Guayas, with 3.3 million people is the largest province in Ecuador. The province is divided into 28 cantones (counties). By far the largest counties are Guayaquil and Durán with 67% of the total provincial population.Most of the attention over the past 50 years has centered on outreach to the two largest counties of Guayaquil and Durán, accounting for most of the evangelical presence in the province.
In the remaining 26 counties (population 1.09 million) there is an unknown, but considerably lower percentage of evangelical Christians and churches.
The “Guayas Cantones for Christ” project seeks to focus prayer, investigation, training, evangelism, discipleship, and church planting on the remaining unreached/under-reached counties of Guayas province.
The project entails at least two churches partnering together to establish reproducing churches in each of the remaining 26 cantones. One of the two churches will be a local national church. The other will be a Stateside/international partner church or missions outreach team.
Together, the national church and their international partners, will adopt and engage one of the under-reached 26 counties. They will collaborate and work together to come up with a viable strategy for reaching their adopted county for Christ. More than likely this would be a 1-2 year commitment by both partnering churches.
The Guayas Strategy Coordinator (me) and Guayas Mestizo Team will facilitate and be available for help, but the responsibility for completing the task lies with those who come saying, "here we are Lord, use us according to your will."
The definition of “reached” is planting a minimum of three networking churches in the canton. Most likely these will be “simple churches” or “house churches”.
Simple/house churches are N.T. churches without all the extras that typify modern churches today (buildings and property, paid staff, etc.) The following documents help describe what we are talking about.
What do we mean by ‘simple church?’
What kind of churches are we planting overseas?
Simple churches need simple plans
Church planting lessons learned along the way
Simple church interviews (YouTube video from House2House)
Interested? Any churches or missions teams reading this post that would prayerfully consider partnering with us in this project, please contact us through the email address found in our profile (top right-hand side bar.) Reaching Guayas with the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a bigger task than we can possibly handle by ourselves. WE NEED HELP from those willing to come and take on the full responsibility for reaching an entire county for Christ. Is this something God might be touching you and your church to come do?
Guy -
ReplyDeleteI am praying with you for this strategic outreach to the other counties in Guayas. Please be sure to keep us updated on the progress here.
Dorcas
Dorcas,
ReplyDeleteThanks. This past weekend I shared the project with leaders from the Ecuador Baptist Convention. There was great interest in expanding the project to include ALL the counties in the COUNTRY, not just Guayas. Your prayers are greatly appreciated!
Guy,
ReplyDeleteI have been reading your blog for the first time tonight and it has really ministered to and convicted me. I am good friends with Geoff Baggett, who I know is a blog friend of yours, and contribute to the new SBC Impact blog (www.sbcimpact.net) with Geoff.
I pastor in Georgia and have a one-month sabattical coming up next year. My family and I would like to go overseas to serve during that time. Could you use a church planter/pastor/worship leader jack-of-all-trades but master of none to do this kind of work? My wife of 16 years and my three homeschooled kids have a real heart for missions and could be a help, too. I was a music minister at a spanish church for a year in college but my spanish is very minimal.
Anyway, please let me know if that is a possibility.
Blessings to you.
Roger,
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by and for your kind words. If you will send me your email address I will mail you a copy of the "Guayas Cantones for Christ" for you to pray over. Once you pray and read over the project, you will have a clearer understanding of our needs and whether or not you sense the Lord has a place of service for you here in the future. Thanks.