Church Planting Update:

Meet Our New Pastors...

Pastor Santos began to pastor the church in Tular in February.  He has married someone who has 4 children still at home to raise.  We have registered two of these children in our Embrace program to be a blessing and assistance to them.  Santos is from the village of Tular and so is known and it was an easy transition and he also has a small piece of land where he can grow some corn.  The group in the church is growing again, as they have their full time pastor there to oversee them and help them in their spiritual growth.

Pastor Santos

Pastor Juan is a new arrival that just came in March.  He was working with another organization over the past 10 years in raising up new areas but wanted to settle into pastoring one single place and to do less travel so that he can be home with his wife and three children.  He was recommended to us and it seemed like a good fit to put him in Ocumbla to oversee the church there.  He comes with a lot of experience and seems to really have a heart for the work and has already seen some growth and new converts to the church.  We also signed up two of his children in the Embrace program to be a blessing to them; especially as the church is not that large in number right now and it is hard for the local congregation to provide all the assistance that a pastor’s family needs.

Pastor Juan

This makes all of our 8 churches that Servant Ministries currently directly oversees have their own full time pastors for which we are very grateful.  Over the last 2-3 years there have been one or two of the churches without pastors at times and others jumped in to help assist but it isn’t the same as having your own full time worker.

Surrounding the towns of Camotan and Jocotan, there are around 150 different mountain villages.  Only a handful of these villages have an evangelical church.  Due to distance and rough roads some of these villages are very hard to travel to and during the rainy season are sometimes impossible to  reach.  Many people never travel out of their own village and that means there is a need to take Jesus to them.

The vision of Servant Ministries is to have an evangelical witness in every village.  That's a BIG vision!!!  But we serve a BIG God!!! 

The first step in building a church is to first establish a Christian witness in that particular village.  This is done through door-to-door evangelism.  When there is an interest shown, a place is found to start a small meeting.  After the people have had a time to grow in the Word and in their Christian walk, then a formal church building is planned. 

Servant Ministries has to first raise the funds to build and then find the laborers to do the construction. Often times it becomes a cooperative effort between mission teams and nationals to complete the construction.  Praise the Lord for His faithfulness to provide all that is needed to bring His presence into these remote villages!

Church in Tular