Christian Mission Church of Nicaragua Environmental projects
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
The Christian Mission Church of Nicaragua began in the 1960s as a movement of ministry to prisoners, calling itself in those years “The Christian Mission in the Jails.” Its founders were Reverend Marcelino Dávila Castillo who was a pastor in the Assemblies of God, and Reverend Antonio Martinez who first belonged to the Church of the Nazarene. The first church was founded in the Acahualinca neighborhood of Managua in 1959. The second church was founded in Barrio José Dolores Estrada in 1972. The churches of the Christian Mission are part of the Pentecostal movement in Latin America.
The Convention Association of Christian Mission Churches obtained its official recognition on October 19th, 1983. Today, the Christian Mission consists of 51 churches located in every region of Nicaragua. The current president is Reverend Rolando Eugenio Boniche, who began his three-year term as president in March of 2011. The Christian Mission Church has been marked since its beginning as a church committed to addressing social problems and very open to relationships with other churches.
Throughout its history, the Association has participated in the founding of various Christian organizations at the national level, with the goal of strengthening ecumenical relationships and supporting the development of churches and their communities. These organizations include: CEPAD (Evangelical Council for Aid and Development), CIEETS (Interchurch Center of Theological and Social Studies), and UENIC (Evangelical University of Nicaragua). The Christian Mission Church also is a member of CLAI (the Latin American Council of Churches) and has maintained relationships of exchange and sister/brotherhood with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), The Brethren, the United Church of Christ, and with the Christian Pentecostal Church of Cuba. It has been an important partner church with Global Ministries for many years.
The Christian Mission Church has as its mission the preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom of God, proclaimed by Jesus and the first Christians in the power of the Holy Spirit. This preaching is done in words and deeds so that the gospel may be seen and heard through the testimony of the church, and its commitments to the values of the Kingdom of God: justice, solidarity, equality, and respect for diversity. The vision of the Christian Mission Church is to encourage and support social transformation, incarnating the gospel as good news for the most vulnerable sectors of society: the poor, the sick, women, children, and people excluded from our socio-economic systems.
Since its inception, La Misión Cristiana has sought to foster social justice in the communities it serves. It currently is at work on a number of educational and development projects that serve its member churches and their communities.
Projects of the National Church
Dairy Farm
The church owns a medium-sized farm in the Northern region of Nicaragua (beyond the town of Waslala), which they are preparing to use as a dairy farm. There are many dairy farms in this region and the farm is right on the main road where a company that buys the milk does regular milk pick-ups. They have improved the caretaker’s house, built a milking gallery (with the help of churches from the South Idaho region of the Disciples of Christ), installed electricity and a water system that draws from a spring on the property, and are growing corn and cacao, as well as renting plots to small farmers. The project still needs to put in fencing and build a corral before they will be ready to purchase cows, and are looking to plant more crops in the future.
Reverend Rolando Boniche has said that in the churches in the north (a rural and poor region) when they need funds to build a church or do some other project, they plant a crop and use the proceeds from the harvest. A lifelong city dweller, he is adopting this model to raise needed funds for the national church and its many wonderful projects.
Centro Emmanuel is the hospitality center for visiting groups. It is also a meeting facility and training center for the church. Representatives of local churches from all over the country gather there for their annual assembly. It also is the space for educational events, talks by invited speakers, revivals, and youth events throughout the year. A new church start is nesting there as well.
The Emmanuel Center is also a potential source of income for the church, especially as the facilities are improved to make it more attractive for event rentals. The church has invested time, talent, and treasure in developing the center and last year a visiting group from Texas helped in the construction of the caretaker’s house.
Food Security/Biodigesters
The church began a project to improve food security for church and community members in the Western region of Nicaragua where decades-old deforestation has worsened droughts, flooding, and the resultant loss of crops. The first step was establishing seed banks which loan seeds to farmers with small plots and sharecroppers, many of whom would not have capital to plant otherwise. These farmers repay 125 percent of the seeds when they harvest, growing the banks to benefit more and more families. The second stage was giving seeds for family gardens (tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, onions, and peppers) and small orange and mango trees. These will help first with family nutrition, and (especially the fruit trees) potentially provide a source of income.
A third phase that has grown out of these efforts is the installation of biodigesters, a relatively inexpensive technology that produces methane gas for cooking from cow manure. Most families in the region are spending much time or money obtaining firewood for cooking in an already deforested area. In addition, the effect of cooking all day in a closed kitchen on an open fire is extremely harmful to women’s health. The first stove, installed as a pilot project in a parsonage, will pay for itself in less than a year; afterward the church no longer has to buy firewood, freeing up significant funds for ministry.
Ministerial Formation
In August 2011, a team of facilitators began teaching the courses on theology as part of the Ministerial Formation program of the Christian Mission Church. It is planned as a two-year program (with a slightly different timetable in each region) to deepen the understanding that pastors and lay leaders have of the church’s specific theology, history, and manner of doing ministry. The goal is to form leaders spiritually and personally, as well as imparting knowledge and developing practical skills for ministry. The program aims to use popular education as its teaching model, honoring the knowledge and experience that leaders bring to the encounters, as well as to be accessible to students with a variety of levels of formal education.
Environmental Education/Tree Planting
Environmental education, including climate change and strategies for growing food (and preparing it) in harmony with nature, has been an integral part of the food security project and is also a topic in the program on ministerial formation. The Christian Mission Church continues to look for more ways to educate its members, especially young people, about the importance of being good stewards of creation and with practical strategies for doing so (including reforestation).
Formation and Training
Leadership development, which includes equipping leaders with skills and knowledge in a wide variety of areas, is a current focus for the church. The church is especially interested in developing projects to work with children and youth in the congregations and in training church leaders in accounting, record-keeping, strategic planning, etc.
Projects of local churches
Several of the individual local churches run educational programs to benefit their specific communities.
Afterschool Programs & Schools — In Managua, both the First Church in Acahualinca and the Seventh Church in Reparto Schick run after-school programs for neighborhood children. These programs emphasize development in four areas: socio-emotional, spiritual, physical, and cognitive. Both programs each serve over 100 neighborhood youth by providing a safe space to come and learn and spend time with other children. Both programs are extremely popular and are currently limited in enrollment by the small size of the church buildings.
The Marcelino Davila Educational Center is run by the Second Church in Barrio Jose Dolores Estrada and has students from Pre-K through 6th grade. English classes are part of the curriculum, and native English-speaking guests are a big hit. The Third Church in Reparto Schick also houses a public school that serves grades 1-3.
The Sixth church in Tisma, a small municipality less than an hour from Managua, has a preschool and a carpentry workshop where they train young people from the community.
In addition, each church has worship services throughout the week, Christian education for children and adults, and a number of active ministries including cultural groups and pastoral work with families and youth.
Below are ways which your gifts to the Christian Mission Church of Nicaragua may be used:
- $25 will provide transportation to a rural church for one theology teacher.
- $50 will purchase fruit trees for ten church families.
- $100 will help cover printing costs for one unit of the theological education project.
- $200 will purchase materials to build one biodigester benefiting a church family.
- $500 will help to complete the construction of facilities at the Centro Emmanuel.
- $1,200 will purchase one dairy cow for the Waslala dairy farm.
- $2,000 will purchase 15 grain silos to help three church communities begin a seed bank project to provide food security to small farmers.
- $5,000 will help the First Church add classroom space so it can accept more children into its afterschool program.