CrossPoint Baptist Church in Worland, Wyoming, partnered with an organization called Good News In Action this spring to help start a church in Mexico City.
Good News In Action was founded in 1971 in San Salvador, El Salvador, and CrossPoint has been working with the organization for the past couple of years. GNIA’s strategy is to train up pastors and send them to areas of the world that have a deficit of gospel-centered preaching.
In March, CrossPoint sent a team of five evangelists to help start the new church in Mexico City. GNIA had been planning on sending two pastors to start the work last August, but due to COVID restrictions the launch was postponed a number of times — until leaders decided it was time to begin the new work despite the challenges.
So five individuals departed Cody, Wyoming, on the morning of March 6 not knowing exactly what would happen. They arrived in Mexico City that night and were part of the new church’s first worship service that Sunday — though there was yet to be much of a congregation.
Gospel conversations and professions of faith
Each day the team went out on the streets of Mexico City with a few individuals from other parts of the United States to share the gospel through interpreters. Anyone who made a profession of faith was connected to the new church. What the team did not know was that Mexico City was on total lockdown due to COVID, until a few days before they arrived in-country.
When they began the work, team members didn’t know how receptive locals would be to talking to strangers from another country.
But God prepared a great number of people’s hearts to hear and receive the gospel message. Throughout the week the team had 588 gospel conversations and witnessed 225 professions of faith.
Then the real work began, when the two pastors attempted to follow up with all those who had professed Christ as Savior and to connect them to the new church that had its second worship service the next Sunday.
The team saw a number of those who professed Christ get plugged in with the new church that next Sunday. They agreed it was a tremendous blessing to be part of what God was doing in that part of the world.
CrossPoint already is planning its next trip with GNIA, to Bogota, Colombia in January.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This article was written by John Burns, pastor of CrossPoint Baptist Church in Worland, Wyoming, and was originally published by Horizons, newsletter of the Wyoming Southern Baptist Mission Network.
