INTRODUCTION
The
idea of producing a
national study of Hispanic Protestant church growth in the USA
first came to mind during the period 1970-1972 when I was a M.A. student in the School of World
Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary (FTS) in Pasadena, CA. At that time I was engaged in bibliographical
research, field work and writing for my thesis, which was published under the title, The
Religious Dimension in Hispanic Los Angeles: A Protestant Case Study
(South Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1974 – 554 pages). Although the subject matter was focused on the
geographical confines of Southern California, I could not help but dream about the
possibility of expanding the coverage of my research to the whole nation.
The
second time that the idea emerged was when I returned to FTS in 1980-1981 for doctoral
studies at the School of World Mission. Between
1972 and 1980 I served as a missionary in Costa Rica with the nondenominational Latin
America Mission (with headquarters in Bogota, New Jersey – later relocated to Miami,
Florida) on-loan to the International
Institute for In-Depth Evangelization (IINDEPTH, sponsor of the Evangelism-in-Depth
national crusades in Latin America). While
at FTS, I was invited to teach a course in the Hispanic Studies Department of the School
of Theology using my previous study of the Hispanic Protestant Church in Southern
California as the primary text book. I was
privileged to have 33 Hispanic students in my course, which was taught in a bilingual
format (Spanish-English) because the text book was written in English and most of my
lectures and questions and answers were in Spanish or Bilingual.
One
of the primary requirements for my course was for each student to write a brief historical
account of the origin and development of his/her denomination in English or Spanish,
building on what I had written earlier in The
Religious Dimension about each denomination. However,
some of the students were allowed to write about the origin and development of their
individual congregations and to include a “church growth” analysis. Some of my students did an excellent job of
researching and writing their respective articles, while others were unable to live up to
my expectations; and a few did not complete the assignment.
Thinking about the future, I made photocopies of the best term papers for my files
and added them to my collection of materials accumulated during my research for The Religious Dimension.
After
my year of study-furlough in residence at FTS, in late 1981, I returned to Costa Rica and
resumed my responsibilities with IINDEPTH in Central America, while completing the writing
of my doctoral dissertation on “The
History of the Protestant Movement in Central America,”
and doing the final editing of World
Christianity: Central America and the Caribbean,
which was published by MARC-World Vision in 1982.
The
next time that the idea of working on a national study of Hispanic Protestant church
growth in the USA emerged was during the period 1985-1989 when I was encouraged by some of
my Hispanic friends to think seriously about this task, after I had completed a series of
national studies in each country of Central America between 1977 and 1981 under the
auspices of the Central
American Socio-Religious Studies Program (PROCADES),
which I founded and directed while serving with IINDEPTH. By the mid-1980s, PROCADES had
evolved into PROLADES
(Latin American Socio-Religious Studies Program)
as a consequence of expanding the ministry to other Latin American and Caribbean
countries. However, the limits of time and
funding made such a national study of Hispanic church growth in the USA impossible during
the 1980s, although we did gather a group of national Hispanic leaders in Irving, TX, for
a weekend consultation during April 5-7, 1988, which was intended to be the startup for a
national study. Although we were able to
obtain “seed money” to organize a National
Coordinating Committee for the Hispanic USA study
and hold the 1988 consultation, we were unsuccessful in obtaining major grants from
foundations to finance the national study during the late 1980s. The name chosen for this project was “Let
Hispanics in North America Hear His Voice!” For more information about the 1988
consultation, see: http://www.hispanicchurchesusa.net/documents/clh-special_report_for_HABBM_1993.pdf
This
happened in the days before the arrival of personal computers, the Internet and e-mail. A national study at that time would have required
us to establish a central office for the project; obtain personnel on-loan from other
organizations or hire needed workers; purchase needed office furniture, equipment and
materials; make hundreds of phone calls; travel to all parts of the country and interview
leaders of about 100 denominations; photocopy thousands of pages of needed documents;
purchase scores of published materials; process, organize and analyze all the gathered
information; type by hand the preliminary and final documents; read, make corrections and
do the final editing; and publish and distribute the final results of the study. At that time, we estimated that we would need a
minimum of about $50,000 yearly for three years to complete the study, plus additional
resources to publish the results, without having to pay for salaries as we expected that
partnership agencies would loan us the needed personnel with salary for three years. However, during the 1980s, our dreams and plans for
such a national study were frustrated.
During
the early 1990s, I returned to the Los Angeles area to coordinate A
Study of Ethnic and Religious Diversity in the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area (GLAMA),
with the logistical support of a dozen partnership agencies, which enabled my organization
to establish a project office in Pasadena on the campus of the U.S. Center for World
Mission and the William Carey International University.
During the period 1990 to 1994, the IDEA Ministries office staff -- Andy and
Dorciane Toth (PCA), Ben Capps (YWAM), Enrique Danwing (ARPC), and several other part-time
volunteers, including Alan Young, our computer technical support person -- and I were able
to create a data base of over 12,500 local congregations of all religious groups in GLAMA,
which included all known Hispanic Protestant churches.
We later expanded the Hispanic dbase to include all of Southern California,
building on the Directory of Hispanic Protestant
Churches in Southern California, produced by Mr. Lou Cordova of the Institute for
Latin American Studies (ILAS) at the U.S. Center for World Mission, in collaboration with
IDEA Ministries, and published in April 1986 by the Hispanic
Association for Theological Education (AHET, Asociacion Hispana de Educacion Teologica)
with offices in Montebello, CA.
