Global Report: Latin America’s Megachurches

by David Miller

The next time you are in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after you stroll the city’s immense boulevards and have a steak at one of its fabulous restaurants, drop in on the worship service at the Ministry of Waves of Love and Peace. It’s easy to find. Take a bus or taxi up Rivadavia Avenue until you see the former Rock Theater, whose neon sign now reads “Jesus Christ is the Rock.” Don’t worry about being late: The church holds six or seven meetings every day, from 7 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. Just join the line forming in the front lobby for the next service.

The next time you are in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after you stroll the city’s immense boulevards and have a steak at one of its fabulous restaurants, drop in on the worship service at the Ministry of Waves of Love and Peace. It’s easy to find. Take a bus or taxi up Rivadavia Avenue until you see the former Rock Theater, whose neon sign now reads “Jesus Christ is the Rock.” Don’t worry about being late: The church holds six or seven meetings every day, from 7 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. Just join the line forming in the front lobby for the next service.

Expect lots of hand-clapping, foot-stomping music and a stirring sermon on overcoming Satan and the world. If he’s in town, you’ll hear the church’s founding pastor, Hector Gimenez. Be prepared for a two- to three-hour service.

A former drug addict and shop-lifter, Gimenez was converted in 1981. He now claims to have 100,000 followers. According to a survey done in 1992 by the Latin American Faculty for Theological Studies, his flock numbers 45,000. That’s still a respectable number, considering his church is only 11 years old.

The Ministry of Waves of Love and Peace is one of Latin America’s megachurches: large, rapidly growing, predominantly Pentecostal churches that have cropped up in major urban centers within the past decade. You need not travel all the way to Argentina, in fact, to visit a megachurch. Virtually every capital on the continent has one or two of them. Some notable examples:

The Belenzinho Assembly of God in São Paulo, Brazil, baptized 1,403 new believers at one recent service. Though attendance has remained fairly stable in recent years, Belen-zinho is the axis of its denomination’s rapid expansion in the São Paulo megalopolis. The Assemblies have grown from 80,000 members there in 1980 to over 200,000 believers that meet in 1,000 local churches today.

In 1975 this church sent missionaries to Cucuta, Colombia, to plant the Dos Pinos Christian Center. Though intense opposition from local Roman Catholics hampered early efforts, the Dos Pinos church has grown to 6,000 members, making it the largest church—Protestant or Catholic—in Cucuta today.

In 1979, when Samuel Olson became senior pastor of the Evangelical Pentecostal Church of Las Acacias in Caracas, Venezuela, the congregation numbered 300. Today 3,000 attend the church’s three Sunday services, making it the largest evangelical church in Venezuela.

The Ekklesia church in La Paz, Bolivia, grew out of a revival in that city in 1972. From 400 initial believers, the group had dwindled to less than 150 meeting in a rented theater 14 years later. Then a moving of the Holy Spirit sparked a revival that catapulted Ekklesia into a growth surge. Currently the church gathers 6,000 worshipers each Sunday in its cavernous sanctuary, located on the city’s main thoroughfare.

Santiago, Chile, is home to the granddaddy of megachurches, the Evangelical Cathedral of the Pentecostal Methodist Church, better known by its street address, Jota-beche. The 7,000-seat auditorium accommodates only a fraction of the church’s members, who are allowed to worship here only once a month. Otherwise, they meet in some 58 smaller congregations around the city.

Due to their diversity, Latin America’s megachurches defy simple classification. Some are denominational; most are independent. Many grew up around charismatic, autocratic preachers; others are pastored by multiple ministers who lead by consensus. Perhaps the only common denominator is their commitment to intensive, self-sustained evangelism.

Independence from foreign money and influence is an article of faith for megachurch pastors. Alberto Salcedo recalls the events on that Sunday in 1986 when revival hit Ekklesia.

“Some brothers from the United States were invited to preach, but it was 11 a.m. and they had not arrived. We elders didn’t know what to do. We had sung all the hymns we knew.

“So I went out and said, ‘People, do you believe the same God is here who is in the United States, in Korea, in every place? Or do we need a gringo forthe Holy Spirit to work?’

“At that moment, the power of God came down. We began to see beautiful manifestations, and from then on the growth started.”

Successful mega-churches receive no significant economic support from outside their local constituencies. Nevertheless, they have managed to develop extensive and, in some cases, expensive ministries. Ekklesia has spawned audio and video recording studios, a book publishing concern, a professionally staffed counseling center, an FM radio station, and Bolivia’s first evangelical television station.

Las Acacias offers a diversified ministry to its Caracas community, including literacy programs, vocational training, microenterprise projects, medical and legal services, a drug rehabilitation program, and counseling for children with learning disabilities.

