World Evangelism Podcast

The Christian Missionary Alliance : Mission in Lima: A Beacon of Hope Amidst Adversity

June 12, 2024 • W. Austin Gardner • Season 1 • Episode 23

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What if you could spark a spiritual revolution amidst political and economic upheaval? Join us as we unpack the incredible story of the Christian Missionary Alliance's transformative work in Lima, Peru during the 1970s. Drawing from the insightful Spanish book "Mission in the City," which has been translated for our listeners, we reveal how prayer, faith, and a strategic use of media like radio played pivotal roles in penetrating households and reaching diverse communities. Discover the key principles that fueled an evangelistic and church growth movement that not only transformed lives but also captured global attention.

In another poignant chapter, we delve into the essential elements needed for revitalizing and growing church communities today. We stress the power of unity, financial support, and teamwork while offering practical steps like training lay leaders and utilizing media for outreach. Additionally, we share a deeply personal story of coping with a third cancer diagnosis, highlighting the role of faith and purpose in adversity. Tune in for a compelling narrative that challenges us to dream big, work collectively, and spread hope even in the face of life's most daunting challenges.

Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

W. Austin Gardner:

Well, this is Austin Gardner, welcoming you to the World Evangelism Podcast, and I am going to do something a little bit unusual today. I have been, you know, doing I was doing some things about prayer, and then we, you know I've been doing about a book and about a country and a missionary, and I'm still going to do that, but I didn't feel like I had enough time to dedicate to things like I would have liked to, and so today I'm going to just do one deep dive into something I think that will revolutionize your life, excite you and motivate you At least it did that for me and this is a story of the work of the Christian Mystery Alliance in the city of Lima, peru, and they have massive influence in Lima. They have built extremely large churches. God has used them greatly. Rg Letourneau was like a donor to them. A special donor gave millions of dollars. He was the mover of men and mountains and long before, I think, most anyone else was talking about it, anyway, he was living on 10% and giving away 90%. By the grace of God, today there are lots of different people that have taken up that same focus.

W. Austin Gardner:

Now, what I'll share with you today comes out of a book that's in Spanish and I have translated things to give you today to go through different points. The name of the book translated is Mission in the City Focus on Movement, focusing on the movement of God. In other words, it was Lima, encountering with God. It's a 70-page long PDF and I've enjoyed it very much, and there are great truths to be learned in this book, and so I want to challenge you as we kind of go through some of the things, because this will. They even worked at using transferable principles. A couple of missionaries got extremely burdened to reach the city and they were doing this way back in the 1970s. It was a time of turmoil in the country. It was a time when there was a military government. They even used that to help them get things going. Time when there was a military government, they even used that to help them get things going, and it was all God moving and doing different things together, and so there are principles that can be taken out of this that can apply to wherever you're working in the world, and these men had a heart to do something great for God.

W. Austin Gardner:

So Lima's encounter with God was an intensive evangelistic movement and church growth movement in the city of Lima, peru, led by the missionaries of the Christian Missionary Alliance. Now that's a great group when you consider they were formed. It was one of the most exciting things that were formed because it was an alliance of business people who would come in and financially back the ministry and lay people who would get behind the ministry and God called people that would do the ministry. So I think from the very beginning of it it was an extremely great idea and movement. In 16 years they literally saw the city of Lima transformed. It got so much attention that people all over the world were asking what is happening in Lima? How is this happening? I heard about it the first time in Arequipa and some of the things I heard I'm not even sure were true, but it was told me that they were running evangelistic campaigns one week and then discipleship next week, and then evangelistic campaign the next week, for two solid years with only one night a week off. They were working hard and God used them to reach professional and business people. These people were in a time of political and economic change. It had shaken up their world and they were ready to listen. So the Christian Mystery Alliance was seeing many people in the middle and upper middle classes seek spiritual answers and get saved and lives be changed. The social upheaval and I believe in my ministry that had much to do with it. When a country's in trouble and there's a lot of bad things going on, people from different social levels begin to begin interested in spiritual things and they want to know what can happen, who can help them, what's the answer for their lives.

