SANTIAGO, Chile – Evangelism, discipleship, church planting, mentoring leaders – these are just a few of the objectives one missionary family is pursuing in their local community. Every step of the way, God has sustained Jason Frealy and his family through the SBC’s Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.
“Lottie Moon is crucial to everything we do as missionaries in South America,” the native Missourian shared. “Generosity of our Baptist brethren has enabled us to livestream our church plant worship services (through provisioned computers), visit a dying man and share the Gospel with his family (arriving there in our IMB-provided vehicle), and mentor church planters in an area with no Baptist church.
“Our life and ministry are sustained by the sacrificial giving each year to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.”
SPRINGFIELD – Jason Frealy, an International Mission Board (IMB) missionary and Missouri native, speaks to people at the IMB booth in the exhibit hall during the Missouri Baptist Convention annual meeting at Crossway Baptist Church here this fall.
In 2017, after serving in Argentina for 10 years, Jason and his wife, Kelli, moved their family of six across the Andes mountains to Santiago, Chile – incidentally, where the couple had first met years before.
Then, they were both IMB journeymen. Now, they are IMB career missionaries, devoted to loving their neighbors and proclaiming the good news of Christ in the northeast corner of the city. Sector Oriente, the district where the Frealys now live, is home to the majority of Santiago’s high-income citizens.
“These aren’t poor people cleaning houses,” Jason explained. “These are people who have poor people cleaning their own houses. It’s an area where people enjoy expensive imported cars, nice private schools for their kids, and great vacations.”
Though materially affluent, Jason noted that these people are in great need of the gospel – and most of them don’t even know it.
When sharing the good news of Christ with these wealthy Chileans, the missionary must often spend significant time teaching them the bad news of humanity’s fallen state. He shared the story of one neighbor who, after hearing the gospel and receiving a Bible, remained skeptical.
“I doubt very seriously he had ever heard the gospel of Jesus Christ before I told it to him,” Jason reflected. “He’s sort of in the rich young ruler phase of life – everything’s going very well, he’s healthy, he’s enjoying himself, he likes his work, he’s got good amenities, he gets to travel. I wish that he would just see through the vanity and the meaninglessness of it all.”
In addition to evangelism, the Frealys are engaged in planting churches and training Chilean believers. While Kelli disciples pastors’ and church planters’ wives, Jason teaches workshops on personal evangelism.
“I have a passion for teaching people to share the gospel in a good, respectful, loving, biblical way, reminding them of many things,” Jason said. Quoting from 1 Corinthians 13:1, he continued: “You have to be loving a person, even if you’re being very direct. You depend on the Holy Spirit to change a heart.”
When teaching personal evangelism workshops, Jason encourages his students to share the gospel in one of three simple ways – by telling the story of Creation to Christ, by sharing a personal testimony of experiencing salvation, or by asking sequential questions with Scriptures leading to the gospel.
Ultimately, Jason noted, sharing the gospel in South America is not very different than doing so anywhere else in the world: “It’s pretty universal. It’s not rocket science.”
Visible fruit of missionary work is often hard to find, but the Frealy family has many stories to tell about Chileans who have heard the gospel in a meaningful way for the first time. Most recently, their vision has grown to include not only evangelism, discipleship, church planting, and training, but also the mobilization of Chilean missionaries who will carry out the Great Commission among the unreached.
“Yes, there is still a need for evangelism and church planting in Latin America,” Jason observed. “But there are also believers there that we believe God’s going to be calling out to go places.”
More information about the IMB’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering can be found by visiting www.imb.org/generosity.