Why Latino Believers Can Go Where Westerners Can't
Summary:
Manny Martinez is a mission mobilizer with Via, which engages, equips, and connects believers around the world to their part in completing the Great Commission. He grew up in Phoenix with a Catholic background, the grandson of immigrants from Mexico, and came to faith at 30. Manny and his wife spent six years in Peru mobilizing the Latino church toward unreached peoples. They now serve in Austin, Texas, among the Latino diaspora and alongside North American churches. Manny is also a practitioner in his own city: prayer walking, starting spiritual conversations, and opening the Bible with neighbors on their front porches.
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Key Points
Prayer was the strategy. Manny came to faith at 30, shaped by the Bible studies his mom did with a neighbor. About ten years ago, Bob McNabb's Spiritual Multiplication in the Real World pushed him outside the four walls: prayer walking, spiritual conversations, and writing down the names of lost friends, neighbors, and family and praying over them. When his family moved to Peru in 2017 knowing few people there, "prayer was actually the strategy."
The people easiest to mobilize are already obeying. Back in Austin, Manny found that the people most ready for the nations were already making disciples in their own Jerusalem. A mobilizer who isn't doing what they ask others to do, he says, comes out "looking like a phony or a fraud." Cynthia describes a debate among YWAM Frontier Missions' global leaders that ended with this conclusion: we are all mobilizers, trainers, and practitioners. Jenn remembers being asked, "So you're just with Christians all day?" The best mobilizers and trainers practice what they preach.
In the Latino church, the barrier is often permission. Many Latino neighbors in Austin are open to spiritual conversations and even a Discovery Bible Study on the front porch. When it comes to multiplying groups, many push back because their pastor hasn't approved it. Pastoral authority shows loyalty and discipline, Manny says, but it can also hinder multiplication. So he never goes around the local church. He builds relationships with pastors and helps them see that multiplying disciples will strengthen their own ministry.
In the Western church, the barrier is often comfort. In Manny's 8,000-person multisite church, people need less permission to go. The challenge is getting them out the door at all. "It seems too easy to get wrapped up in a hamster wheel" of programs and activities.
What Latino believers bring. Overseas, brown skin doesn't carry the historical baggage that white skin often does. After Manny taught 40 Egyptian pastors and church planters, his translator passed along the room's question: "Your English is so good, but you don't look American." When he explained that his grandparents came from Mexico, the light went on. Latinos share real common ground with Arab cultures, football included, and many Latin American passports open doors that are hard for Americans to get through. Multicultural teams work best: Anglos open doors of favor, and Manny can go deeper relationally (Revelation 5:9; 7:9).
When the field and home don't match. Cynthia names a hard tension: believers are released on the field to do things their sending churches would never allow back home. Manny's answer is to honor the authorities God has put in place, sit down with pastors, and make clear "we're not trying to steal their sheep." When pride wins, nine times out of ten the person finds a church that supports their calling. A new generation is watching what God is doing and won't wait. Many Latino immigrant churches in the US also try to copy the American model of buildings, budgets, and people in the seats, when the call is to take church to the people.
Covering instead of control. Jenn shares that in Thailand, being few makes many churches self-protective. Some Thai pastors have offered their name and covering to new house churches, which keeps those churches from being scooped up or treated as illegitimate.
The global South is ready to go. Funding is the gap. Manny met Ronald and Glenda Chunga during online mobilization trainings in 2020, when Ronald was already using Via's study as missions director of a large church in Lima. Today they lead Via's mobilization work in Peru, doing it "way better" than Manny and his wife could. Many Peruvians have put their yes on the table. The biggest challenge is funding, and Manny wants to see the North American church come alongside mobilization from the global South.
No Great Commission without the Great Commandment. Manny names five habits of Great Commission obedience: pray, send, mobilize, welcome the foreigner among us, and go. Asked what he'd say to Anglo pastors and to Latino believers, he gives both the same answer: love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind, abide in Him, and let love for your neighbor overflow into making disciples of the nations..
Resources Mentioned
Spiritual Multiplication in the Real World by Bob McNabb
Xplore, Via's small group study on God's heart for the nations, the 10/40 window, and the five habits of a world Christian
Via — vianations.org
Key Question
How do we honor the pastors God has placed over us and still release every believer to make disciples, at home and among the unreached?
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Dave Ferguson: Exponential
Read further articles: Dare To Multiply Blog Page
Join our Membership for more great content: Dare To Multiply Memberships
Order Cynthia’s Book: The Multiplier's Mindset Book
Connect with Cynthia Anderson
