By Jennifer Taylor
Tom Jones (center) stands with father and son Pedro and Santiago Delhierro at a church construction site in Las Laguna, Ecuador.Stadia has been planting churches across North America for more than 10 years. This spring it will begin planting churches internationally, as well.
The ministry”s new “glocal” initiative combines global partnerships with local church planting.
The project is starting in April with four new churches launching near Manta, Ecuador. Stadia is working with Compassion International, a Christian child advocacy ministry, and Camino de Santidad, a church planting movement that has already started 25 churches.
“About 5,000 people live in each of the villages we”ve chosen, but there are no churches of any kind,” Stadia shares. “Several lack wells to provide drinking water; they all lack schools and health care.”
Partnership with Camino and Compassion will not only create new churches in these villages, it will lead to new wells, education, health care, and child sponsorship for the families living there.
“We”re not going to tell them how to plant churches in Ecuador when they”ve been succeeding for decades,” says Stadia President Marcus Bigelow. “But we are going to help them and provide resources to transform these communities.”
Creating a “glocal” focus also expands the mission of Stadia”s U.S. plants.
“Every time we plant a church in the United States, we want to work with them to also plant a church internationally,” Bigelow says. “This kind of partnership embeds the mission into these plants and provides new opportunities for service and giving.”
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Jennifer Taylor, one of Christian Standard”s contributing editors, lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Read her blog at www. christianstandard.com.
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