wfn.org | Partnerships with Latin American Churches Continue to Expand

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

25-February-1998 
98066 
 
    Partnerships with Latin American 
    Churches Continue to Expand 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.-As the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) wraps up its Year with 
Latin Americans observance, the General Assembly Council (GAC) has 
authorized four consultations to develop two new mission partnerships in 
Central America and to review the church's longer standing ministries with 
Presbyterians in Cuba and in Mexico. 
 
    "We don't want things to stop at the end of the Year with Latin 
Americans," said Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD)'s Ecumenical 
Partnerships Committee chair Inez Allan of Bellevue, Wash., during the 
division committee's Feb. 13 meeting here.  "We want things to continue to 
go on." 
 
    Those "things" include scheduled study trips in 1998 to Argentina and 
Chile, Nov. 4-20, and Cuba, July 6-15 and Oct. 6-15, in addition to the 
1997 study tours that took 67 U.S. Presbyterians to Brazil, Argentina and 
Chile, Colombia and Bolivia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.  The 
PC(USA) coordinated 227 work groups in 1996 to Central America and the 
Caribbean, with nearly 83 of those groups working along the U.S./Mexico 
border, and led 28 travel/study groups to Latin America, with 24 of those 
groups studying Nicaragua. 
 
    Furthermore, the denomination's new Young Adult Volunteers program - 
which has doubled in size since its inception in 1994 - placed 
Presbyterians in short-term assignments on the U.S./Mexico border. 
 
    "I think that we were successful at putting Latin America on the table 
again after it was neglected since the late 1980s, though that was not a 
stated objective," said Year with Latin Americans coordinator Peter 
Kemmerle, who reports that about 90 percent of the educational materials 
produced for the year have been distributed. 
 
    "[But we acted on] reports from mission workers in Central America who 
reported that partners were saying, `Where did you all go?'" 
 
    So after a June 1997 WMD Committee decision to enter partnerships with 
the Presbyterian Church of Honduras and the Reformed Church in El Salvador, 
dates were set for consultations with those two Central American churches. 
"These are consultative conversations, the first steps toward dialogue and 
engagement in mission," said outgoing WMD chair Eugene McKelvey of Houston, 
Texas. 
 
    The El Salvador meeting, during which a cooperative mission statement 
will be developed, is set for May 20-25.  The PC(USA) has historically 
worked with the Lutheran Church in El Salvador.  The meeting in Hondruas is 
set for May 17-20. 
 
    No dates are currently set for the annual review of joint activities 
undertaken between the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico and the 
PC(USA) or for a larger scale review of ministries between the Presbyterian 
Reformed Church in Cuba and the PC(USA). 
 
    "We will be looking at what we've done in the past ... and at the 
written [partnership] agreement that we signed 12 years ago," said the 
PC(USA)'s Central America liaison, Julia Ann Moffett, about the Cuba 
dialogue.  "We'll look at the agreement, see what we want to continue and 
see what we ought to do to meet [the needs] of a changing situation. ... 
 
             "The church there has changed its structure.  And certainly 
the world has changed." 
 
    In other business related to ministries with Latin Americans, the WMD 
Committee approved guidelines for a relationship between the division and 
Presbyterian Reformed and Renewal Ministries, an independent organization 
in Black Mountain, N.C., for mission in mutually agreed upon South American 
countries, beginning with Brazil. 
 
    Finally, a partnership between Providence Presbytery and the Christian 
Commission for Development in Honduras, an agency in the Honduran capital 
of Tegucigalpa, was approved by the division. 
 
    When asked about how successful the Year with Latin Americans has been, 
Moffett told the Presbyterian News Service that the idea was initiated by 
Central Americans who wanted the PC(USA) to rethink its ministry there. 
"So we just broadened our scope, understanding that any initiative - 
whether it is on Africa or Latin America or education -  is a special time 
for the church to concentrate on those issues. 
 
    "Our hope and our prayer," she said, "is that it will not be dropped at 
the end." 

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