United Pentecostal Church celebrates its 70 years in Colombia

William Delgado and ALC/Gospel Noticias, BOGOTA, Colombia, March 20, 2007

This past weekend over 50 thousand Evangelicals gathered together in the El Campín Covered Coliseum Taxi Heathrow Airport in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital city. The gathering was to commemorate the 70 years in Colombia of the United Pentecostal Church, the largest Christian Evangelical denomination in the country, with 3,100 pastors and churches throughout Colombia. The denomination was founded in Colombia in 1937 by missionary Aksel Verner Larsen.

Pastor Reinel Gálvez Rueda, Presiding Bishop of the United Pentecostal Church of Colombia (IPUC in Spanish), told GospelNoticias.Com that the celebration, “more than just another year of existence, is a demonstration of how God has been a refuge for us generation after generation. This year we are commemorating this special time with conventions that will take place in strategic cities at which we will celebrate this important date with all the church.”

Galviz paid tribute to the pastors and ministers who for more than 50 and 40 years have worked in different parts of the country, in public recognition of the hard work of a pioneer mission of evangelizing in the geographically most remote regions of Colombia, dedicating their lives along with their families to the work of the church.

Present at the festivities were delegations from Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala and other countries to which the IPUC has sent missionaries, a matter in which it has made uncountable investments “to carry the message of salvation to a culture and people needful of knowing the love and name of Jesus,” said the Rev. Vicente Arango, Director for Foreign Missions of the church, who explained that the denomination currently has missionaries and pastors in 23 countries in the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia.

Likewise, Pastor Héctor Campuzano, the IPUC’s Bogotá District Supervisor, expressed at the end of the event the joy and full satisfaction of the achievement, sharing that the expectations for the LXX Convention had been met, including surpassing the financial expenses estimates that the celebration program would require, despite the fact that over 5,000 persons were unable to enter the coliseum, because of the great crowd that had gathered from Saturday through Monday, March 19, a national holiday.

The IPUC has 180 church buildings in Bogotá and 3,100 on the national level, with 23 missionaries and their families in different countries of the world. It maintains fraternal relations principally with other denominations of its same doctrine in Ecuador, Perú and Chile, and 18 other countries where the International and Latin American United Pentecostal Church is found.

Home

Top

 Comment this article