Like other megachurch pastors, Olson believes the success of Las Acacias stems from a central focus on prayer.

“We have prayer going on from 6 in the morning to 9 at night, with close to 500 people coming in throughout the week to pray,” he explains. “We have prayer vigils every Friday night and prayer marathons twice a year. We have an organization devoted to training on the relationship between prayer, fasting, and health.”

José Wellington, long-time pastor of the Belenzinho Assembly, believes prayer and personal witness are key elements in his church’s growth.

“The first principal factor that has contributed to growth is the way we teach every believer to win another person for Christ,” he says. “The second important reason is prayer. The custom of being on our knees before God abounds among us.”

As these comments suggest, megachurch members are mobilized to do more than pray. Active lay ministry is an important part of megachurch life.

A 600-member string orchestra accompanies congregational singing at Jotabeche. Like other worshipers, however, the guitarists, accordionists, and mandolin players are unable to participate in every service, since the orchestra enrolls a total of 6,000 musicians.

Las Acacias conducts evangelism classes that have trained a third of the congregation in soul-winning. Teams of young people do evangelistic mime on Caracas streets. The church is presently sending out cross-cultural missionaries, many to predominantly Muslim countries.

Despite their obvious strengths, the megachurches suffer from some common ailments. An oft-heard criticism is their lack of theological depth. In most cases, discussion of the serious issues of Christian discipleship gives way to the more marketable gospel of health, wealth, and happiness.

Megachurch preachers proclaim an upbeat message because they have learned that prosperity religion attracts new believers. Prominent Brazilian evangelist Caio Fabio, a second-generation Presbyterian, decries the triumphalism preached in some Pentecostal churches, while acknowledging that it may make a positive contribution to Protestant theology in Latin America.

“Even though I am not a disciple of the theology of prosperity, I think that it has enabled some people to look at themselves better,” Fabio says. “Our (Protestant) theology is related to poverty and siding with the poor. But we’re just talking about it. We aren’t helping the poor to develop.

“If you do a reading of the country, you see that everybody’s talking gray. There is no call in the future, no hope. Then some people appear saying, ‘No, it’s going to improve. We’re going to take over.’ People look at themselves with more courage. There is some boldness in the air.”

A critique of the theological shallowness within megachurches is usually accompanied by the charge that their leaders lack adequate professional training. Aside from notable exceptions like Olson, who earned his academic credentials at Johns Hopkins and Princeton, megachurch preachers are largely self-taught.

This is an area where outsiders can perhaps make a contribution to the development of megachurches. Alberto Salcedo, for example, says he benefited from a year of discipleship trainingin the U.S. He is open to more training, but says he can spare little time away from his ministry. His experience shows that training for megachurch pastors must be flexible.

Also, trainers should not be surprised if megachurch pastors show little enthusiasm for systematic or comparative theology. Doctrinal purity is a low priority in most megachurches, often by design. Leaders avoid controversial themes to focus on shared beliefs.

“The most important factor that has influenced growth is that we do not add anything to the word of God,” says Jotabeche spokesman Manuel Faundez. “We are not trying to upset our brother who is mistaken. He might cook it one way, while around here we cook it another way.”

Olson downplays doctrinal differences to the point of disregarding the customary Protestant-Catholic tags. “I feel my church grows because . . . I don’t talk about being evangelical Protestant or Pentecostal,” he says. “People come and receive the word and worship. We are not trying to make them become members of our church. We’ve had people who are Roman Catholics and they’ve been coming to us for 10 years. They even become baptized in water. In their minds they’re Roman Catholics, and they want to maintain that identification so they can minister to their own people.”

Such openness is strikingly uncharacteristic in Latin America’s polarized religious climate. Yet it coincides with another vivid feature of megachurches: social heterogeny. Congregations reflect a broad cross-section of urban populations, from working-class poor to professional elite. At Jotabeche and Ekklesia, street vendors and cab drivers worship alongside high-ranking public officials and captains of industry.

The heterogeneous nature of megachurches goes against the grain of highly stratified Latin American societies. It also defies conventional wisdom regarding successful church planting. Instead of focusing on particular groups, or homogeneous social units, megachurches have honed a message and cultivated an ethos that appeal to Latins from all walks of life.

Undoubtedly, the greatest strength of megachurches is their ability to attract large numbers of urban Latin Americans of diverse backgrounds to a religiously neutral setting in order to introduce them to evangelical Christianity. In that sense, megachurches offer a wide door for effective work opened in areas fraught with many adversaries.

So here is my suggestion. The next time you are in La Paz, or Santiago, or Caracas, or any number of major Latin American cities, drop in on a megachurch. You might find you have something to contribute. Chances are, you will certainly find something worth taking away.

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EMQ, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 422-427. Copyright © 1993 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

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