The Evangelical Covenant Church in Ecuador had the vision to plant churches and felt the need to do so. But when they began the process, they could not find the right way to plant churches, Wilfrido Velásquez shares. He is the Church Planting Coordinator for the Fellowship of the Evangelical Covenant Church.

“But right in that moment,” Wilfrido says, “God sent an instrument called Multiplication Network Ministries (MNM).”

“We as a denomination had been sleeping for ten years. Then we began to have this desire to plant churches, but we also knew that we needed to revitalize other churches too,” Wilfrido admits.

In order to know where to begin, the denomination went through a time of analysis and reflection. “In some cases we found that there were problems with relationships, fellowship, and other churches had issues with the structure of the church,” Wilfrido shares. These reasons and others were keeping the local churches from wanting to plant new churches.

Wilfrido and the denomination’s leadership came to a simple conclusion—if the mother church did not have the multiplication gene, then the churches born from it would not either.

“We need healthy churches that want to multiply,” Wilfrido concludes.

With this commitment in their mission and the desire to plant new churches, they started to promote the essential points taught by MNM to create the central plan in the tasks of revitalizing church bodies and motivating churches to plant other churches.

“We have good results, not only in Ecuador, where we started but it has extended to Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, and Mexico. In countries like Uruguay, where we used to have only two churches, we now have five. This has been a result of revitalizing and planting,” Wilfrido shares.

A vital tool in church planting, Wilfrido adds, is mentoring. Through this, the leadership of each country and district is accompanied on the church planting journey. It gives each leader accountability and support.

There have been many difficulties but Wilfrido is thankful for how far they’ve come. “We have seen the first fruits, leaders who, for the first time, were open to their problems and difficulties, like loneliness and the fear of being removed from the church. We have been able to show them we are brothers and want to help each other and learn from one another.”