For those of you who have heard about CLIR for the first time on this blog, I wanted to take the time to explain what it is that CLIR stands for, what we do and why you should be interested. Briefly, let me just take you on a little tour south of the border…
Our Identity.
CLIR stands for La Confraternidad Latinoamericana de Iglesias Reformadas, or for those who are Spanish-challenged, The Latinamerican Fellowship of Reformed Churches (See the header above!!). While we are headquartered in Costa Rica, CLIR’s reach is Latin America-wide. Now you know the name, but who are we?
CLIR is
1. A “fellowship” of Reformed and Presbyterian churches all over Latin America. CLIR strives to be a medium whereby different Reformed and Presbyterian denominations in different countries all over Latin America can come together to collaborate in the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ to preach the gospel, baptize and make disciples of the nations. While we are many churches with different local traditions and cultures, what unites us is a common faith. To be a member of CLIR, a church or denomination must subscribe to the historic Christian faith as summarized in one of the historic Reformed confessions of faith, such as the Belgic Confession or the Westminster Confession of Faith. The goal of CLIR is to work together, projecting to the world our unity in our one Lord Jesus Christ. We do this is the following ways:
- International Conferences (the last one was in Bolivia earlier this year)
- Seminary exchanges, in which seminaries swap professors for conferences and courses.
- The mutual support of church planting and evangelism in Latin American countries that do not have a Reformed gospel witness. For example, CLIR is a vehicle through which both the Brazilians and the Mexicans are working together to plant churches in Panama, which to date and to the best of our knowledge has no Reformed or Presbyterian witness.
2. CLIR sponsors a publishing house, Editorial CLIR, through which we publish solid gospel-centered literature in Spanish. The goal of this aspect of CLIR is to provide for the churches of Latin America a strong and deep pool of resources in order to equip the churches in their task. Many of our books are translations from English, but a growing number of them are written by Reformed scholars and pastors right here in Latin America. We publish many books which are written as theological course material for MINTS (Miami International Seminary), the most recent of which is a study on the book of Nehemiah. This is the area of CLIR that I (Nick) am most involved in, and the aspect of the work which I will often blog about. These are just some of our recent and upcoming titles, either published this year or slated for publication early next year (titles are translations to the English):
- “Predestination and Providence” by John Calvin (2009)
- The Westminster Shorter Catechism (2009)
- The Heidelberg Catechism (2009)
- “When Good Things Happen to Bad People” by Stevan Henning (2009) [also available in English]
- “Red Alert!: False Prophets Ahead” ed. Bill Green. (2009) [this is a compilation of 10 years worth of articles about the radical pentecostal, health and wealth movement here in Costa Rica and in Latin America. This year we have done two printings of this.]
- “Spiritual Conflict” by Julio César Benítez (2009) [a book on spiritual warfare. Prof. Benítez is the director of the Fundación Instituto Bíblico Reformado and is the author of two other books.]
- The Westminster Standards with full text footnotes (2010). This title will include the Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms with full text biblical references in the footnotes. It is an enormous undertaking which has lasted for the better part of the last year and has required the efforts of multiple editors, revisers and translators.
- “Elders and Deacons” by Dr. Alonzo Ramirez. (2010) [This is a training manual for elders and deacons.]
- “Lectures on Calvinism” by Abraham Kuyper (2010)
- “Preaching and Biblical Theology” by Edmond Clowney (2010)
These are just some of the titles that we have or are working on. Check out all of our titles (in Spanish) at www.clir.net. In addition to these books, we print a theological journal twice a year. The journal started out 10 years ago with a distribution of 300 copies and has grown to a present-day distribution of 4,000 copies twice a year. That is 8,000 theological journals a year and we continue to grow. For some pastors in some countries, our theological journal is the only solid biblical literature that they recieve.
3. CLIR also exists to facilitate the training of future leaders. CLIR sponsors an acreditation program for seminaries in Latin America. We also work closely with MINTS, as I mentioned before. In Costa Rica, we have a seminary to train pastors for service here in the country. Right now, I am finishing giving the first class of two in Beginners New Testament Greek. We have eight students, but only a few of them desire to be ministers. The rest come form different churches in the central valley by San Jose and are studying Greek in order to better understand the New Testament and to better serve their local congregations.
This is really a thumbnail sketch of what CLIR does. I should say that CLIR’s whole existence is the service of the churches, since CLIR is in fact an international community of community of churches. CLIR is not an organization which exists for itself or to propagate itself. For example, the board members are representatives form various Reformed or Presbyterian denominations in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and Bolivia. The makeup of the board represents the vision and character of CLIR. Please remember CLIR and its various ministries, its board members and particularly the churches that are represented by it.
I hope that this brief overview has helped you understand just a little better what it is that we are doing.
