Thinking small has paid off in a big way for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Peru. By using small groups of church members who reach out to neighbors, the church is doubling the number of new members joining annually, and doing a better job of keeping
Thinking small has paid off in a big way for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Peru. By using small groups of church members who reach out to neighbors, the church is doubling the number of new members joining annually, and doing a better job of keeping them in the community.
Already growing by an average 25,000 members per year since 1995, the growth rate has jumped since changing its evangelistic emphasis from large public meetings in favor of small group ministries in 1999.
In 2002 over 51,000 people were baptized in Peru. This year 21,000 new members have been baptized through May.
Melchor Ferreyra, president of the Adventist Church in Peru, says small group ministries are not only successful in attracting new members into the church, but that the apostasy rate has dropped from 87 percent to 17 percent in the last three years.
The small group phenomenon has been a tremendous success because of wide acceptance of the system. For church members it is not just a weekly obligation, but a way of life.
“In reality small groups are not a method of work, it’s a lifestyle,” says Ferreyra, “We want the church to live in small groups and to work in small groups and also to grow in small groups.”
When large public meetings were the premier method of evangelism, many members were not able to participate in the process. They were spectators in the stands, according to Pastor Salomon Arana, president of the church in the Northeast region of Peru.
“What’s happening in Peru wasn’t so easy. Just four years ago they depended on the pastor very much. Really, the pastor was central to every evangelistic program. If the pastor did not get involved, if the pastor did nothing, there was nothing,” says Arana.
Large-scale public evangelism did not allow the entire church to participate because it was a program “for specialists only,” according to Ferreyra. Only those who knew how to do public evangelism got involved. “[Members] applauded but did not participate,” he adds.
Small groups encourage growth and improve member retention because their church experience consists of more than a weekly visit to a pew. Church leaders say that when members are divided into small groups they lead, guide, worry about peers, engage in visitation, and do more missionary work.
Small groups also help the church reach out into the community; to people that might not otherwise be interested in coming to church. With small groups people feel more comfortable going to a home or visiting with a friend from work or neighbor that has invited them.
Retaining more new members has been another benefit of small groups. Before small groups existed, new members tended to feel alone and out of place, according to Pastor Ferreyra. “The difference with small groups is that they start making friends from the beginning,” he says, “through friendship, companionship with neighbors and relatives and also with work mates. That has permitted the church to add about 50,000 people per year.”
The small group explosion has brought much rejoicing to the church in Peru as well as two “crisis of growth,” according to Pastor Ferreyra: a shortage of pastors and infrastructures, especially churches.
The fact that the number of pastors has not been growing proportionately with the number of members is significant, but not crucial, since the very nature of small groups makes them very self-reliant. They organize themselves easily and are eager to help out in any way they can, easing the burden of overworked pastors that often care for multiple churches.
The second crisis is far more serious. There is a desperate need for infrastructures—churches and schools—in this poor Andean nation where 54 percent of the population is below the poverty level. There are only about 1,500 churches for Peru’s nearly 600,000 members.
Abel Guevara, treasurer for the church in Peru’s Northeastern region, believes that it would be ideal to build enough churches first, in order to receive all of the new members. The reality is that we win souls and we don’t know where to place them,” he adds. “The churches do not exist to place all of our members.”
The church in Peru was caught off guard by the membership explosion that small groups have spurred. Pastor Ferreyra admits that the lack of insufficient planning for adequate infrastructures is the result of growing too fast.
“It’s possible, because we have been growing much faster than we can attend our members,” he says. “We’re growing too fast, and I’m thinking we don’t have an infrastructure development plan. We have to do it.”
One regional church official fears that pastors will return to what he calls the “criteria of the past,” when, he says, some pastors would slow down their work and prepare for a year or two in order to buy land and build a church to receive new members.
In response to the need, Maranatha Volunteers International, a lay supporting ministry, announced last month that it would build 100 churches and 14 schools in Peru as part of its “1,000 Churches in 1,000 Days” initiative.
Maranatha Volunteers president Don Noble is excited about the opportunity that the new buildings will provide for the church membership in Peru. “I am convicted that God led us to be here,” he says. “If we build 100 projects in this country it is going to make a difference—God is going to bless it.”
Although church officials are grateful for the new buildings they will receive, they realize it’s just a start. They hope that the Maranatha project will be an “impulse that will generate a change of culture within the church to start the construction process,” according to Pastor Ferreyra.
Though some might consider holding back the reins on small group evangelism to slow down the growth, it just doesn’t seem to fit with the vision of the Peruvian church.
“Oh, I believe that it could be an alternative. Not to advance with the preaching until we build more churches,” says Pastor Arana. “But I believe that the mission of the church is to advance. And if we don’t have churches, even if it’s under a tree, or under a palm, or in a garage, the church cannot stop.”
Pastor Ferreyra agrees and sees no signs of slowing down. He believes that by the year 2005 the church in Peru will approach 800,000 members if they continue to grow at this pace.
“It’s not just thinking about baptism, baptism, baptism,” says Ferreyra, “because that’s putting people in the boat and it won’t make the boat grow. We must grow in an integrated manner.” He believes that by working together with small groups and careful planning, the church will be better prepared for future growth.
