Among all the hundreds of places North American Mission Board (NAMB) church planting missionaries work and minister across the United States and Canada, none is more dangerous than Laredo in south Texas, where Chuy and Maria Avila live and serve.
Laredo sits on the north bank of the Rio Grande, right across the river from Nuevo Laredo in Mexico. The Laredo-Nuevo Laredo metro area has a combined population of more than 700,000 American and Mexican citizens. It’s a mecca of cold-blooded murder, drugs and chaos.
Nuevo Laredo to Laredo is a thoroughfare for an estimated $20 billion drug market operated by drug cartels between Mexico and the United States.
The Avilas — jointly sponsored by NAMB and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention — are two of more than 5,000 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions.
“Laredo is a dangerous place to minister,” Chuy Avila said. “I need prayers and support from my Christian brothers and sisters.”
Born into a Catholic family in Juarez, Mexico, Avila was only 5 when a missionary came to town to hold a tent revival. “This is the way the gospel came to our family. My mom got saved, my father was saved and I got saved when I was 21 years old. The next year, I was called into the ministry.”
Only 18 months ago, the Avilas were working and living in Tennessee, where he spent 11 years as a Hispanic church start strategist. “I knew nothing about Laredo at the time,” Avila said. After visiting, he and his wife fell in love with the south Texas border town.
In Laredo, Avila’s “M.O.” has been to go into neighborhoods — he calls them “colonias” — where he feels a need to start something new, a brand-new Baptist church.
He has formed partnerships with local pastors and laypeople and established a “missionary house” — a house fully equipped to hold a group of up to 30 people. “There are only 53 evangelical churches in Laredo,” Avila said. “To reach just 25 percent of the population of 300,000, Laredo needs 278 new churches. We now have only 14 Baptist churches, averaging 50 people each.”
Avila said even putting the “danger” issue aside, Laredo is a challenging place to minister.
According to Avila, Baptists have been in Laredo for 135 years. But that 135 years has only produced 14 Baptist churches.
“We want to start house churches, contemporary churches, traditional churches, cowboy churches, truck-driver churches, and more Spanish- and English-speaking churches,” he said. Avila sees his role as a catalyst, who tries to find the right place a new church is needed, and determine what kind of church to plant.
“Because of the average young age of the population, we may need a contemporary church. In an area of empty nesters, we might need a traditional church. For the Texas cowboys, we would need a cowboy church.”
While Avila would welcome church planters from the outside, his preference is to use indigenous church planters, train and equip them locally, and then deploy them throughout the Laredo metro area.
Does Avila’s ministry in Laredo make a difference? It did to Angel Contreras.
Just 19, Contreras already had made some serious mistakes in his life by the time he and Avila met. He had gotten married at 16, was the father of a baby girl but was seeking to divorce his teenage bride.
“Angel passed our church and saw some cars in the parking lot, so he thought there was someone that could pray for him because he was depressed,” Avila recalled.
Over coffee the following day, Avila led Contreras to Christ. Contreras now is trying to rebuild his marriage, and Avila is discipling him to be a leader in one of the 50 churches Avila plans to plant in Laredo. “I thank God for Chuy,” Contreras said. Avila said Contreras is but “one example of how the Lord can provide everything we need in order to accomplish our goals and the vision He gave us for Laredo.”
“The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering helps us a lot,” Avila said. “Through that and prayer, we feel the support.”
Avila graduated from Frontier Baptist Seminary in Juarez, Mexico, and from Hardin-Simmons Baptist University in Abilene, Texas. He has served as a pastor and missionary in Juarez; a pastor in El Paso; Hispanic church planter in Midland, Texas; and as a Hispanic church start strategist in Brentwood, Tenn., for NAMB.
He and his wife of 30 years have four children and six grandchildren. (NAMB)
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