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From Enduring Corruption to Establishing Credibility: Mayordomos de la Fe Costa Rica and GTP
My name is Javier Espinoza. In 2024, I celebrated 40 years of serving the Lord with different churches, networks, and groups. God has blessed me with the privilege of preaching the gospel. For many years, I have made this as my highest priority.
But when I met GTP two years ago, God shook me with this parallel truth: Jesus cares as much about faithful administration as He does about gospel proclamation. This reality has shaken and awakened my passion to promote the faithful stewardship of God’s resources all across Latin America.
Javier Espinoza among the participants of the GTP Latin America Regional Event in Panama, November 2022
From my experience in global missions, I have seen how pastors and ministry workers struggle with building trust and maintaining credibility with the resources God supplies through the people they serve. I have witnessed this challenge in my home country, Costa Rica, where many unfortunately feel afraid of accountability.
We have around 5 million people in Costa Rica, and 55% identify as Catholic and 25% as evangelical Christian. We have about 4,000 evangelical Christian churches, each with its specific opportunities and challenges.
Costa Rica has 7 provinces. San José, Heredia, Cartago, and Alajuela represent the metropolitan ones. We are a small country, and yet, we deal with corruption on all levels, including in the church. We have been praying for ways to address this. This is where GTP enters the story.
In October 2022, while attending a conference in Argentina. I got a call from a friend named Andy Miller, a missionary from New Zealand living in Costa Rica. He was looking for a person from Costa Rica to join him at the first GTP Latin America regional event in Panama. He said, “The event is in two weeks. Could you change your return flight and stop in Panama?” It seemed crazy, but I felt this message was from God. So, I changed my flight.
Andy Miller, Gary Hoag, Javier Espinoza, Paula Mendoza, and Carla Archila at Rosa de Sharon Church in San José, Costa Rica
In Panama, I met Gary Hoag (GTP President & CEO), Paula Mendoza (GTP Global Administrator), and Carla Archila (GTP Spanish Translator). I learned about ECFA and how it transformed the administration of churches and ministries in America. I immediately connected it with the idea of advancing this vision in Costa Rica to turn corruption to credibility.
Together with Gary and Paula, I dreamed of bringing the message of GTP to Costa Rica to start a peer accountability movement among churches and ministries in my country. This dream came true months later. GTP traveled to San José for the first official GTP trip to Costa Rica.
They taught “Stewardship and Standards” in the 4 metropolitan provinces in 3 days – an exhausting but impressive feat! This created the necessary momentum to consolidate a group to start the peer accountability movement. God raised faithful and credentialed volunteers in each province, including Jonathan Tencio, a lawyer of good reputation in the Christian and professional setting. Read on as he continues the story.
Group photo of the GTP “Stewardship and Standards” event in Heredia, August 2023
My name is Jonathan Tencio. I received an invitation from Javier to attend the GTP “Stewardship and Standards” event in Heredia. I was thankful I could attend as it happened on a Saturday at a nearby church. I listened to the teaching carefully with two hats on – as a church planter and as a lawyer.
I liked that GTP spoke to me as God’s ordained person for the transformation of my country, not depending on people from outside to do it for us. At the end of the meeting, Javier and Gary approached me to discuss the next steps. I agreed to collaborate to guide the group’s legal process and give my advice on the standards. I am pictured in the header photo giving a thumbs-up with Javier and three other participants.
A few days later, Javier contacted me and shared the response of the other three provinces. I started to get more excited to collaborate! He told me that even the president of the Evangelical Alliance of Costa Rica, Ronald Vargas, gave his full support for churches to associate with the standards movement at the San José event.
This was huge and almost unbelievable! By the end of the GTP trip, we felt God pointing us to “rebuild the walls of Costa Rica” in 52 days inspired by the biblical story of Ezra and Nehemiah. We had no time to lose!
Group photo of the GTP “Stewardship and Standards” event in San José, August 2023
After GTP’s visit, 14 volunteers from different churches and ministries, each one with different skills and degrees, met for a time fasting, confession, and prayer. The Lord revealed to us the name of the group to be Mayordomos de la Fe de Costa Rica, which means “Stewards of Faith of Costa Rica.”
We started to study the standards of other peer accountability groups (PAGs) around the world. We got these from GTP. Then we formed working groups representing different denominations, pastoral fraternities, ministries, missionaries, and the evangelical alliance.
We came up with 7 locally contextualized standards – or as Javier likes to say, “Ticos Standards,” tico meaning Costa Rican: Governance, Spiritual Foundations, Administration, Transparency, Trustworthiness, Health, and Care.
While we waited for the legal status of Mayordomos de la Fe de Costa Rica, we started a national promotion tour to raise awareness about the standards and to start a national dialogue to invite people to join the movement. We presented the 7 standards to churches and ministries. Their feedback said that what we shared is “relevant and opportune” for the church. Many registered their interest to become accredited and some reached out to ask for help for passing the baton to the next generation.
The founding members of Mayordomos at their first meeting on 5 September 2023
We also created and finalized a booklet to distribute the standards to our church and ministry networks. GTP contributed an introduction to that too. Thankfully, God blessed us with an office space too. As we write this story, we are working on our website and communications plan.
And great news! After all this hard and mostly spiritual work, we finally got the legal registration number to start operations and the 14 founding members signed it to make it official. Praise God!
It has only been 9 months since the standards movement began in Costa Rica. And this is only the beginning of a season of transformation for us, as it was for America when ECFA started. I pray that God will help us turn corruption into credibility as we pursue this good work for God’s glory.
