March 19, 2010 – Panama City, Panama…[Libna Stevens/IAD]
Benjamin Eugene lives by one motto: “Depleting the population of hell and increasing the population of heaven.”
He has lived by that motto since he became a lay evangelist 15 years ago. A member of the Parham Seventh-day Adventist Church in Antigua and Barbuda, Eugene, 45, an electrical engineer consultant, became an active church member since his near-death experience in 1987. Since then, he has won more than 2,500 souls.
“As a lay person, I was called by God miraculously,” Eugene says. Eugene was electrocuted while on the job, and was rushed to the hospital. While in intensive care, “I could see what was happening as they tried to take blood and revive me. Right then I asked God to save me and use me as a carpenter uses his tools.” He recovered, and soon after was called to participate in a lay evangelistic campaign.
“I went from sitting in pews to preaching the Word of God,” says Eugene. He travels with a team of six laypersons twice a year throughout churches in the North Caribbean region. He is happy to fund his evangelistic campaigns and says he is thrilled to preach the gospel.
Eugene was among 1,300 outstanding laypersons throughout the church in Inter-America who attended the division-wide Festival of the Laity Congress held in Panama City, Panama, last week. They gathered to be recognized, trained and motivated through dozens of lectures, spiritual messages, and seminars.
Eugene also represents the more than 500,000 active church members throughout the territory who work tirelessly in aggressive evangelism.
Included in that number is Ricardo Sosa, a 66-year-old business owner of a bus transportation company and veteran lay evangelist from South Mexico. A Seventh-day Adventist for more than 50 years, Sosa has been traveling with a team of eight laypersons. The group has averaged nine evangelistic campaigns every year for decades. Last year, his team led out in some 12 campaigns.
Sosa says he was inspired to be an evangelist in 1972 while listening to a pastor preach in church. He became a Bible instructor and since then desired to work for God. Although he wasn’t able to become a minister, he knows God led him to be a lay evangelist. Sosa has lost count, but estimates that more than 5,000 people have joined the church as a result of his efforts. He recently began training lay preachers to serve on the front lines of his evangelistic campaigns.
“There is nothing else that can make me happier,” says Sosa, of being a lay evangelist and serving the church. Sosa is pleased to fully fund his campaigns as he travels throughout South Mexico.
Although he has been to many large regional lay congresses in his country, Sosa says that this year’s division-wide event was a wonderful experience.
“There was great unity among all of us who attended, and this shows that the church is united,” he says.
It’s this unity among its multi-cultural, multi-lingual lay force which prompted top church leaders in Inter-America to hold the lay congress on a territory-wide scale, the first such event in over 10 years, according to Pastor Carlyle Bayne, Personal Ministries and Sabbath School director for the church in Inter-America, and organizer of the event.
The congress was a good fit for Gabriel Amos, a lay preacher of the Vaudrevil Adventist Church in North Haiti who also traveled to Panama to attend the congress.
Amos, 40, was one of only two of the 106 Haitian lay delegates able to attend. Haiti was devastated by a powerful earthquake in January.
Amos, like Sosa and Eugene, is also a committed lay preacher. When he is not working as a public accountant, he is preaching. It is a passion he has pursued for almost 20 years. He has brought more than 100 new believers into the church, and is happy for the opportunity to travel and fellowship with his peers.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed the event and it was been wonderful to see the diversity in programming, speakers, and seminars,” says Amos. He looks forward to bringing what he’s learned back to his country filled, he says, with people thirsty for the truth.
It’s that exposure to the truth that compels lay preacher Martin Coba, a medical instrumentalist by profession, to spread the gospel at his job. Coba works in the operating room of Metropolitan Arnulfo Aria Madrid Hospital in Panama City.
Coba, 58, a member of the La Pulida Adventist Church, has been sharing the message of hope in and out of his job since he joined the church in 1977.
“I learned the truth through Bible studies,” he says, a truth which inspired him to become a layperson forever. Although he considers himself more of a Bible instructor than a lay preacher, he speaks to and prays with patients after his night shifts. He also leads a small group in this home every week, and has led more than 100 people to join the church. He knows God has led him through the last 22 years of sharing Bible truths.
“The Lord has work for us to do wherever we are,” says Coba, “because anywhere you look there are souls to win for the Lord.”
Church leaders say it is that determination and passion demonstrated by the lay force that has been a main ingredient of the fast membership growth enjoyed by the Inter-American Division (IAD) for decades, particularly during the current quinquennium. In the last five years, church membership has swelled by 1,008,000, a record.
“This has been a real banner quinquennium in our division, due to the individual achievements of scores of our lay evangelists — both in public and personal evangelism, as well as the work of administrators, directors, and pastors who have given outstanding service in directing the efforts of the lay forces,” says Pastor Bayne.
The outstanding growth was celebrated during the climax of the congress, as top church leaders from each of the 17 IAD church regions participated in a special baptismal ceremony. The ceremony, called Pentecost and More, saw tens of thousands more join the church. The event was broadcast live via satellite. (see story here).
Throughout the congress in Panama City, more than 250 laypersons were awarded special medals and plaques for their dedicated service in preaching, Bible instruction, Sabbath school leadership, and community outreach.
Leaders will continue to focus on reaching the millions more in the territory who may be searching for the truth, Bayne says. He says a big concern is finding ways to motivate the 70 percent of its membership not involved in active evangelism, about 2.5 million of the 3.2 million members in the territory.
“That’s the gap we have to bridge to finish the work,” says Bayne. “We need to cover every unentered village or town with an Adventist presence in our territory, and that’s going to take at least 51 percent of the church membership involved in aggressive evangelism work.”
“We must do our part,” says Bayne, “and we will see a tremendous outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit and the work will be finished,” Bayne says.
To learn more about Inter-America’s Festival of the Laity Congress held in Panama City, Panama, Mar. 9-13, and to view a photo gallery of the event, visit http://panama2010.interamerica.org/
To view additional articles on the Festival of the Laity and Pentecost and more, visit https://recursing-golick.147-182-135-0.plesk.page/
