A Quiet Man
Shaping a network across the Latin American civilization.
[Left to Right: Mario, Lucas, Katherina, Josiah (making the same face my son makes if we have more then three takes in the same photo op) and Amuy.]
I met Mario and his family about nine months ago at the 2024 BILD summit in Ames, Iowa, where 150 or so network leaders from around the globe gathered to represent the churches in their contexts and collaborate together on how to continue shaping a global movement of churches who are gospel-shaped extended families. (It feels like I’ve known Mario for a decade. That’s how quickly he draws you in and gets you partnering with him.) Mario’s reputation as a quiet, careful, effective leader had preceded him and my initial impression of him was that maybe he was a little too quiet.
About four months later, I had the opportunity to travel to Spain for our European leadership summit, which Mario and their church hosted. I spent five days there getting to know his family and the church and was absolutely floored by the mature families and larger church community they have carefully built in their situation on the Southern coast of Spain. (I wrote about that trip here.)
This was not always the case for them. About fifteen years ago Mario moved his family from Panama to Spain to pastor a traditional church. But the pressures and dysfunction they encountered in that church began to tear at their own family. The church was not a community. It was not a family and so instead, it functioned like any other institution, resisting change, which made it impossible for Mario to help them become mature. He spent seven years working to stabilize this church, but was continually met with institutional battles, and obstacles of immature people who refused to follow his lead. All of this was causing extreme stress on his wife and even led to his daughter becoming fed up with what she perceived as Christianity and even reaching the point of wanting nothing to do with church.
Right as things began to fall apart, Mario discovered the concepts and paradigm of Christ’s plan to build His church as a global family of families, and it made all the difference. He left the traditional church with the desire to plant a simple church community out of his home. He began to work hard at orienting his own marriage around these principles, then extended that out to his children and then together they began to sacrificially invest in a few young families and over the course of the past seven years a small cluster of simple churches have emerged who are self-sufficient, freeing him to do the same thing in other places. Mario’s field of work has continued to expand, now including both the extensive Latin American civilization around the world and various parts of Europe.
His own example, his intense, hard work, and the investment he has made in relationships with these key church leaders across Latin America paid real dividends last week, as these Latin American leaders came together, helped one another solve problems and make plans, and then departed on the other side as a one-minded network who will continue to strengthen and help one another.
One final note about Mario’s family. When I was in Spain, I got to know his 23-year-old daughter Katherina. She is an amazing woman with an amazing story, and she made such an impression on me that I now refer to her my hija adoptiva, my adopted daughter in Christ. Together with Mario’s family, we are building Jesus’s global family movement across different civilizations, regions, networks, and traditions.
One more final note (I promise this one is really final) about Mario’s leaders. I met Josue, Lidia, Alvaro and Deisy (I’m certain I’m not spelling their names correctly, which bothered me enough to make this comment, but not enough to text them as ask for the correct spellings.) I met them when I was in Spain last June, along with a few other young couples who are building their lives and households into a community and then together investing in their neighborhoods and city. I have been repeatedly impressed by their dedication and commitment to Mario, to one another, and to Christ, which is evident in the things they talk about and the way the talk about them, their focus, and their priorities. All of them have stepped up to lead in their homes and churches, freeing Mario to pursue fulfilling his calling as an apostolic leader.