Casa De Libertad

I discovered a wonderful movement of the Kingdom of God in Guatemala City, Guatemala under the leadership of Pastor Francisco Bendfeldt in a recent visit. The new church is called Casa De Libertad (House of Freedom). This young church has the potential to ignite a revolution of new evangelical churches in Latin America. Casa De Libertad embraces the imperatives of orthodoxy and orthopraxis.

The church's vision is "to be the Church, not just a church, and foster an environment of responsible freedom and true worship to Jesus that leads our families to serve and transform our community." The five pillars of the church include "unity, responsible freedom, true worship of Jesus, family, and community transformation."

From spending time with pastor and members, I was encouraged by their passion to see the Gospel transform people and the culture. In Creation Regained, Albert Wolters reminds us that all of creation is included in the scope of redemption. "It is all of creation that is included in the scope of redemption. . .through Christ, God determined 'to reconcile to himself all things,' writes Paul (Col 1:20), and the words he uses (ta panta) preclude any narrow or personalistic understanding of the reconciliation he has in mind."

Following Jesus, then, is becoming an intimate Kingdom ally with God and pursuing our role in His cosmic plan to redeem the whole creation. In following Jesus, we not only care about saving souls but also about the restoration of creation here and now. Jesus followers are passionate about evangelism, redeeming the arts, education, business, social issues, politics, cities, science, our communities and so on. All of creation belongs to Christ and God's people are called to apply redemption to all things on earth as it is in heaven.

As I witnessed in the powerful preaching and Christ-centered worship, those who attend are pointed to Jesus that they may be freed from sin, idolatry, legalism, and the power of the devil to live lives characterized by freedom (Gal. 5) not the false religious rules of "religion." True freedom is freedom to be the kind of human being that God originally created humans to be and to live our human vocation with moral responsibility to the glory of God.

Embedded in a culture of Roman Catholicism and "health and wealth" prosperity Gospel evangelicalism, Casa De Libertad offers a fresh Kingdom-oriented, Christ-centered approach that could not only be a model for Central America but Latin America as a whole. You can hear more about this exciting new church (in Spanish) on YouTube.