The church in Loja

When I went to arrange for our Internet connection yesterday, a Lady at the Internet company asked what the foundation "Operation Hope" does exactly. I was surprised that an organization that has been in Loja for 10 years would be so unknown because Loja is a farely small town of only about 100,000-150,000 people, but then all evangelical Christians make up about only 1% of the population. I tried to articulate that we were doing medical ministry both here and out in the province, that we were teaching English, and that we were Evangelical Christians.

The current situation of the evangelical church in Ecuador isn't that different from the state of the church in the US except that they are facing their challenges as a 1% minority that is often persecuted. Biblical illiteracy is just as high here in Ecuador as in the US. Few evangelical pulpits are teaching from the Bible at all, preferring to minister only to felt needs rather than starting there and moving on to real spiritual needs. Even those who do teach from the Bible tend to use it morally preaching against the evils of dancing, smoking, and drinking instead of focusing on Christ and giving him the supremacy that the scriptures naturally give him and asking people to live righteously as a response to his sacrifice for us. We have been told that if you ask the average Ecuadorian what an evangelical is, they will tell you that they are moralists. Not that they are known for following their rules, just having a lot of rules.

The solution for the Ecuadorian evangelical church seems to be the same as for any church anywhere: They need to focus on Christ, treat the Bible as authoritative, and trust God to save them rather than relying on adherence to their own set of rules.

The Catholic church here in Loja (and out in the country side especially) has only stopped preaching within the last 5 years that evangelical Christians should be persecuted. The priest who encouraged the boycott of evangelical's businesses in Gonzonama as well as encouraging more extreme types of persecution is now the priest of the church in the plaza across from the SIM outreach café. I want to meet him and see what he thinks the points of disagreement are between Catholics and evangelicals. I would like to do a lot of asking this question of people in general. It seems that evangelicals and Catholics (as well as the average Ecuadorian youth who doesn't go to church at all) don't really know what the Christian faith is about at all. More on this later...

-Micah