OVERVIEW

The first U.S. missions to Guatemala at the end of the 19th Century represented three types of Protestantism—mainline Protestant, Evangelical, Holiness. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Evangelical, Holiness and Pentecostal groups clustered at one end of the religious spectrum. The intertwining of relationships among individuals and organizations provided the human resources, spiritual goals, and financial means for global Protestant missions in the first half of the 20th century. Holiness churches (which eventually became Evangelical and Pentecostal) and interdenominational movements shared the goal of converting the world to their brand of Christianity.

The second trend came at the beginning of the 20th Century with Pentecostalism. The theological difference between Holiness groups and Pentecostals was the latter’s belief that speaking in tongues (glossolalia) always accompanied Holy Ghost baptism. One of the main distinctions between mainline and the other Protestant groups was the focus of the latter on evangelizing and the rejection of institution-building. Whereas missionaries for the mainline missions tended to have a college education, the Pentecostal missionaries were equipped with Bible institute and evangelism training. The focus on evangelizing coupled with premillennial urgency—the immediate return of Christ to set up his kingdom on earth--meant that mission work could not wait for people to receive a college and seminary education.

Countervailing foreign mission approaches at the end of the 19th Century—one stressing “civilizing” objectives such as education, technology, and entrepreneurship, the other focusing on the urgency of salvation—led to the development of the indigenous approach to missions that promoted “self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating” evangelization. John Livingston Nevius, a Presbyterian missionary to China, added Bible training and wide itinerancy to the three “selfs” Anglican missionary to China, Roland Allen, shifted the focus of the indigenous approach to church growth.

In the 1960s onward, the growth of Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches was in large part due largely to the writings of Donald McGavran. Education was not significant rather conversion and the “calling”, not ecclesiastical (ordained) roles, led to spontaneous church growth. The indigenous approach evolved to emphasize the social movement dimensions of church growth along kinship, linguistic, and communal lines. Reformulated again, the indigenous approach stressed church growth through groups of believers called cells. The combination of the urgency of salvation, low investment in human capital, kinship-based numerical church growth had a deleterious effect on the Protestant message. In the twenty-first century, Guatemala is predominantly Evangelical with schisms occurring, making that country’s religion market a highly competitive one.