Spotlight on Mission  Positive Stories. Valuable Work.

Building extraordinary partnerships in Peru

Debra Fieguth
Special to ChristianWeek

Deep in the jungle of Peru a group of missionaries is at work trying to reach 13 Amazonian tribes that have never had contact with the outside world. The work is dangerous—there’s a big chance the missionaries might be attacked when they reach the tribes, and the region is fraught with disease.

This small band of committed, passionate missionaries—Amazonians themselves—are among the “extraordinary partners” that work with 60-year-old Partners International. “They are incredibly dedicated missionaries who are willing to go out and live in abject poverty to reach their people,” says Tom McLagan, Partners International’s Canadian director of development.

The area is “beset by disease, tribal warfare and low life expectancy. This is not the Amazon of Hollywood.”

Partners International has been working with MINAP—or “Holistic Tribal Mission of Peru”—for only a year. “They’re in the early stage of development,” explains McLagan. “We’re in the process of helping them build a headquarters.”

What would make an established organization invest in a fledgling missionary group in the jungle?

Experience—faith that God is at work even in the remotest jungles of Peru. Evidence—besides the mobile clinics that are addressing health needs, the Peruvian missionaries are already seeing people come to Christ.

“What makes it so extraordinary is that they are the leaders,” says McLagan.

In business terms, it’s like Partners International investing in the early stages of a company’s formation. “We identify this as a ministry that has tons of potential. They’ve got the leadership, they just don’t have the money.”

Past partnerships—and a certain number of mistakes—have taught the organization how to spot that potential and know if it’s worth investing in. For example, about 40 years ago a young Christian leader in Indonesia named Chris Marantika approached Partners with an idea for training Indonesian pastors and planting churches.

“He was just a guy with a vision.” But Partners sensed he wasn’t “just some dreamer” who would never be able to see the vision to fulfilment.

Today Marantika’s vision is evident in a seminary that has 16 branch campuses and has graduated hundreds of evangelists who have planted more than 1,000 churches across the country.

Partners International has faith that the Peruvian partnership will in time see the same kind of results. Program staff who have visited MINAP “come back and say ‘these guys have it,’” says McLagan. “The only thing they live for is to reach these tribes.”

• Partners International (PI) was started in Shanghai, China in the 1940s by a British missionary who saw the potential of working with national Christian leadership.
• PI now works with more than 100 local ministries in more than 50 countries around the world.
• Church planting is always a component of the indigenous ministry. However, increasingly, PI works with agencies that incorporate compassionate ministry with evangelism, such as establishing orphanages and clinics as well as churches.
• During the recent conflict between Lebanon and Israel, partners in Beirut distributed blankets and food as well as Bibles and New Testaments.
• One of the newest partnerships is in Peru, where reaching Amazonian tribes is “not your normal trip to Tim Hortons,” but involves a four-hour plane ride followed by a week in a motorized canoe.
• Peruvian missionaries are grateful for financial support and visits from PI. One of them commented, “Others have always come to tell us what to do, or to do their own ministry.”