ENI – Rev. Israel Batista, general secretary of the Latin American Council of Churches presented a report at the fifth assembly of the church grouping's highest governing showing a shift in membership and focus. The Latin American church was once seen as a bastion of liberation theology. But some delegates noted that in recent years it has moved closer to the mushrooming Pentecostal and Evangelical churches which are outstripping the traditional Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in membership growth.
“We should recognize that, in these last decades, some Christians have understood that the proposal of the Gospel and the following of Jesus imply taking responsibility for one's neighbour and the development of a certain dimension of human beings and their rights,” said Batista. “In this sense, the societal commitment and the necessity to work for a more just society, oriented towards the development of every individual, brought many to consider that the work of diakonia (service to society) was not separated from the life and mission of the Church.”
He asserted: “It follows that diakonia (service) and evangelization form part of the one whole Mission and that they do not possess different values, but they complement each other. They are two sides of the same coin.”
Some Pentecostal churches have misgivings about the relationship in ecumenical bodies of traditional Protestant churches with the Roman Catholic Church and others have been uneasy about what has been called a “social Gospel.”
