Venezuela: Land of Contrast

Venezuela: Land of Contrast

 

Those changes mean she still travels home each year, either on missions trips or to visit her parents in Valencia.

Littlejohn, wife of Benjamin Littlejohn, pastor of First Baptist Church, Birmingham, works part time as a translator at a Birmingham-area hospital. While her missions efforts includes trips with First, Birmingham, she also travels with other churches as a translator.

“Historically, the Venezuelan population has been very responsive” to the gospel, said Dickie Nelson, a missionary in charge of the Caribbean Basin regional ministry, who works with the International Missions Board (IMB).

Nelson said the responsiveness of the Venezuelan people is greatest among lower income groups. Commenting on another demographic, he said about 60 percent of the country’s population is below age 25.

With about 23 million people, Nelson thinks there is a lot of work to be done in the country. He said 15 teams, composed of 96 missionary personnel, currently work in the country, and several of the team members are Alabamians or have ties to the state.

The needs of the 400,000 displaced by December flooding has created a whirlwind of efforts such as hunger and disaster funds. So far the IMB teams have done only short-term projects, like creating water purification centers, but hope to turn the work into a long-term church planting effort.

Ambitious beginnings

The first apparent Baptist contact with Venezuela was made in 1944 with  a Southern Baptist missionary serving in Colombia. The first church was opened in Acarigua in the Portuguesa state July 5, 1945. It was followed by Central Baptist Church, Caracas, which opened May 2, 1946, and First Baptist Church, Guanare, also in Portuguesa, the same year.

Six more Baptist churches were formed during the next five years and by August 1951 had organized into the National Venezuelan Baptist Convention (CNBV).

In 1951, the first international missionaries from the Southern Baptist Convention were named specifically for Venezuela.

About 250 Baptist churches exist in Venezuela today with about 16,000 to 20,000 members.

Over the next seven years both the number of churches and the number of missionaries increased. By 1958, however, due in part to a series of conflicts between the CNBV and the Southern Baptists, an impasse arose in the work. This impasse continued until August 1964, when both parties agreed to the “One Work Concept.” As a result, a strong sense of partnership between Southern Baptists and the convention has developed.

The 50-plus years since the Baptist work began in Venezuela have seen both people and programs come and go. National Baptist workers and missionaries are seeking to work in more people group specific ways in hopes of giving birth to a church planting movement.

Alabama has recently forged a partnership with Venezuela as well. Reggie Quimby, state director of global partnership for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said he thinks the partnership will have a “positive effect on the missions work in general.”

New opportunities

Flooding has hindered church planting efforts by missionaries in Venezuela, Quimby said. The delay will “increase the need for more volunteers.”

Church groups and associations already send teams to Venezuela to help missionaries there. Quimby hopes the new partnership will increase the number of missions groups.

Since the flooding, the Venezuelan government has placed tighter restrictions on medications and supplies.

The IMB said it is working through details and hopes to arrange future medical missions trips.

Littlejohn said construction missions trips, like one by Bessemer Association this past January and February, are much easier to arrange because of fewer restrictions.

The best way to help is to find out what the missionaries need, Littlejohn said, and plan a missions trip with those needs in mind.

For information about IMB, visit its Web site at www.imb.org.