The Covenant Church of Ecuador is growing, and its general secretary wants it to set a clearer common direction for the coming decade — including the goal of reaching 20,000 members. David Lomas, who leads a church of around 16,000 members, set out his hopes in an interview with the Swedish church newspaper Sändaren, drawn from the podcast “In Search of the Church of the Future”.
The Ecuadorian Covenant Church is a sister church of Sweden’s Equmeniakyrkan, and Lomas’s own story runs through both. Born in Ecuador, he trained as a pastor there and in Sweden, and was ordained in 1998 in what was then the Swedish Mission Covenant Church. After twenty years in Sweden he returned home a decade ago. He told Sändaren that his Swedish years had shaped the way he works — not least in planning and punctuality — but that returning also meant an adjustment, because what looked good on paper did not always unfold as expected.
He describes a church that is growing but lacks shared goals. “Where do we want our church to be? Which way should we go? Perhaps make a ten-year plan and have goals for both activities and membership. Could we imagine being twice as many in ten years, or at least 20,000? We don’t have such goals right now,” he said. At the same time he is eager to keep what he values in Ecuadorian church life: the ability to improvise, to adapt and to receive what comes without letting changed plans destroy the joy. “We would do well to have clearer structures, but structures that don’t box us in so that we become rigid. Planning that perhaps isn’t followed 99 percent of the time, but at least 60 percent,” he said. He sees a lesson in that for the church in Sweden too, noting that planning can create security and move a congregation forward, but can also leave too little room for people’s own initiatives and expressions.
(Originally published in Swedish. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: Equmeniakyrkan / Sändaren — sandaren.se