W. Austin Gardner:

Now, the Christian Missionary Alliance was very smart. They took advantage of communications, so they went on the Radio of the Pacific, because they finally had permission to do that, because a sort of religious freedom had come into Peru and they were able to reach a wider audience and penetrate into the households. Now here's something I'd like to say to you about using the media radio, television, even social media and the internet and that is that when people are sometimes ashamed to leave their homes and be seen going to an evangelical church that would preach the gospel, they're a little bit afraid to do that, but they are interested and they would if we could get over the wall of their house and into their home in privacy where they could study it on their own. There are people who would never be publicly associated with you that might listen. So they use the radio to get that message out. I know that in Adikipa my son, chris, had started a television station and I used that television station to preach as much as anybody and I found people knew me all over the city that would never have come to our church.

W. Austin Gardner:

So as they began working and reaching out, they began to reach people from all different levels socially, all different kind of social and economic backgrounds were coming and getting the gospel. Because, you see, people were openly seeking spiritual guidance, because it was a time of upheaval, a time of uncertainty. The government was in trouble. The United States is kind of getting to that point. There are things going so wrong. It's probably a good thing that would get people excited. But now the Christian Mystery Alliance had in mind that they would work together and so they would tell you that what contributed?

W. Austin Gardner:

This is right out of their book, the book that was written, as I told you, mission in the City, by Miguel Angel Palomino. Miguel Angel Palomino, miguel Angel, michael Angel Palomino, and he wrote this book and he said it was that there was prayer and faith expecting God to move, there was church unity, there was teamwork and also the resources had been provided for them to do the ministry. Now, you know, I think we could work on that. I think some of you you know I think we could work on that. I think some of you you know we might ought to be a little better about praying and believing God and expecting him to work, and maybe we ought to quit fighting among ourselves so much.

W. Austin Gardner:

Sometimes some churches can be so nitpicking, fussing and fighting and we almost hate our brother in Christ, which is totally not who we are biblically and teamwork. We're so independent in fighting that we want the lead and we want all the honor, and then those that have the money could give we could see God do something, palomino says. Now let me explain something to you. They face great trials and satanic attacks. The media harassed them. Even other evangelical leaders were criticizing them for the work they were doing trying to reach the city of Lima. Now they started. By the way, can I tell you that even today their church is run, one in 2000. They have I mean they have massive buildings and in very visible positions and many people are attending their churches. But no matter how many trials came their way, these missionaries stood the test. They could be harassed and criticized and canceled, but they stood the test in trusting in God and they continued doing the evangelistic work that God had called them to do. Now they openly stated we're not going to use canned techniques or principles from church growth schools. We're not just reading books about how to grow churches. We are working hard and this is what they worked on.

W. Austin Gardner:

Prayer. There was a great deal of prayer effort put into their work. As they would try to reach into the city and start different churches. They organized into cell groups that would meet all over the city praying and studying the Bible and evangelizing in their area. They spent a long time training people how to win people to Jesus Christ. They spent a long time training people how to be counselors and to share the gospel at invitation times. They spent time training people how to do the music so the musicians would be ready and they would be able to get the job done there as they were working. And then they helped all the believers learn how to share their testimony about what God was doing in their lives. Now, that's something we could reproduce, isn't it? That's something that we could put into place wherever we are.

W. Austin Gardner:

So train people in your ministry. Be careful to be training soul winners and counselors and musicians and teaching people how to give their testimony. Be careful to maybe start cell groups where people are praying and evangelizing within reach of your church. Then they welcome people from all socioeconomic backgrounds. And Peru, like any other part of the world, is just eat up with racism and socialism and classism. But the gospel changes that and our churches ought to be reaching every nationality, every ethnicity that's in our community. They ought to be a part of our church.

W. Austin Gardner:

Now these men, as they made their plan, knew that one of the biggest needs was going to be biblical instruction. Not just tell them how to get saved, not just get them in church, but teach them basic Bible truths, teach them about personal evangelism, teach them the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, teach them the truth of the gospel that they would be able to share them. I really love one of the other things they did. They were really big on using the radio and homes. So get out into the homes, start cell groups and reach out. They had Bible classes on the radio so they could reach more people. We could do that. We could. I have a friend named Robert canfield who has a ministry called uh, taking the light and they are working at getting radio programming in different places around the world and the church that he's out of. They have a whole ministry to do that. We should be doing that. We should be doing that on web pages and social media. We should be working on that.

