Eduardo Salinas
The Salinas Family
How have you seen God working in your life?
As someone that wasn't born in a context where my family knew the gospel, I had the glorious privilege of experiencing the saving and transforming power of the gospel in my own life. As I started walking in a relationship with the LordJesuschrist and growing in the knowledge of the word of God I experienced a burden to preach the gospel to the people I knew throughout my life which led me which I did for years and with that, grew the call from God to plant a church. After two years of the planting of Central Church, God has been working in my life leading me to grow in my capacity to teach and train others to live the gospel in their lives and to develop in them a missional culture. Right now we are in an intentional training season starting by me as I depend on God's grace to do this beautiful work. After years of being an evangelist who preached the gospel to unchurched people, God is making me a pastor for this people. A pastor that not only speak to them about the gospel, but that guides them on how to live it and how to be disciples to.
How have you seen god working in your family?
Since I perceived God’s calling in my life to plant a church, I always knew and believed as a very personal conviction that my most important and primary ministry is my family. So, from the moment my wife and I discussed the call toplant a church, we always agreed and established as the foundation of our agreements that the first priority for uswould be the well-being and discipleship of our family. Therefore, when planning our ministry from the beginning, we have always tried to properly plan projects and time to serve the Lord together as a joyfully serving family with a joyful and healthy heart, rather than a burdened and overwhelmed heart. Currently, my wife, our two young children, and I greatly enjoy doing ministry together as a family.
In church gatherings, it’s particularly touching for me on Sundays, when we are setting up the electronic equipmentand arranging the furniture, seeing our four-year-old daughter helping us move cables and arrange chairs, is trulyheartwarming. We genuinely love serving in the church and love God as a family. Something that has also deeply moved us as a family is that our one-and-a-half-year-old son constantly wants to pray with us, even though he can’t speak yet. Before every meal or in the evenings before going to bed, he put his hands together as a sign that he is asking us to pray as a family. This is our privilege, and it has been the joy we have sought and experienced while serving the Lord in this honorable task of planting and pastoring a church.”
How have you seen god working in your church?
When we planted our church, naturally, we thought of a place where people need to hear the gospel and where they need to be taught at the end of the day, we are all disciples of the Lord, and the word ‘disciple’ means student. It’s normal to think about the different programs and ways in which we’ll teach people. Something we’ve learned over these two years of planting a church is that, despite the emphasis on the church being a place of discipleship and teaching, it’s extremely important for the church not to feel or be perceived as a classroom or a school. Rather, the church should be seen as a family, a community growing in faith where we’re all brothers and sisters, just as it should be. In our particular city, we have a context where the rhythms of the city are highly rapid, and as a society, we suffer from a kind of loneliness where our relationships are constantly or mostly within the context of work or society for a certain project. Here is where we’ve discovered the importance and the difference the church can make in people’s lives. We’re not only offering growth projects or goals in gaining more knowledge, but we’re also creating and fostering spaces where individuals can find meaningful and deep relationships, building strong bonds just like a family. This has been our focusand the main challenge for us as a church, given that these aren’t the natural rhythms of our city we’ve continuallysought wisdom from God on how to navigate and create this culture within our church. We are extremely happy and grateful to God because even though we can’t claim to have the perfect formula, over these two years, we’ve truly witnessed people finding deep relationships and very significant friendships within the church which fills us with excitement and joy.
church name
Iglesia Central Monterrey
church email
gualo@centraliglesia.com
church website
http://centraliglesia.com
What is your church’s mission?
Our vision is as follows: 'Jesus, purpose, and community are what we seek and enjoy,' in other words, our emphasis is on preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the growth of individuals in God's purpose for their lives, and the development of a community of faith that walks in the Gospel. God has called us to build a church where relationships are meaningful and centered on the Gospel.