Christians From Nicaragua And Panama Continue A U.S. Church-Planting Legacy
A delivery driver makes his way down a street in historic downtown Asunción, Paraguay. (Photo by Erik Tryggestad)
MARIANO ROQUE ALONSO, Paraguay — Winning souls for Christ in Nicaragua was tough, César Gadea said.
“But it’s tougher here,” he added.
The 45-year-old minister from Managua spoke to The Christian Chronicle in the one-room church building where he and his wife, Sonia, have served for a year in the South American nation of Paraguay. Enoch Rinks, a former missionary to Paraguay, translated his words from Spanish.
A little more than two decades ago, Rinks and his teammates moved here from Tennessee to plant a church in the capital, Asunción.
Now, the church they planted is planting new churches in the city’s suburbs, including Mariano Roque Alonso. The town, named for a former president and known locally as MRA, is an industrial commercial hub with a growing population.
Most of that population claims Catholicism as its faith, as do 88 percent of Paraguay’s 6.8 million souls. Some surveys refer to the South American nation as one of the most religious in the world. In a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 82 percent of adult Paraguayan respondents said they pray daily.
But in a country where faith is almost an assumption, church membership and attendance doesn’t seem to be a priority — at least compared to his homeland, Gadea said. Political oppression, or lack thereof, may play a role. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista regime and the Contra War of the 1980s was a golden era for Churches of Christ, which experienced rapid growth as distressed souls turned to Jesus. Paraguay, like many of its South American neighbors, has endured political and economic turmoil in recent decades, but not on the scale of some Central American republics.
Gadea served the Rene Polanco Church of Christ in Managua and worked briefly with medical mission Health Talents International before he enrolled in Baxter Institute, a ministry training school in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. After graduating in 2010, he returned to Nicaragua and studied psychology. He joined a mission team in Mexico City in 2016.
Gadea served in Mexico’s monstrous capital with support from Great Cities Missions. Chris Fry, the ministry’s director of Latin teams, had served on the U.S. mission team with Rinks that planted the Iglesia de Cristo Sacramento in Asunción.
Fry recommended Gadea for the Sacramento church’s new effort in MRA. The Nicaraguan minister and his family moved south with support from the Austin Avenue Church of Christ in Brownwood, Texas. The Gadeas served for a year with the Sacramento church and got to know its members as they settled into life in South America.
The Gadeas and their children, ages 8 and 3, spent the past year meeting neighbors — at school, at the gym, in a mother’s group that Sonia attends. They’ve invited families to events at the MRA church building, even using their cultural differences as a strength. A Nicaraguan-style piñata party drew more than 60 kids and their parents, César Gadea said.
The friendships are glimpses of hope in a tough mission field, the minister said. He knows there are spiritual seekers here.
To find them, “it’s a process.”
Church planters Racquel and Eliezar Pérez enjoy dinner with their daughter. (Photo by Erik Tryggestad)
The Gospel in Guaraní
While nearly 90 percent of Paraguay’s population identifies as Catholic, an even larger percentage speaks the country’s indigenous tongue, Guaraní, in addition to Spanish. Both are national languages of Paraguay, though Guaraní didn’t become a language of instruction in schools here until 1996.
The language is experiencing a renaissance as a part of Paraguayan cultural identity. Speaking and understanding it is vital to win souls to Jesus, said Eliezer Pérez, who works with another congregation planted by the Sacramento church.
Pérez and his wife, Raquel, spoke with the Chronicle at a restaurant in a shopping mall sandwiched between the iconic blue, wavy towers of Paseo Galleria in Asunción.
The menu included tereré — a drink of brewed herbs similar to the hot beverage called mate that’s consumed across South America, but served cold. Most Paraguayans prepare tereré, which comes from a Guaraní word, at home and carry it in leather-bound jugs almost everywhere they go, sipping it throughout the day using metal, spoon-like straws.
Pérez, a native of Panama, studied ministry at Theological Institute of Latin America in Guatemala City, where he first encountered visitors from Paraguay. He traveled to Asunción to study marketing and publicity.
He fell in love with the Sacramento church — and with Raquel, a native Paraguayan. A few years earlier she had found the Sacramento church through a newspaper ad and studied the Bible with the team of missionaries from the U.S.
“Something like scales fell from my eyes,” she said, and she asked to be baptized. Now she and her husband have a 5-year-old daughter.
Eliezer Pérez built a website for Churches of Christ in Paraguay and uploaded resources congregations can use for Bible study and evangelism. When he learned that the Sacramento church wanted to plant new churches, he volunteered.
The new congregation first met in Ñemby, a southern suburb of Asunción that takes its name from Guaraní.
Now the church, which has about 12 members, meets in another suburb, San Larenzo. The Sacramento church supported the congregation as it began. In 2021, the Margaret Street Church of Christ in Milton, Fla., took over support.
“Sacramento, they were by our side,” Pérez said. “The prayers of all the churches in Paraguay have been with us.”
For the church to grow, Christians must be able to speak in the people’s heart language, Pérez said. He’s learning Guaraní and is looking to train other evangelists who are fluent in the language. Although most Paraguayans in Asunción know some Guaraní, many church members in the capital are not able to preach in it.
“Language is the most valuable thing a person has,” Pérez said. “So that’s the strategy.”
This article was first published in The Christian Chronicle.
Erik Tryggestad is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org. Follow him on X @eriktryggestad.