Jonathan Montoya grew up in Honduras as the son of Carlos and Lori Montoya. Upon moving to the United States about eight years ago, he met and married his wife and became a pastoral intern in the areas of missions and young adult ministry at Calvary Memorial Church in Roanoke, VA. In August of 2023, he returned to his heartland to lead a team to Honduras from his church. His reflections on this experience offer much food for thought on the topics of biblical mission involvement and its impact on cultures worldwide.
For Jonathan, Honduras is more than a country in the heart of Central America.
“This is not only where I grew up,” he says, “but it’s where the Lord saved me. It’s where I cut my teeth in ministry.”
Calvary Memorial had been supporting his parents as missionaries for years, developing a partnership with the Seminary for Expository Preaching in Honduras (SEPE Honduras) and sending short-term missions since its establishment. Although his desire to serve in Honduras alongside the church body was initially curtailed by Covid, it continued to grow as the short-term mission funds were set aside for a later date.
When the opportunity finally presented itself last year, the trip preparations were a church family effort, commissioned and funded by his local church.
“The opportunity to be able to visit a missionary that we support as a church is so precious to our church body,” he says. “It’s touched basically every person, because they’ve been involved every step of the way.”
HOW TO TRANSFORM A CULTURE
Something that touched both Jonathan and the team during their time in Honduras was seeing, as he says, “how they [Honduran believers] get the sovereignty of God and how they trust the sovereignty of God in the midst of extremely difficult circumstances that often we don’t go through in our lives in the United States.”
But there is a dark side to every culture.
“Every culture of any country is affected by the Fall, and that’s going to manifest itself in peculiar ways and different ways in each culture,” he says, “and it’s certainly no secret that one of the key ways that the Fall has affected the Honduran culture is in a weak biblical masculinity – a lack of biblical manhood.”
This pervasive fatherlessness is rooted in a lack of faithfulness in Honduras’ husbands and fathers, which is a cultural problem that is not without a biblical solution.
“That’s just another reason why the seminary is here,” he says, “is to quite literally transform that culture…to train men, who can train men, who can train men, and cause families to flourish – cause the church to flourish.”
WHERE SHORT-TERM MISSIONS COME IN
“What is a short-term missions trip?” Jonathan asks. “It is believers from one country going to a different country to encourage co-laborers and also be encouraged.”
At this juncture in the history of the United States, we are on the sending end of missions, and this presents us with the opportunity to support co-laborers in the Gospel work that is laying the foundation for cultural change.
“If we actually think about it, there’s not a whole lot that we could come down and do that we could actually do more effectively than the people who are already planted here,” he says.
“One thing that [we can do] in our situation in this time in church history…is actually come down and visit. We are positioned by God’s kindness…where we can, with great facility, jump onto a plane and come down and see fellow believers face to face.”
He refers to 2 John 1:12, which says, “Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your joy may be made full.”
“What was the apostle John saying to the believers of his day?” Jonathan asks. “He was saying, ‘Look, there is technology that I could use to communicate, like pen and paper.’ But for whatever it was he wanted to tell them, he said, ‘It’s more important and it’s far better and far more precious to be face to face. So I’ll wait.’”
Calvary Memorial is one example of just that. While team members served on the ground in various practical ways – replacing a dorm roof, engaging in visitation and evangelism in the communities of local churches, and putting on a youth conference and couple’s banquet – they also took advantage of the opportunity to encourage the brothers and sisters ministering day in and day out in Honduras.
WHY THE SENTIMENT IS MUTUAL
The encouragement from this partnership in the Gospel goes both ways.
“In one sense, when you’re going to be around fellow believers, you know that you’re going to be encouraged in some way that I don’t think anyone, including myself, would have estimated,” Jonathan says. “We’ve just been so filled up.”
It is truly a gift from the Lord when the global church is on display, joining hands in ministry under the banner of Scripture’s sufficiency and authority. And this is something that Jonathan has witnessed firsthand.
“There’s just this sweet like-mindedness and harmony there, of not just what we’re doing, but more importantly why we’re doing it,” he says.
“In one sense, I can step back and say we’re doing the exact same thing in Roanoke, VA – in Siguatepeque, HN – we’re doing the exact same thing. Just trying to be faithful to the Lord, humbly submissive to His Word, and to honor Him through that. For all of the cultural differences, for all of the language differences, for all of the stylistic differences, you blow that away and the substance is one and the same.”
In God’s magnificent providence, the joint efforts of the global church have the Spirit-enabled power to effect not only mutual spiritual encouragement, but ultimately the transformation of a culture.
And one day, when the Great Commission is fulfilled, we’ll experience this reality fully.
Jonathan aptly puts it this way: “For believers to be face to face is a precious blessing for so many reasons, not least of which is the fact that it’s a foretaste of what we’ll be doing for eternity.”
