Detour!

All that you need to know about our Latino Church Plants is now on the web site

www.wemultiplychurches.org

All future news and information can be found there.

Thank you for your interest.

Backpack Ministry – How to help

This is a note from Jen K at Blackhawk Church -
“A few weeks before the start of the new school year, Access, a twenty-somethings ministry from Blackhawk Church in Madison, was made aware of the need for backpacks and school supplies in the local Hispanic community. They had been praying about how God might use them to meet local needs and were ready to to help however the could. After talking to Pastor Rayo, Access attenders received a list of supplies that were needed for Sun Prairie students. The group was able to collect a total of 40 backpacks full of school supplies for Pastor Rayo’s congregation and were excited to learn that Pastor Rayo would be using these backpacks as an outreach to the local community. “

This is a great example of how a small group can help one of our church plants – if you are interested, contact one of the pastors – click the “How Can I Help” link at the top of the page.

Hispanic Church Planting Vision

My desire to work as a team with those who have or are planting churches, using the available materials to guide me in order to reach my purpose

At this moment we need to continue working with the Theological Training Center.  In order to continue preparing leaders from the new existing churches in the Forest Lakes District.  Through this ministry new pastors will arise.  Church members will also be rained in order to improve their work ethic as they continue to serve God in their churches.  Yet,if through this training someone shows outstanding improvement and knowledge, he or she will be encouraged to prepare at a higher level.  We can count of the Baptist University of the Americas, who are now giving our students credit for their courses.

In many cases, at the start of a new church plant a pastor might need to work at a secular job on top of working at the church.  However, this could only apply in some cases.  We hope that eventually each church would be able to support their own pastor.

For the pastors, the Gateway Theological Institute has offered to give them credentials through their program.

August 30, 2007

Pastor Adrian Rayo

Church Planting Movement

 What is the Hispanic/Latino Church Planting Movement?

David Garrison defines Church Planting Movements:  Church Planting Movements are rapidly multiplying indigenous churches planting churches that sweep across a people group or population segment. ( David Garrison, Church Planting Movements, WIGtake, 2004) What are the key points of our Latino CPM? Vision: what motives us is not mere numbers, but a reflection of God’s compassionate love for all people and for every group of people.  The vision is to do what it takes to reach a whole group of people through churches that plant churches. 

Prayer: we can understand and organize how to raise funds for buildings, staff, programs and organization.  Some of that could happen even without the Lord’s blessing.  However, we can not conceive of how to establish a CPM.  We know what they look like but they are not created by us.  Therefore we pray.  Indigenous:  What we mean are churches that grow out of and are suited to their context. Suppose you think Willow Creek is the perfect church.  It is marvelously successful.  However, Willow Creek could not be sustained by the resources, nor even be desired by the peoples we may want to reach.  We do not plop models on people, but we seek to let the people group determine the model of church.  We can’t squeeze one people group into another’s model. Reproducible: If the local community can not produce leaders, become pastors, sustain the operation of the churches; those churches are alien structures that will not be reproducible. Every out of context feature is a roadblock.   For example, we can normally expect churches in our contest to have fully paid pastors with seminary training,  church buildings, and plenty of parking.  Those expectations do not fit in places like rural China, or inner city
Milwaukee. People Group:
Wisconsin is experiencing an increase in people for whom Spanish is the first language.  Our Census bureau uses the term Hispanic, but we are talking about a diverse linguistic unit.  The current growth is primarily in Mexican and Southwestern US migration.  This is our audience.

Pastors and Planters: A key factor in church planting movements is finding, training, supporting and encouraging church leaders from these churches.  Certainly someone has to come from outside to get it started, but it has to pick up workers from inside to sustain the growth.  The form of theological and ministry training will be different, but it needs to be of high quality.  It may be we are working with men who have secular employment, but we need to honor them as pastors just the same.   

Where are we in the FLD? We have two reproducing congregations.  La Cosecha (Harvest) in
Norwalk and Nueva Vida (New Life) in Sun Prairie. La Cosecha sent their pastor to begin Nueva Vida.  They have had a Bible study among migrant workers in Merrilan.  Nueva Vida is working towards a church plant in Waterloo. We have two full time Latino Pastors.  Adrian Rayo (Nueva Vida) who lives in Sun Prairie. 
Rubens Silva  has recently moved to the FLD to be a church planter near Plover/Stevens Point. There are two Hispanic Church Planting Steering Committees, one in the Madison area, and one in central Wisconsin. 

We have  a Training Center restarting in Madison.   We have identified several lay leaders who are already involved in church ministry, who are interested in ministry training.    A new Training Center Plan is being developed, utilizing the distance education program of
The University of the Americas.Vision? A number of churches have become aware of Spanish speaking neighbors and are wondering if they might somehow host a church plant in their community. How can Your Church Help?  Pray – we would love to include you in regular prayer updates.  ->Contact us or follow information at this Blog. Invite – invite Adrian, Raul or Rubens to visit your congregation for a bit of vision casting.

Adrian Rayo - arayo111@yahoo.com       
Rubens Silva – rubenscampos@yahoo.com 

Look – are you in one of those communities ripe for a Latino church plant?  Be Visionary – you do not have to be a large church to be a partner.   

Honor – show the same regard to our brothers in ministry as you would fellow Anglo Pastors or missionaries. Support – There are many options for support.  Each of the pastors could use additional support.  We would welcome gifts toward the tuition, supplies, books and materials needed for the Youth – Perhaps your youth ministry can help with an in-state mission trip.  

Why Plant Churches?

1.       Christ is for all Nations (Mt 28:18-20)

2.       The Lord brought Latinos here (Acts 17:26,27)

3.       There is a great increase in the Latino Population in our State.

4.       There is openness now to the Gospel that may not last.

5.       There is a lack of depth in teaching in many existing ministries.(Mt 28:20)

6.       Training of leaders is not now available (Eph 4:12-14)

7.       Existing Latino/Hispanic churches are not enough

8.       A Church Planting Movement is possible.

9.       Supporting Churches exist to help with funding and volunteers.

10.   A team of Latino workers is forming in our district. (Mt 9:37-) 

What is His Plant?

This blog is to help English Speaking friends and supporters of Hispanic or Latino church planting in the ares surrounding Dane County.  We want to post newsletters, prayer requests, opportunities for involvement and profiles of some of our workers here. 

The church planting movement we envision does not belong to us, it belongs to HIM.  That is why we use the name HIS Plant.