Slowly the tide began to turn, and there was a push for religious freedom, many times coming from Protestant European immigrants. Today the majority of Latin American countries enjoy religious freedom without any restrictions. These freedoms have been accompanied by phenomenal church and denominational growth over the last 119 years. One Catholic article I read says, “Latin American Protestants shot up from 50,000 in 1900 to 64 million in 2000.” At the turn of the century, Protestants made up only 1% of the population of Latin America, and today 15% claim to be Protestants.

With the growth in churches, seminaries, fellowships, and associations in Latin America in the last 100 years, there has also grown an interest in missions. Now many Latin American countries have the infrastructure to raise and train their own workers, to fund them, and to send them, and I believe that we are standing on the precipice of a great missions movement out of Latin America.

Rising standards of living are contributing to the missions movement in Latin America. Many of the Latin American countries are what are considered “merging markets.” The last thirty years have been relatively calm in South America, allowing countries like Chile and Peru to establish their economies and grow. Peru today is very different than the Peru of thirty years ago, and with higher economic growth comes more opportunities. The churches have more money, and they are no longer as reliant on outside funding from the United States as they were in the past. They not only have the spiritual resources for missions, they have the financial resources as well.

Another thing to consider in Latin America missions is that they have access to countries that we as North Americans don’t. A missionary from Colombia could more easily go as a church planter to Cuba, or even to Russia than an American can. They also do not carry the stigma that an American missionary might have in some foreign countries, thereby opening more doors for them in ministry.

Examples of Latin Missions:

In 2018 I had the opportunity to met Pastor Jorge Espinoza from Lima, Peru. He came to the seminary in Arequipa to conduct a conference on missions. Pastor Espinoza’s church is also the home to MPM, which is a mission board in Lima, Peru. The mission board was established in 2007, with the goal of helping Peruvian churches and nationals fulfill the great commission. That week I heard Pastor Espinoza encourage his countrymen to rise to the challenge of world missions. He listed many of the missions organizations in America and then told the Peruvians that “If the Americans can do it we can too.” They currently have

missionaries serving on five continents. They have a breakdown of what a Peruvian would need to begin a ministry within the country or to be an international missionary. I was inspired by the depth of their missions philosophy and was greatly encouraged to see and hear about how God is working through their ministry.

While in Peru, I had the opportunity to meet many missionaries from there. My good friend César Moreno was a missionary to Morocco for some time, working with an American missionary. César worked there until he was kicked out of the country, then he returned to his church in Chiclayo, Peru. He and his wife now work in their home church and have started a ministry in one of the towns outside of the city.

Silvia was my wife’s Spanish teacher when we were in Peru. She served in Morocco for over five years, helping a missionary family there.

The magazine Christianity Today places Brazil and Mexico in the top ten countries that send out missionaries. I know that when I was growing up, there seemed to be many missionaries to Mexico. What has happened? Those ministries have grown, and now Mexico is sending out her own missionaries throughout Latin America. There is still a great need in Mexico for sure, but they are being obedient to the command to take the Gospel to the world. As the ministries continue to grow in their own countries, so do their world missions programs. Personally, I have met missionaries from Mexico in Peru, Chile, and here where we are in Argentina.

In 2013 when Emily and I visited Argentina for the first time, we meet a young man named Jairo. He played the guitar in his church, preached, and was attending the Bible college in La Plata. Fast forward three years later to when Emily and I were in Peru learning Spanish, and we ran into Jairo again. He had come to Peru to further his studies and to gain more experience in the ministry. This year he left Argentina to serve as a missionary in the African country of Burkina Faso.

So if you are considering going into missions, I would like to encourage you to come here to Latin America and become a part of the Latin American missions movement. There are still churches that need to be planted in the cities, and towns of Latin America. By planting more churches and evangelizing more here in Latin America, we can raise up even more laborers to send from here to enter the harvest fields in other places throughout the world.