Missions Ministry Team

Cumberland Presbyterian Church

Mexico Mission

The Missions Ministry Team of the Ministry Council is excited to report that in January 2011 a new Council of Cumberland Presbyterian Churches was formed in Mexico. Over the years we have attempted to develop a mission field in Mexico. We have made various attempts using different strategies to establish work there. Although some of those attempts of the past didn’t result in achieving our goal, they did teach us things we needed to know and thus better prepared us.

The wilderness wanderings that have led us to this point of establishing a new field started in 2006 with Rev. Alfonso Marquez introducing us to The Living Water Association of Pentecostal Churches in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. This became our first major effort to establish CP work in Mexico. We entered into a two year exploration process conducting shared activities and helping them with some of their needs. After two years they determined that a merger into the CP Church was not in their best interest. In reality, that was probably a good decision. The training and orientation we would have had to do to assimilate them into Presbyterian polity and  CP theology would have been extensive. We then explored sending a Mexican candidate for the ministry living in the USA to Nuevo Laredo. A committee was established in Red River Presbytery to help the church planter that would live in Nuevo Laredo. However, the family of this person, living in Mexico, advised against living in Nuevo Laredo because of security concerns and thus this approach didn’t materialize. In 2009 the Missions Ministry Team staff went to Juarez, Mexico to meet with any interested in affiliation with the CP Church, and one pastor and his new mission congregation expressed interest.

These efforts over the past years did not result in our ambitious goal of establishing CP Churches in Mexico, but they did lead to: legal status as a church in Mexico, an investment in land in Nuevo Laredo, a deeper vision for work in Mexico, and a new perspective of looking at all opportunities and CP connections for expansion in Mexico.

In 2010 Rev. Hector Mata, a CP pastor in Del Cristo Presbytery, introduced us to a fraternity of churches in Mexico. The Missions Ministry Team initiated conversations with the Maranatha Fraternity of Churches in Mexico.  The fraternity of Churches consisted of four churches, 3 in Mexico City and one in Juarez. All churches and pastors in the fraternity had Presbyterian roots and used Presbyterian polity. The ordained pastors were seminary trained in Mexico and all had years of experience as pastors. In 2010 the Fraternity consulted their churches and all agreed to dissolve the fraternity and be assimilated as provisional churches and pastors into a new Council of CP Churches in Mexico. The Missions Ministry Team formed the council on January 14, 2011 in Mexico City with all pastors and lay representatives of the churches in attendance. The four churches from the Maranatha Fraternity and one congregation from Juarez that was contacted in 2009 were formed into the council, making a total of 5 provisional CP churches/missions. The Missions Ministry Team placed two CP pastors that live in the USA on the council, Rev. Hector Mata (Del Cristo Presbytery) and Rev. Alfonso Marquez (East Tennessee Presbytery). The council will be used as a means to prepare these churches and pastors into becoming a future CP Presbytery in Mexico. It is anticipated that the council will grow by assimilating more congregations and pastors, as well as plant new CP churches. The future programs and mission activities in Mexico will be coordinated using the Maranatha CP Council of Churches.

Pastores: Jorge Mata (Juarez), Uzziel Gallardo (Mexico City), Hector Mata (El Paso, TX), Jesse Vega (Mexico City), Uzziel Gallardo jr. (lay person Mexico City)

Pastor Juan Carlos Marroquin (Juarez)

Pastor Alfonso Marquez (Lenoir City, TN)

Maranatha

CP Council of Churches

Mexico

Organization

Meeting

January

2011