and the Caribbean but into the world’s harvest fields, and Latin Americans can be part of that,” Russell said.

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