6,300 From Around the World Join in ‘Historic’ Convention : Latino Evangelicals Gather in Anaheim

More than 6,300 people from around the world gathered in Anaheim this week for what participants called a historic convention of Latino evangelicals.

The International Congress for the Evangelization of the Latin World, co-sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. and the Santa Ana-based Alberto Mottesi Evangelistic Assn., drew 1,000 more delegates than expected, including pastors and lay leaders from more than 46 countries.

“It’s a surprise for everyone,” said Mottesi, a local evangelist whose radio broadcasts reach millions of Americans, who added that the four-day event is the largest of its kind in the world. “The conference was completely financed by Latin American people. It’s a great miracle.”

For many attending the conference at the Anaheim Convention Center, it was an ordeal to come. For example, two Bolivians traveled for two months by land to reach Anaheim, and other foreign delegates saved for two years to pay the $75 convention fee. (American delegates paid $125.) About 2,400 without funds for hotel rooms were lodged in Orange County homes.

“Some people sold their cars, their cows to pay for the tickets,” said spokesman Horacio De La Vega, an Argentinean who said he was unhappy with his comfortable middle-class life until he converted to a personal belief in Jesus. “Right here is the training, the motivation and the inspiration for the evangelization of the world.”

Delegate Dorothy de Guerrero of the Dominican Republic said that the impetus for her coming was more than seeking individual happiness for herself and people in her homeland. Preaching the gospel, she said, can improve health and social conditions in undeveloped rural areas. “We believe new people can make a better world.”

Multidenominational evangelical delegates, including Pentecostals as well as Baptists and Methodists, came from traditionally Roman Catholic countries including Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina and Spain as well as Holland and even Japan. About half of the delegates were from the United States, De La Vega said.

“The goal is to prepare more Latins to convert Latins,” said de Guerrero, who came to talk about Universidad Nacional Evangelica, her country’s first evangelical university, which opened two years ago in Santiago. “Many Latins are going to Lebanon or Korea and find out they are received better” than U.S. missionaries, who may be blond, blue-eyed and have trouble learning languages, she said.

“This is a historic event,” Isaac Canales, a Pentecostal, native of East Los Angeles and teacher of Greek at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, said of the conference that ends today. “It pulls (Latinos) all over the world to the challenge of indigenous evangelism.”

In recent years, Latinos have responded in large numbers to evangelists, including the now defrocked Jimmy Swaggart, who preached of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, according to Naomi Rojas, coordinator of Hispanic Ministries programs at Fuller Seminary.

“People get so tired of governments they’re under, they re seeking any action they can get,” and will listen to any kind of hope offered, Rojas said. Guatemala is now 33% evangelical and a “tremendous” spiritual revival is under way in Argentina, Mottesi added.

The prospect of losing converted Latinos worries Roman Catholic officials. “Hispanics have a religious spirit already; it’s easy for other groups to reach out to them,” said Cuban-born Father Enrique Sera, the first Latino to sit on the priests’ council of the Diocese of Orange. Bishop Norman McFarland has asked the priests to implement as much of a new pastoral plan on ministry to Latinos as soon as possible, he said.

In Orange County, 50% of the half-million Catholics are Latino, Sera estimated.

“At the same time, many of these Hispanics (who converted to evangelical faiths) were marginal Catholics,” he said. “So in some ways it is a blessing to them they have found the Lord and are following the Lord’s way. We just wish they would find it with us.”

Already, Bible study groups have been formed in an attempt to give Catholic Latinos a more personal church experience, Sera said.

Some Catholics also are evangelicals, dedicated to “spreading the good news, the gospel for Jesus Christ,” said Father Lawrence Baird, chairman for the commission on ecumenical interreligious affairs for the Diocese of Orange.

But Catholic Church officials regard evangelicals who proselytize among Catholics with a chosen “faith tradition,” as un-Christian, Baird said.

“Our general attitude is that there seems to be an anti-Catholicism implied when they say they’re going to go to Hispanic people and make them Christian. If they are Catholic, they’re already Christian,” said Father Gregory Coiro, special assistant in public affairs at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

About Alberto Mottesi

He is 46.

He was born in Argentina and now lives in Huntington Beach.

His family converted to Baptist Church when he was 11.

He started his Santa Ana-based ministry eight years ago.

His radio show reaches 500 Spanish-speaking stations worldwide and is played 750 times a day. He also has a weekly TV show, a daily press column, seminars for Latino leaders and stadium-based crusades.

He says he never solicits money on TV or radio.