On Mission in El Paso/Juarez

by Jonathan Kindberg

As one of the largest Bi-national metropolises in the world, El Paso/Juarez is a region of contrasts and contradictions. While El Paso is the safest city of its size in the United States, Juarez, a mere stone’s throw across the dried up Rio Grande, is the most dangerous city on earth. This last weekend 37 people were murdered, the bloodiest three days in the city’s history. Furthermore, while El Paso is a modern city of considerable wealth, many areas in Juarez do not even have running water.
This last weekend myself and William and Anne Beasley of the  Greenhouse Regional Church Movement spent four days in El Paso/Juarez at the invitation of St. Clement’s Anglican Church presenting the Greenhouse model for the spontaneous expansion of the church.

Contrasted with traditional models of church planting that require ordained clergy and large amounts of planning and resources, the Greenhouse model uses lay pastors (known as Catechists), little to no resources and emphasizes that it is “the whole church raising up the whole church,” everyone using their Spirit given gifts and talents.

El Paso/Juarez is a region ripe for such spontaneous expansion.  El Paso is approximately 90% Hispanic and a thoroughly bicultural and bilingual city. Espanglish is the lingua franca. The city is a living example of what many think is the future of the United States. “We’re seeing the development of two populations groups in Texas: aging Anglos and young minorities. We’re seeing Hispanic growth not just deepen but become pervasive throughout the state. The Texas of today is the U.S. of tomorrow,” says Steve Murdock, former Census Bureau director and now a Rice University sociology professor, on the Latino population growth in Texas (quoted in USA Today).

While St. Clement’s is a generally wealthy congregation, the neighborhood surrounding their building is an economically depressed area.  Eight year ago, responding to the difficulties facing those living in the surrounding neighborhood, St. Clement’s started Ciudad Nueva, a community development corporation currently serving over 200 at risk children and youth in the surrounding community through after school programs and community outreach. It is a beautiful picture of the church at work in the “transformation of society,” one of the accountabilities that Archbishop Bob Duncan constantly reminds us of.

This demographic shift and the reality of injustice and poverty are realities that we as Anglicans have yet to grapple with in our church planting efforts. As a movement we are still primarily Anglo (as our name also seems to communicate) and primarily middle to upper class. I pray that as a movement we begin to plant churches that reflect our changing society: multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and messy. Churches of the kind we have never seen before. I pray that we not only plant many, many churches, but that we plant churches that have a deep impact on communities and neighborhoods, following in the example of Ciudad Nueva. I pray that we plant churches that welcome the stranger and that attack the root causes of poverty and injustice, churches that bring the good news of the Gospel. Let us all pray that this be the case in El Paso/Juarez.