Mexican church in convention welcomes two new congregations
Filed Under: Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Church, Convention, Mexico, Mission to the Children, Missions, World Missions
The Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mexico, one of WELS' sister synods, welcomed two new congregations into membership at its 18th annual convention, held July 16-19 at Cristo Resucitado (Resurrected Christ), Mexico City.
The congregations—El Buen Pastor (Good Shepherd), Altar, Sonora, and Cordero de Dios (Lamb of God), Sásabe, Sonora—both began through Mission to the Children, a WELS-affiliated humanitarian aid group that has been delivering food and basic essentials to villages in Sonora for 20 years and currently is served by a WELS missionary.
"It is great to see the congregations develop," says Missionary Michael Hartman. "This helps to give some permanence to the working going on in Sonora by Mission to the Children. Whenever foreigners come in as missionaries, it is really just a temporary effect that they will have on a community unless they get national leadership involved."
To get that national leadership, the national church body called two home missionaries to the state of Sonora to work with the new congregations as well as other preaching stations. These men—Alejandro Sánchez and Carlos Rosales—will spend the next few years working with the WELS missionary in Sonora.
The 20 delegates passed the church's annual budget and grew in the Word through a variety of presentations.
"It was a very positive convention," says Hartman. "I was particularly pleased to see the Mexican church taking on more and more of the fiscal responsibility for their pastors."
In January, three missionaries and seven national pastors will be serving 670 baptized members in 10 congregations and 20 missions and preaching stations.
To learn more about the church in Mexico, go to www.wels.net/jump/worldmissions.
