October 3, 2006 Portland, Oregon, United States …. [Rajmund Dabrowski/ANN]
If you were a part of a faith community of 500,000 and there were only 13 representative church buildings in use in your country, you would likely consider the prospect of 1001 new churches a heaven-sent one.
Such a plan–to provide new church buildings for Seventh-day Adventist churches in Mozambique–received a welcomed endorsement from participants at the annual convention of Maranatha Volunteers International, a lay organization specializing in building houses of worship for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The organization's 2006 event, its largest to date, brought 1,200 volunteers to Portland, Oregon, Sept. 29 to 30.
“Most of our people [in Mozambique] worship under a tree. When it rains – and it rains often in Africa – there is no church service that Sabbath,” said Paul Ratsara, president of the church in the Southern Africa-Indian Ocean region.
A decade of civil war, which ended at the end of last century, left scores of victims and virtually destroyed the country and many of its churches. “The war does not decide who is right, but what is left,” Ratsara said.
Thinking beyond the next five years and the current 1001-church-project, Ratsara's dream is to build 50,000 churches in the region that presently has more than 2 million baptized members worshiping in 20,000 congregations. The plan also includes adding eight new Adventist schools to the only one in existence today. Ratsara said that all congregations in Mozambique held a chain of prayer for the convention's success.
In a televised program, the convention participants heard reports of a similar massive church, school, and orphanage-building program that started in India in 1998. Pastor Ron Watts, president of the Adventist church's Southern Asia region, reported that Maranatha has already constructed 1,200 houses of worship, as well as participated in a series of multi-village activities.
According to Kyle Fiess, Maranatha vice president, during 2006, Maranatha will have coordinated outreach projects for more than 400 villages. Maranatha will construct a new church in each village and a so-called “pioneer worker” who will coordinate the activities of a given faith community.
Fiess said that in its building program, Maranatha has also constructed 250 homes for tsunami victims in India. These homes were built for Adventist Development and Relief Agency, and Habitat for Humanity.
It was also announced that in 2007 Adventists in Ecuador will have 38 houses of worship built, as well as seven schools, one of which is located on the Galapagos Islands.
“A school on the Galapagos Islands will receive a new face. And this is a very important project for us,” said Leonel Lozano, president of the church in Ecuador. “The islands are regarded as the cradle of Darwinism. Tourist and scientists come from all over the world to see the unique species existing there. Our school is highly respected. Many scientists send their children there. It's a school that teaches the story of God's creation.”
Endorsing the Ecuador program, Pastor Melchor Ferreyra, secretary of the South American region and until recently the leader of the church in Peru, said, “in Peru we became partners with Maranatha. We worked as volunteers together, and we had a desire to build something different.”
Today, the Adventist church in Peru is among the fastest growing worldwide. There are 700,000 members and less than half of the existing congregations have a place to worship. Last year, Maranatha's efforts included an innovative plan to construct a floating church on Lake Titicaca. Dedicated in November 2005, it serves the community of the Los Uros Islands, as noted in an earlier ANN story.
At the convention conversations between the volunteers often centered on the opportunities of Adventist mission, and presentations expressed how believers got involved with the mission activities of the church. Don Noble, president of the organization acknowledges that the culture of doing missionary work in the church is changing.
“We are trying to respond to a changing church. Significant growth of the church is talking place in the developing world. As a result, the infrastructure has not been planned. We are responding in addressing this,” he said. As the church continues with a traditional long-term missionary program, Noble comments that while the volunteers go on short-term mission projects, their involvement with the church also changes. “They go, they are blessed by working in a team, and then they return to their congregations and energize them for mission involvement,” he added.
Since its first construction project in 1968, Maranatha has built more than 4,000 churches in more than 60 countries. “Physical buildings make a difference,” Noble explains. “We respond in concrete ways by providing homes to our growing faith communities. What matters is that as the church grows, we can hold people in the church. These houses of worship become centers of spiritual growth for a Christian community.”
Copyright (c) 2006 by Adventist News Network.
