Evangelism in Cuba
By Ruth Schenk | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Going door to door to talk to people about Jesus might be part of a bygone era of evangelism in the United States.
Not so in Cuba, said Southeast member Jay Melgar, who went there on a short-term trip in June.
There, members of Eduardo Otero’s church, which has grown from three to 50 home churches scattered around the island, went through a local community, knocking on doors.
Melgar wasn’t so sure about the outreach.
At the first house the team visited, three generations lived in one dwelling. The grandfather of the family answered the door. For 10 minutes, the elderly man talked with Melgar,
the only Spanish-speaking member of the group, about how no one could force him to accept Christ.
He said that he had been a revolutionary and didn’t believe in God.
Melgar didn’t translate the conversation to others in the group, but at the end asked Southeast staff member John O’Neal if there as anything he wanted to say.
Without hesitation, O’Neal began laying out the plan of salvation, pausing to let Melgar translate the message. The grandfather seemed to listen carefully, then said that he
wanted to accept Jesus as his Savior and be baptized.
“I was totally shocked and in awe,” Melgar said. “It just shows that God always does more than we ask or think. It was amazing to see that people in Cuba are hungry for the
Gospel. ”
He already has signed up for the next trip to Cuba.
Southeast member Steve Scott, who has led dozens of trips to Cuba, said it’s always amazing to see how God works.
For decades, the church in Cuba was called “church of the silence.” There was no evangelism, sports ministry or worship under communism. Much of the island was
developed as a social experiment with limits on faith as formidable as the Havana wall that keeps ocean waters at bay.
History tells of persecution and imprisonment of Christians. But when restrictions began to ease in the 1980s and early 1990s, Southeast member Dan Garcia, whose
grandparents fled Cuba in 1903, went to Cuba to explore the possibility of ministry there. He found Otero living in the baptismal font of a small church with his wife, Vivian, and
two young children.
Southeast’s partnership with Otero has grown stronger over the years.
Southeast member Jason Bragg said the church in Alamar is changing the culture in Cuba. Church members have used baseball to reach out into communities. Mission
teams that go to Cuba serve wherever the church chooses. They might revamp baseball fields for more outreach, work with players and coaches, women’s ministry or children.
But ministry isn’t always “doing.” Since life in Cuba revolves around relationships, ministry also means sitting down with church members for a cup of coffee, sharing a
homemade meal of rice and beans at the church, studying the Bible or gathering at a house church for worship.
Otero said his vision is to see all of Cuba affected by the presence of the church.
“There’s been enough time for atheists to tell people there is no God,” he said. “My dream is that the color of my country will change on the world map. In 1997, I saw a map with
atheistic countries in brown. Cuba was brown. I pray that someday I will live to see the color change by seeing people walk with the Lord.”