W. Austin Gardner:

They worked as a team. They realized that there's almost a turf war between pastors, like this is my area and this is my area, and don't you cross my border lines and those are my people, and don't you talk to my people and there's a competition and don't get messing with it. But they decided that wasn't working. They decided that they would change from that model to a cooperative approach, and so not only did they have in mind to do great things in the city of Lima, which is today a city of well over 10 million people, but they wanted to reach out into the other areas of the city of Lima, start a lot of churches. I'm pretty sure that within that 16 years, they started 26 churches all over Lima, and they started them with big money and big groups of people. We ought to consider that when they were starting churches, they looked for key locations that gave them visibility and accessibility to attract newcomers and expand their reach. Now they had RG, letourneau and other ways of getting money. They were also teaching their people to give and to participate because they believed in having a self-sustaining, self-supporting church, sustaining self-supporting church. Even the churches that had more money were taking out of their offering and raising money to help the other churches that had less money, so they could get on their feet, so both churches could help other churches. What are we going to do? That's not about building my ministry, but about building the kingdom and getting the gospel of Jesus Christ out to the world. It's really exciting.

W. Austin Gardner:

In 1974, this group of people working so intensely in Lima held 21 evangelistic campaigns outside of Lima and other parts of the country and had 661 decisions for Christ. Now they found a great problem in their churches, a problem, I think, that might exist in our churches. They found that their churches weren't ready to assimilate the newly converted. It's not hard for churches to form little cliques. You know there's a rich guy in the church, or key people in the church, or old families in the church, or groups of people, and so everybody kind of you know there's two or three little pods of people that are in a church and new people come in and they can't find a way to fit in, and the older church members don't want anybody else working in their ministry and it becomes a problem. And so they realized that they had to stop what they were doing and train their people on how to assimilate new converts, how to get new converts into the church and keep them in their church.

W. Austin Gardner:

So I want to challenge you I mean I've gone over quite a few things and I will come back and finish some of that in a minute but I want to review with you what we've talked about. We ought to be trying to reach our city and the world with the gospel. We ought to realize that people are hungry and looking for answers about where they can go and what they can do. We ought to see what we can do to use the radio or television or what we can do to use the internet or whatever to get our gospel message out. We ought to realize that we're to reach every class of people. We ought to realize that God is already preparing hearts that are hungry to hear the gospel message, and we ought to build ministries of prayer, seeking to pray and find the will of God and God's power. That's our goal.

W. Austin Gardner:

We need God to work.

W. Austin Gardner:

We need God's power.

W. Austin Gardner:

We need God to move. We need to wait on God. We need to expect God to do great things. We need to quit fighting amongst ourselves, and for many of the friends I've grown up with, that's almost an impossibility. We seem to enjoy finding something we disagree with so we can shoot at each other. We've got to stop that. We've got to work as a team and we've got to get together the financial money to take care of things, and we have people that can give. Let's do it. We've got to know that the devil's always going to be attacking us and when he shoots at our brother, we got to stand with our brother. We got to stand together. The media might come after us. Social media might come after us. Criticism might come from other preachers, but let's continue to try to reach with the people with the gospel. Let's trust God and stand in the face of trials and let's be praying and working together. Let's work at training people. What's your church right now? Right now, right now, what plans have you got to train lay leaders? Are you teaching people how to win souls? Are you teaching people how to be counselors? Are you training new musicians? Are you teaching people how to share their testimony? Are you giving Bible instruction outside of what you preach in the pulpit? Are you using the radio and other ways to get the message out? Are you working as a team? Are you trying to start other churches? What's going on?

W. Austin Gardner:

So the Christian Mystery Alliance said that these were the transferable principles that every church could use that allowed them to reach an attendance of thousands, multiplied thousands, in various churches in 16 years Commitment. You got to be sold out Now if they really did two years of revival and discipleship work. You got to know that Sacrifice Pay the price to get the gospel out. Concentrate your efforts, work as a team. This is one of the most powerful ones, they said. Be willing to change. You see, only a crazy person does the same thing over and over and expects a different result. The way we've been reaching out for people, the way we've been being maybe ugly about things, maybe the way we have been preaching grace to bring them in and law to change them instead of letting God change them whatever, we have got to be willing to adapt biblical methods. We got to mobilize the believers. We got to get everybody involved and everybody working, and we got to start more churches.

