Mision Cristiana Elim Internacional
Mision Cristiana Elim Internacional is a pentecostal world ministry that was founded in El Salvador by Pastor Sergio Solorzano. It has churches throughout North and South America as well as Belgium and Australia.
Its mother church, a megachurch known as "Elim Central", is located in San Salvador. Once known as the second largest single church in the world, the ministry has a membership that surpasses 115,000 people and has, at its peak, numbered as much as 200,000. MCEI has more than 500 full-time pastors in El Salvador alone. The church is known for its "Time of Restoration" events in which hundreds of thousands of people gather from all around the world to worship together. These events have sometimes been held simultaneously in all the major sports stadiums in El Salvador. Its membership was surpassed only by the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, a mega church with which MCEI has very warm relations. The church's senior pastor, David Yonggi Cho, developed a new organizational model (the "Cell Method") that would eventually be incorporated into Mision Cristiana Elim, which experienced dramatic success using it. As of today (2009) it is the fourth larges church. Javier Vasquez is senior pastor of Yotabeche Methodist Church surpasses Elim Central with 150,000 members.[1]
Its beginnings
Christianity, through the Catholic Church first came to El Salvador from in the sixteenth century with the invasion y Pedro de Alvarado. San Salvador was made a Catholic archdiocese on February 11, 1913 with Monsignor Antonio Adolfo Perez as first Archbishop. Prior to that date it had been under the jurisdiction of Guatemala. Archbishop Luis Chávez y González from 1939 to 1977 encouraged priests to study farming cooperatives and made efforts toward improving the poorest sectors of El Salvador.
In May 1977, the Mision Cristiana Elim International church (which began as an off-shoot of the Elim Church of Guatemala, itself an off-shoot of Catholicism via Protestantism) began operations in a small space of the Santa Lucia de Ilopango in San Salvador, El Salvador with only nine people after an evangelistic campaign conducted on May 28 of that year was made official by Dr. Othoniel Rios Paredes, Pastor of Elim Christian Mission in Guatemala Bro Sergio Solorzano to lead the fledgling congregation.
Its growth
In 1983 the mission in El Salvador separated from that of Guatemala over disagreements as to their doctrinal positions, but the separation did not involve a name change due to the difficulty of starting this type of proceeding in the country which was still wracked by civil war. The church in El Salvador is still called "Misión Cristiana Elim de El Salvador" until today (the church in Guatemala changed its name to "Partners Area Elim Ministries" and later "Elim Ministries" (MI-EL )) T In 1985 the church in San Salvador had about 3,000 people, which was not entirely satisfactory. The church leadership decided to implement a .model similar to Cho's church pastor, Sergio Solorzano. The pastor of the mission decided to travel to South Korea to learn more about the work of Pastor Cho.
On July 13, 1986 the church opened a radio station named "Radio Restoration" which became one of the country's top after their kind ever since.
In the mid 1990s Pastor Solorzano experienced a spiritual crisis in his personal life that would eventually result in the naming of a new senior pastor to look after MCEI. He eventually overcame his doubts and went on to establish another world impact ministry, "La Palabra Viva" (The Living Word) in the late 1990s, which continues to flourish to this day. MCEI, now under the leadership of a new senior pastor, Mario Vega, also continues to flourish and expand.
MCEI owns 6 radio stations under the name "Radio Restauracion" in El Salvador and Los Angeles and is in the process of building an 11,000 seat auditorium and television studio in San Salvador.
Three different Elim
In 2007, the Pastors Cesar Flores (Elim San Fernando Valley) and Nelson Martinez (Elim Guatemala) forged a division of enormous scope that separates nearly half of its branches within Elim Mission. They are still called Elim International despite winning the non-repudiation of dissidents and this forms the third Elim International with its headquarters in the capital of Guatemala.
These pastors divided mission Elim Elim internationally separating all of Mexico Guatemala, South America and some of North America.
They pointed out that international Elim had stopped believing in the rapture pretribulational to believe in a rapture or posttribulational midtribulacional basing these accusations on isolated cases of Elim pastors and teachings of CETI (Theological Institute which teaches Elim pastors, but that is not the mission. The divisions of this third Elim U.S. pastors were discontent with Rene Molina (by having friendly ties with churches and pastors G12 movement to which he was accustomed Elim not related).
Amid the scandal over 33 subsidiaries were separated. Elim tries to recover the areas founding new churches and has established position denying any wrongdoing.
Other facts
On July 3, 2008, members of the church who were driving a private bus after a religious service are drifting down the river in the Salvadoran capital Acelhuate 31 people died, [9] This fact shocks the Salvadoran society and reopens a debate about the care of the environment and the status of risk mitigation works.
In August of that same year one of the members of the council of elders elected by the National Conciliation Party of El Salvador as a presidential candidate of these in the 2009 elections, [10] that application is not supported by the authorities the church and again puts the Elim church in the foreground in the country, but later his candidacy is withdrawn. Organization
Elim Christian Mission International is run by a global spiritual Directive, a Council of Ministers (acting as an advisory and consultative body) people led by Mario Vega, who in turn is the Senior Pastor of the church in San Salvador, so practically it is the highest authority of the mission not only locally but internationally speaking.
Each church subsidiary or daughter, has at least one pastor who is the spiritual and administrative guidance of the congregation, also a council of elders who collaborates with the local pastor or leader or principal in local projects, their system of government is autonomous and each church is therefore self-financing and self-propagate. Pastors meet quarterly akin to be encouraged by the preaching of Pastor accountable while cell growth obtained in these three months.
Internally each congregation to develop two types of service area: the exteriors and interiors. those who develop the cellular system outside or outside the congregation are: supervisors, leaders, assistant leader, hosts, secretaries, treasurers, leaders of children, etc. internal servers: they develop their service during religious celebrations being deacons, deaconesses, committee support, protocol area, children's church, radio committee, etc.