Marcelo Nicolau is the Moderator of the Evangelical Waldensian Church in the Río de la Plata. Marcelo and his colleagues believe a demographic challenge is facing their church. In the following article, Marcelo explains what that challenge is and how South American Waldensians are reinventing their church to confront that challenge.
Until a few decades ago, the Waldensian Evangelical Church in the Río de la Plata was still essentially an immigration church, a transplant church, whose hallmark was its rural identity.
The demographic change that moved the church from the countryside to the city center took place over at least five decades (from around 1960 to around 2010). Today, at least in demographic terms, that process is practically finished. In the way we think and act, however, we still often function as if the rural church still existed. When our operating model of church life gives way, it is a kind of death and that can be painful, not without tensions and conflicts.
In most cases, our congregations have understood that the challenges that God poses today have to do with the urban culture and not their geographical location. In fact, nowadays urban culture extends everywhere with nuances – including even small towns and rural areas. The rural family church has given way to a church where the individual’s personal decision to follow Christ is determinative, and not just the fact that one was born in a certain ethnic group or tradition. In this transition and change, openness to the social environment is the decisive factor that makes a church either thrive and grow or stagnate and die.
Put another way, the church is on the way. The challenge is great. The adventure of responding to Christ’s call in the cultural context in which we live is beautiful. From the future and from the margins of our society, God is calling us anew to the work of bringing the Gospel.
Marcelo also wrote specifically about the shortage of pastors in the Río de la Plata.
Throughout the history of the Evangelical Waldensian Church in the Río de la Plata in South America, the work of pastors has been fundamental to the life of faith communities not only spiritually but also culturally and organizationally. These pastors, who in the early days came from Italy, in later years were increasingly pastors who had been trained in the region. Wherever they came from, these pastors were fundamental for the strengthening and growth of the congregations in the Río de la Plata.
However, since the year 2000, for many reasons, the number of pastors has been declining, at least in the historic churches. The decline in the number of pastors and church workers has resulted in a profound change in how ministry is done. The reasons for the decline in the number of pastors are many and complex, but the consequence is a decrease in the number of theology students and even more in the number of new pastors being ordained. The number of new pastors is significantly lower – and sometimes even dramatically lower – than the number that would be needed to fill vacancies caused by the simple passage of time and generations.
Does this mean the end of our churches? Without a doubt it is the end of a way of being church. But there are positive signs that show that the churches (or at least some of them) are preparing for a different time, in which lay leadership will play a significantly greater role. We are preparing for this new time partly by engaging in new efforts to strengthen the theological training of lay leaders by converting traditional faculties of theology into educational platforms that are much closer to the needs of lay people. Copernicus changed astronomy by discovering that the sun and not the earth is the center of our solar system. This change in who does ministry and how they are prepared for ministry is resulting in a church that is much closer to the church in the first century. This is a new Copernican revolution in Latin American Christianity.