W. Austin Gardner:

Now, one of the things they did that's pretty hard to transfer, to replicate unless we can get a hold of money is they made sure that their buildings were in visible locations. Now that's a problem because it takes a lot of money to get on the main avenue In Lima. They're on two or three of the most prominent streets in the city. You drive right by their building. But we can do something about that. If we will get the good kind of signs up put signs around the city telling them where we are, if we will advertise, if we will give out literature, if we'll put up posters, if we'll put up banners that cross the street, if we will use the radio and television, we can make ourselves much more visible. So, whatever we need to do, we need to stretch ourselves and go beyond what we're going to go and what we've been doing.

W. Austin Gardner:

One of the exciting things was that dozens of people testified that they did not get saved because of the messages they heard, but by the acts of love that they received from other believers in their home. The other believers are going into people's homes where there were needs, a death in the family, somebody sick, somebody with some kind of need, and they were there to help them. We have got to get our people out loving and helping other people and being a blessing to them. The author of the book Mission in the City his name, is Miguel Angel Palomino. He said that he did his own survey and found that less than 10% of the teenagers and young people attending the youth meetings had come to church as children, meaning they had gotten saved as teenagers. They'd been reached when they were teenagers. We need to be out on the street more looking for those people.

W. Austin Gardner:

I am convinced that people between the ages of 15 and 25 are the people God will most use to help you do a lot of the work in a church and to continue growing. And then one of the main things that they emphasize and I've tried to share all of it with you is academic training and the training of leaders. We have to have, like we have, the Peru Bible College. We have to have that. We have to be training our people to know the Word of God and to be able to preach the Word of God. Now I read this book and I just thought I'd share it with you today.

W. Austin Gardner:

Isn't it time to dream about reaching our city? Isn't it time to dream about God doing something big with us? Isn't it time to dream about God doing something big with us? Isn't it time to get a hold of the fact that God just might let us see something big happen? Let's stop being the lone ranger. Let's stop being the guy who won't work with anybody else. Let's stop being so focused on our own name, our own self, that we would work with others.

W. Austin Gardner:

All of my life, most every preacher and missionary I've ever known, is focused on the corner of Elm and Maple, their church, their location. Missionaries don't like that when they're raised in support, but as soon as they go to the field, they become just like that. It's my country, my city, my church, and nothing else seems to matter. Yeah, I'll take on some mysteries, but that's my church doing that, and so it's always about me and my and so on. Well, I hope that, uh, I tell you what, uh, I love to try to make available to some of you that speak Spanish at least, this PDF that can be found on the internet Mission in the City, lima, al Encuentro con Dios, and maybe you could get that, and I would just love to see you get more involved and let's see what we can do. I hope that what I'm doing is helping you and I want to challenge you to share what you would and you know here.

W. Austin Gardner:

If you're on YouTube, I'm trying to get it clear. There it is. There's the book Fulfilling Marriage. I so wish you'd help me pray that God would make it useful. If you haven't gotten a copy, get a copy If you have gotten a copy, and would give me a recommendation. Whatever you think the value of it is one star to five stars on Amazon I would really appreciate it and I would like to ask you to think about are you called a checklist, something you can get in the hands of young missionaries? And right now the new book from pain to praise is just about to come out. I'd like to also ask you to pray for me.

W. Austin Gardner:

I am working on a book about dealing with cancer. When you get the call that you have cancer again for the third time and you begin to wonder about what's going to happen with you. I'm trying to share steps about how to deal with the news of cancer, so I'm trying to write. I wish you'd pray that God would use the time that I'm writing to be a blessing to other people. I just want to help. I want to use whatever life I have left to bring honor to the name and glory to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So help me spread the word about the World Evangelism Podcast, if you will. Thank you so much for all you're doing and I pray God blesses you wherever you are. Thank you so much.