During
the early 1990s, I became an active member of AHET, led by the Rev.
Jesse Miranda (Superintendent of the Pacific Latin American District of the Assemblies of
God),
and participated in the AHET
History Committee
under the direction of the Rev.
Dr. Rodelo Wilson. I served as the project manager for the production
of a 224-page compendium of articles on the history of a dozen Protestant denominations
with Hispanic ministry in Southern California. This
volume was published by AHET in April 1993 under the title, Hacia
una Historia de la Iglesia Evangelica Hispana de California del Sur. Some of the original articles that were considered
for publication had been written by students in my FTS course on the History of the Hispanic
Protestant Church in Southern California in 1980-1981. However, since these earlier
articles had been written about ten years previously, the History Committee decided ask
each author to update them or to invite other Hispanic leaders to write new articles about
their respective denominations. Consequently,
some of the articles published by the AHET History Committee in 1993 were updated versions
of the original 1980-1981 documents, while others were newly written. See the following website for the online version of
the AHET History compendium: http://www.hispanicchurchesusa.net/AHET/indice2.htm
Also,
during 1993, my office staff and I were able conduct a preliminary study of Hispanic
Protestant denominations in the USA and produce a series of documents, which were
presented to the board of directors of the Hispanic
Association for Bilingual-Bicultural Ministries (HABBM)
in Santa Ana, CA, on October 13, 1993 in fulfillment of our contract with HABBM, which
provided us with a small grant for this undertaking. At
that time, I was an active member of the HABBM board of directors and one of its founding
directors, under the leadership of the Rev.
Danny de Leon, senior pastor of Templo Calvario Assemblies of God in Santa Ana. It was not until the mid-2000s that I was able to
process this information and make some of it available on my website at: www.ideaministries.com. Now, with the creation of our new website at www.HispanicChurchesUSA.net,
we have now made some of these documents available at:
http://www.hispanicchurchesusa.net/national_hisp_study_93.htm
Now,
more than seventeen years have passed since the publication of the AHET History compendium
in 1993. After my retirement as a professor and member of the board of directors of the Evangelical
University of the Americas (UNELA = Universidad Evangelica de las Americas)
in Costa Rica in 2007, I resumed an active role as director of PROLADES and began to
think, once again, about the possibility of coordinating a national study of Hispanic
church growth in the USA.
However,
another opportunity soon presented itself when I was invited by Dr.
J. Gordon Melton,
general editor of Religions
of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices
(Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Publishers, First Edition, three volumes, 2002) to update my
original articles included in the First Edition and to help Melton update articles on
other countries in the Americas for the Second Edition to be published in 2010. This activity took up most of my time during 2008
and 2009, and it resulted in the production of 35 updated country articles for the Encyclopedia.
In addition, Melton encouraged me to rewrite all the country articles for Latin
America and the Caribbean and to prepare them to be published in three volumes: tentative title, “Religion
in Latin America and the Caribbean.” The
end result would be a total of about 700 pages in a 6 X 9 format, which was completed in
October 2009. The process of final editing and
formatting continues, as well as negotiations with the publisher.
As
my work on the Encyclopedia neared an end, the
opportunity of turning my attention to a national study of Hispanic church growth in the USA
presented itself between July and December of 2009 during two trips that I made to
Southern California from my home in Costa Rica. My preliminary conversations with Hispanic
leaders in Southern California during late 2009 resulted in the impetus needed to launch
the present national study, with the support of a dozen or more key Hispanic and Anglo
leaders who believed that the time had, indeed, come to begin such a study.
Consequently, in early January 2010, I took the necessary steps to launch the project,
form a support group of Advisors, create a new website, and begin the long process of
research, writing and production of a series of new documents for the “Online
Handbook of Hispanic Protestant Denominations, Institutions and Ministries in the
USA” at: www.HispanicChurchesUSA.net
The
documents on this website are a compilation of information from many sources as noted in
each section of the Home Page and related links. We
have begun the process on consulting with leaders of +150 Protestant denominations with
Hispanic ministry in the USA. The website and
related documents are purposefully designed to be “a work in progress,” so that
corrections, additions and updates can be added continuously by participating individuals
and organizations.
At
long last, a more complete picture of the origin and development of the Hispanic Protestant
Church in the USA is now emerging as each piece of the mosaic is added, trimmed, fitted
and polished. This is what I previously experienced regionally when I wrote The Religious Dimension in Hispanic Los Angeles
during 1970-1972. Others authors have added
other pieces to the national mosaic by contributing regional and denominational histories
of the Hispanic Protestant Church in the USA; see the following web pages for more
information:
http://www.hispanicchurchesusa.net/history_docs.htm
http://www.hispanicchurchesusa.net/hispanic_regional_studies.htm
In
order to orient the reader to our classification system of religious bodies in the Americas,
please see the following document: http://www.hispanicchurchesusa.net/clas-eng.pdf
We
welcome your comments, corrections, suggestions and contributions to this study so that
the final product will be more comprehensive and, hopefully, free of distortion and
misinformation.
Clifton
L. Holland,
Compiler, Editor and Producer: www.HispanicChurchesUSA.net
President
of IDEA Ministries: www.ideaministries.com
Director
of PROLADES: E-mail: prolades@ice.co.cr Internet: www.prolades.com
San
Jose,
Costa Rica
25
March 2010