Living the Great Commission in Latin America
by Dr. Ricardo Gómez, (2003, MA; 2007 PhD)
I learned the following Chinese proverb in one of my anthropology classes at Asbury. It says, “Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. And with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say, “We have done this ourselves.” Isn’t that a great way to live out The Great Commission found in Matthew 28:16-20? As my wife, Beth, and I began full-time missionary service in Latin America, the Chinese proverb became our mantra for ministry. It was the “how to” of the Great Commission.
When we moved to Santiago, Chile at the end of 2007, my role was to Coordinate the Theological Education and Pastoral Training for the Free Methodist Church throughout Latin America. It was a big job and enabled me to do what I loved and what my seminary education had trained me to do: teach and train Christian leaders. I liked the fact that I was not holed away in a seminary, instead I got to be out in the field, serving people who were currently serving churches and communities. In our first year on the mission field, I traveled and taught in 11 different countries, not including our home country of Chile.
The next year, I had the privilege of traveling, among other countries, to Cuba. Despite growing up in a poor Colombian family and traveling to so many other Latin countries, I have never before or since seen such widespread economic poverty. I have never before or since seen a church so fully dependent on Christ to supply every need, so full of love, compassion, generosity and active faith. The church in Cuba is positively impacting its society. Those whom I served had such a deep hunger and thirst for solid Biblical teaching! One pastor told me that although everyone who could was leaving the country, he had been called to serve those who stay. Therefore, he needed every bit of theological training he could get.
Of course, as I traveled from place to place, I was not really able to embody that Chinese proverb in my ministry. In order to maximize my time in a country and minimize my time away from the family, I generally spent no more than three or four days in any location and I was teaching for nearly every waking hour of that time. I really did not have much of an opportunity to live with, learn from or love the people.
While I was still enjoying the regional, bigger-than-life challenge in front of me, the local ministry in Santiago began to take shape. About one year after arriving in Chile, the conference superintendent, asked if we would consider planting a church. In fact, he was asking us to re-plant a church which had failed on previous attempts. He offered no budget, no team of people, and none of the things most church plants have. He only offered us Casa Grande (translation: Big House).
Casa Grande, as he called it was, was known as “El Castillo” (translation: The Castle) by everyone else. Originally a grand home, years of disrepair transformed it into the neighborhood’s eyesore.
We did not consider ourselves church planters and suddenly we had been given the task to plant and grow a protestant, urban church in a middle class, Catholic neighborhood that is nestled in a bustling, impersonal city of seven million people! How were we to convert a falling down castle into a welcoming church building? How could we convince a bunch of middle class, once-a-year-Cathedral-goers that what they really needed was a relationship with Christ?
Now it was time to start living out the Chinese proverb, not to mention applying some of the other theories received and developed throughout my years on the Wilmore campus. (We soon learned which theories worked, and which ones were simply theories.)
We started spending time in the neighborhood, shopping in their tienditas (translation: shops), eating in their restaurants, and playing at their park. Little-by-little we got to know a few people. We began to learn the language that they spoke, and so we used their words for better understanding. For example, we did not serve “Holy Communion,” we served “The Eucharist.” We did not hold “Advent Services,” instead we invited neighbors to the “Novenas Navideñas” (translation: Nine nights of Christmas Mass). We then used these opportunities to assign meaning to their traditions, to point them toward true relationships with Christ.
We, also, worked hard to transform their “Castillo” into the meeting place of a true Christian Community. We called it Comunidad Cristiana Casa Grande (Christian Community of the Big House). As we worked hard to transform the yard and building back into the beautiful property it once had been, we got to experience God’s transformative work in the lives of people all around us; people who had become our friends, our neighbors and our church family!
When we left Santiago in December 2012 for a new assignment, we left behind a vibrant, growing church with a strong leadership team. We left behind a Christian Community that walks daily with 
Jesus and is about the business of transforming their neighborhood for Christ. At the end of the day they can say, “We have done this ourselves, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, of course.”
Bio: Ricardo Gomez graduated in 2007 with a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies. He, also, belongs to the class of 2003 with an MA in Theology. Ricardo and his wife, Beth, are full-time missionaries in Latin America. Following 5 years of service in Santiago, Chile, they are preparing to move to Medellin, Colombia to join the faculty of the Biblical Seminary of Colombia. They have two children, Juliana (9) and Jonathan (7).
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