By Tony Campos
Pastor of Casa de Luz in Sacramento, California
In July 1974, Catharine Padilla gathered her children around a world atlas in their home in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Pointing to Lausanne, Switzerland, she explained that their father was about to give a talk. He would say things some people might not want to hear. She asked the children to pray. Their father, C. René Padilla, was addressing an international gathering of evangelical leaders. The question he brought to them had grown out of years of study and ministry: How could Christians proclaim the Gospel while treating poverty and injustice as secondary concerns?
For Padilla, that question was personal. Born in Ecuador in 1932, he spent his childhood in Ecuador and Colombia. His father worked as a tailor and planted evangelical churches. The family knew economic hardship and religious persecution. As a boy in Bogotá, Colombia, René was struck by stones because of his family’s faith.
He later studied in the United States and England, earning a doctorate in New Testament. But the questions of Latin America continued to shape his work. Serving among university students, he met young people trying to understand faith amid revolutionary movements, inequality, and political conflict. They needed a theology that spoke to the world they inhabited.
At Lausanne, Padilla challenged his audience to examine what they were carrying into other countries along with their Christian message. Were they sharing the Gospel or also exporting their own way of life? What place did care for the poor have in their understanding of the church’s mission?
His vision offered a corrective to influential Western assumptions about mission, particularly the emphasis on individual conversion that left social conditions largely unquestioned. . . .
The next NAB Gateway FUSE trip is happening next summer, July 27–August 10 in the Philippines.
For decades, Gateway has led short-term mission teams that consisted of people from multiple churches brought together on a single team, which is why we call them FUSE Teams. These teams typically have have members from across North America and beyond (we’ve had FUSE Team members come from as far and wide as South Korea and Singapore).
This FUSE trip will be partnering with the Bicol Center for Christian leadership, led by NAB missionaries Claire and Tim Marker. Find out more about the various ministries they lead at BCCL.
If you will be age 17 to mid-20s by July 2027 and interested in learning firsthand what international mission work is all about, we invite you to apply for this FUSE trip. Applications are due November 30.
The NAB International Missions team invites you to a 30-minute prayer call for NAB missionaries and ministries around the globe. We meet the second Tuesday of every month at 5:00 p.m. (Pacific) on Zoom.
Join us as we learn about NAB missions and missionaries and pray together to the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers into his harvest field (Luke 10:2).
The next prayer call takes place October 13. Won’t you join us? Register at the link below.