Latin America

Which five countries in Latin America have lowest % of evangelicals?  All right, we all know that this number is only marginally useful.  There are a lot of nominal evangelicals (particularly where the % is high), and there are a lot of “evangelicals”.  But still, for comparison’s sake, which countries are the bottom 5?

With the best information I could find for 2013, they are

Paraguay is at the bottom.  Incidentally, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Guatemala and Honduras are at the top, with the most evangelicals.

Now here’s the odd thing.  Out of those 5 countries, there’s only one that has fewer missionaries (per capita) than Mexico.  It’s Colombia.

So why is it that out of the bottom 5, Mexico and Colombia have so few missionaries?  The other 3 are in the top 7 when it comes to missionaries, but Mexico and Colombia are waaaay behind.

But I have more bad news for Mexico.  The growth rate of evangelicals in Colombia is the highest in Latin America.  Mexico, on the other hand, is about in the middle, with only 63% the growth rate of Colombia.

So all things considered – missionaries, evangelicals, and evangelical growth rate – Mexico isn’t looking so great!

Yes, the world’s largest Spanish speaking country – strategic, and currently open – do you see why we’re asking people to come to Mexico?

Before I started looking into it, I thought “everyone went to Mexico”.  Well, there are a lot of short term teams hitting the border.  But incidentally, most of the evangelicals in Mexico are south of us on the Guatemala border and in the north east.  So central Mexico has a much lower % of evangelicals – probably far lower than any other country in Latin America.

So we should take every missionary out of the other countries and send them to Mexico, right?

WRONG!  Ok, sure, maybe it’s time for some to move on.  But there are still segments of the population in every country that won’t be reached unless someone from outside comes in to reach them (either outside their country or outside their culture or group).  There are unreached people in all these countries.

Also, many are training leaders and missionaries that could be serving Mexico and other countries that need church planters.

So no, we don’t need to move all the missionaries to other countries.  They’re needed where they are!  And we can’t deny the need in many other countries around the world.

What we need is more people who are willing to come to Mexico to have a part in reaching these vast numbers of who haven’t heard the Gospel.  Pray that the Lord would send workers!

Ok, so statistics only tell you so much – and maybe that’s not much.  Still, I think they can give you a clue about what’s going on in the world.

Yes, there’s still a need in Mexico.  Are you interested in coming for a week?  6 months?  A year?  Contact us and let’s talk about it!