Walking in God's way

Be strong and courageous and keep the charge of the Lord your God – I Kings 2:2

Since the revolution in the 1950s, the churches have had to find their way in Cuba. More recently, national policies have become a little less restrictive and the Cuba Council of Churches now includes about 50 member churches.

Council president and Presbyterian pastor Joel Ortega Dopico says the Council’s purpose is to help the Cuban churches be more effective in their mission. He says the church can never lose sight of their two fundamental responsibilities – developing church leaders and serving the community.

Pastor Luis Hernanez has been the national president of the more than 150 Brethren in Christ (BIC) churches for less than a year. While the BICs are not a member of the Council of Churches, Pastor Luis demonstrates his commitment to these responsibilities as well.

Pastor Louis earns about 300 Cubanas each month (about $12 USD). For his salary, Louis is the director of the national church, the administrator of a teaching center and the pastor of a local congregation in Palmira.

Sunday morning, Pastor Luis welcomes the congregation and many of the 17 BIC pastors of the Cienfuegos region who have assembled here for our conversation later. He shares from John 17 about Jesus’ desire for his followers to be one. He tells the congregation that they should be prepared because God is calling them, too.

After the service, we talk to the pastors. Many walked for hours, bicycled or shared a ride to get here. One pastor says he’s supported by the community, even though they don’t have the resources to do so. Another couple says their primary ministry is to help the poor, be involved in the community and win them for Christ.

The pastors meet together each month to support each other and to be accountable to each other. One pastor tells us that our visit is a real joy for the churches and that the churches have been praying that we would be able to visit them. “Through MCC,” he says, “the churches here can touch people in need all over the world.”

Another pastor tells us that the BIC churches are poor and they may not be able to share food with people in other parts of the word, but they can offer words of encouragement and share what they have.

One pastor says they need to struggle for their land, but they are thankful to God that they live in Cuba. We prayed for these pastors and asked God to give them strength for their leadership of the churches and for their work in these communities.

The next day, we visit one of the BIC house churches in La Havana. A family has contributed part of their house for worship for this church community. As we stand in the front area of the small worship space and talk to the pastor, we can look through the entrance into the rest of the living space and see family members going about their daily routines.

Despite all the challenges, Pastor Luis says, the churches here share what they can with each other and with their communities and they will continue to share. 

He says that, as a leader, God simply asks him to walk in God’s way, and to be strong and courageous, just as King David instructed his son Solomon. Being strong and courageous is how I would describe Pastor Luis, too.


Ron Byler is executive director of MCC U.S. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

They welcomed us

Image
One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. (John 9:25) She was addicted to drugs for 20 years. She was in prison and her family broke apart. Her child was in an orphanage and her husband died. Because of her substance abuse, she eventually lost her one arm below her elbow. She saw no way out. She had hit the very bottom. When she came to know God, Natalia says everything changed. She found she had a deep desire to help people like herself and she discovered that her life experiences helped her understand others. “I remember what God did in my life and I have hope that God can touch other peoples’ lives and give them new life, too,” Natalia tells me. In Nikopol, Ukraine, she and Olga and Valodya, both of whom have similar stories to tell of their own, began New Life Charitable Fund a half dozen years ago to help people in prison, or who have drug or alcohol addictions, are HIV positive, homeless or for some other reason need a helping hand. Ukraine has
Read more

God multiplies our efforts

Image
Sister Zita at the La Posada shelter with baby Emmanuel and members of our border learning tour. Photo courtesy of Janae Rempel The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail. – I Kings 17:14 Ana Hinojosa remembers growing up on the Texas-Mexico border near Brownsville in the late 80s. Her family’s house was a mile from the border wall and she remembers the extended family gatherings in her back yard. Ana, an MCC immigration staff person, says border patrol agents would rest in the shade of the trees near the front of her house and, in the same day, it would be possible for a family from Mexico to knock on her front door to ask for food or directions. Her family turned no one away. Life on the border can look quite different today. When we enter the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen, Texas, it is startling to see the contrast from the serenity of the neighborhood outside to the chaos inside. Cesar Matta tells us that, today, the cente
Read more

A river of love

Image
For it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. – Matthew 25:40 “We are happy you are here to see this with your own eyes,” the leader of the Islamic Charities organization in Deir Attieh, Syria tells us, a group of MCC people visiting partner organizations in Syria. “We can’t express enough our heartfelt thanks to you.” Islamic Charities works with 3,000 at risk families affected by the war in the region and relies heavily on the work of volunteers. MCC provides food boxes to Islamic Charities as part of our humanitarian assistance in Syria. When I visit five families who received these food boxes, I recall the heartfelt thanks but feel mostly heart broken.    We visit two families living in a partially constructed apartment complex that stalled when the war began. The first family lives in a small two-room apartment, the mother and her five children and the woman’s father. Her husband is serving in the army. The second family includes seven
Read more