Toward a Classification System of Religious Groups ... - Prolades.com

OUR CONTINUING RESEARCH EFFORTS
We plan on continuing to update our studies on Central America during the next
decade, and to expand our research activities to every country of Latin America and
the Caribbean, with the assistance of professors and students in programs of
theological and university education, together with the support and encouragement of
denominational and para-church leaders. To that end we have created a "Latin
American Church Growth Task Force," known as LACGTF, composed of a dozen
representatives of educational institutions and mission agencies. This volunteer group
of Latin American specialists, which had its first meeting in 1988 at Fuller Theological
Seminary in Pasadena, CA, was led by Clifton L. Holland (IDEA-PROLADES) and Daryl
Platt (O.C. Ministries-SEPAL). The LACGTF was discontinued in the mid-1990s when
the members dispersed and regular meetings in Pasadena were no longer possible.
We have a growing relationship with key leaders in many countries who are
involved in national and international organizations that are unifying Evangelicals
around common causes that further the Gospel of Christ, such as national Evangelical
alliances and/or ministerial associations, the Latin American Fellowship of
Evangelicals (CONELA), the Latin American Theological Fraternity (FTL), the Lausanne
Committee for World Evangelization, the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), the
"AD2000 and Beyond Movement" and other organizations. We will continue to network
with these interdenominational groups, together with denominational and
para-church organizations, to serve the Body of Christ throughout the Americas.
Our general focus in this document has been to present an overview of all religious
groups known to exist in the Americas (North, Central and South America, as well as
the Caribbean cultural area) in order to help us "understand our universe" in the
important area of the sociology of religion. More specifically, it has been to help us
define the parameters of the "Protestant Movement" and to create a greater
understanding of this phenomenon in the context of the Americas. In order for the
reader to better comprehend the global proportional representation of the world’s
religions, we have included below two graphics that illustrate the data provided by Dr.
David Barrett in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (IBMR, Vol. 20,
No. 1, January 1996):
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