When Mexican federal police showed up on his front lawn in response to a threat against his family, International Mission Board missionary Douglas Cantu (not his actual name) knew it was time to relocate. The violence associated with the drug cartels in Mexico had been evident in the region—drug-related deaths and gunfire—but there had been no direct threats to the well-being of Cantu and his family until that night.

 

Escalating violence between the four major Mexican drug cartels has, in some regions, spilled over into the civilian population and is having a chilling effect on mission teams’ travel across the U.S. southern border. But, said missionaries on both sides of the border, with strategic planning, good communications with Mexican nationals, and a healthy dose of common sense, smaller teams can still safely venture into Mexico and continue their ministries with local congregations.

 

“We don’t want to scare them from what God has called them to do. But be cautious and get as informed as possible,” said Cantu, who now works in the region of Mexico called “the Heart of Darkness” where less than 1 percent of the population is evangelical Christian. God can work amid the drug war, he said.

 

Terry Simons, chief deputy in the Victoria County Sheriff’s Department and a former Texas pastor, called Mexico a “war zone.” He said the rise in border violence became most evident in 2000 with the emergence of the Zeta gang, the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel. The leader of the Zeta gang, Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa, was arrested April 29 in Matamoros, just across the border from Brownsville, according to Associated Press reports.

 

Simons, who helped coordinate mission trips into Mexico from his church in Quemado, said there is a high risk for the traditional mission teams that populate the Texas-Mexico border each summer. Although mission teams have not been targeted, his concern is with the overall level of violence in some regions.

 

“You can’t pick where a criminal element will choose to have a gunfight,” he said.

Daniel White, pastor of First Baptist Church, Eagle Pass, just blocks from the border, said the one thing the narcortaficantes (drug traffickers) can’t do is shoot straight. Use of an automatic weapon is not a skill they have honed and much more than the intended target can get hit.

 

“When you have war in your city there is going to be collateral damage,” White said.

The city of Piedras Negras, he continued, is controlled by the Gulf Cartel and the April 26 assassination of its newly appointed Police Chief Arturo Navarro Lopez is evidence of such Mafia-style manipulations. The city is run by elected officials but many of those authorities White accused of being ultimately beholden to the cartel.

The violence and intimidation tactics are nothing new to Scottie Stice, who served as a church planter in El Salvador for the IMB and is now an SBTC field ministry strategist. Dealing with and avoiding the cartels were part of the landscape of living in Central America.

 

“It’s not a new concept,” he said. The menace has simply migrated north to the U.S. border.

 

CHANGING STRATEGIES

With reports of drug-related violence along the Texas-Mexico border, mission teams once destined for their annual cross-cultural ministries are reconsidering their options and sending teams out of harm’s way. Pastors who coordinate mission projects along the border from Brownsville to El Paso report the number of teams they will be working with this summer is down significantly.

 

First Baptist Church, Brownsville, plans and coordinates mission trips into Matamoros and the surrounding region through its Missions Outreach Center.

Thirty teams filtered through the facility last year but that number, MOC Director Dwayne Spearman said, is down to 10 or 11.

 

Mike Due, a Port Arthur pastor, said the number of teams he usually directs into Mexico is down by half. As of May 1 only 10 teams are scheduled to venture south. That decline is representative of the decisions being made across the U.S. regarding missions work in Mexico.

 

“Folks have called and said, ‘We’re not going,’” said Due, expressing his disappointment. “Mexicans are saying, ‘Please come.’ And people here are saying, ‘We’re afraid.’”

 

White said he would be happy to get three to four committed teams to serve on the Texas side of the border.

 

There is a stranglehold of fear when considering a foray into Mexico, said John Sherman, founder of Christian Hands in Action.

 

“Americans are getting to be a fearful bunch,” he said.

 

A member of Exciting Immanuel Baptist Church in El Paso, Sherman has been taking teams into Mexico via Ciudad Juarez for more than 25 years. He still goes into the Mexican state of Chihuahua three to four times a month to meet with local pastors.

Last year CHIA played host to 25-30 teams as they traveled into Mexico. This year Sherman said he’d be lucky to get five to six teams to commit. With such numbers, the doctor said he will redirect his efforts beyond Mexico into Central and South America.

 

Sherman blames the U.S. media for propagating the fear.

 

“The heartache is for the people in Mexico.”

 

But as safe as Sherman may feel traveling to visit fellow believers in Juarez, the trepidation Americans have about journeys into Mexico is not unwarranted. Travel alerts posted by the State Department have called for discretion at best and avoidance of certain regions altogether, including Ciudad Juarez.

 

A portion of the alert reads: “The situation in Ciudad Juarez is of special concern.  Mexican authorities report that more than 1,800 people have been killed in the city since January 2008. Additionally, this city of 1.6 million people experienced more than 17,000 car thefts and 1,650 carjackings in 2008. U.S. citizens should pay close attention to their surroundings while traveling in Ciudad Juarez, avoid isolated locations during late night and early morning hours, and remain alert to news reports.”

 

The alert is in effect until Aug. 20.

 

Thousands of violent deaths in Mexico have been attributed to the drug violence in recent years. Already the drug-related death toll is on par with last year’s record number with 2,000 deaths reported through late April, according the Stratfor, a global intelligence collection and dissemination agency.

 

IMB spokeswoman Wendy Norvelle said, “Some places are chronically dangerous. Some become hotspots. Our personnel learn how to live with that being an ongoing thing.”

 

The well-being of all IMB personnel around the world is a high priority, she said. With 5,500 full-time personnel in the field, the board uses a variety of resources to keep track of the ever-shifting milieu of violence and its potential impact on personnel like the Cantus.

 

A first measure of defense is to make sure all IMB representatives are registered with the U.S. embassies, take note of State Department postings, and communicate with local residents, who know the landscape and the danger risk.

 

In her five years with the SBTC, Missions Mobilization Associate Tiffany Smith said she has never issued a travel alert. In an effort to stave off the flow of enthusiastic but naive teens and their chaperones to the unstable border for spring break projects, the SBTC issued a travel alert that stated, in part: “The SBTC urges you, as an autonomous church, to carefully evaluate any trips to Mexico. Because of the potential for extreme violence the SBTC recommends that you consider re-rerouting any Mexico mission projects to another location.”

 

Smith and SBTC Missions Director Terry Coy said churches called the state offices to cancel spring break and summer trips to the border and seek assistance in locating new projects. What was Mexico’s loss became another ministry’s gain.

 

Smith said the convention did not want to damage missions in Mexico but considering the level of violence in some regions and the make-up of the missions teams—primarily large groups of teenagers with some adult chaperones—erring on the side of caution was the best course.

 

Smith, along with Due and other pastors who facilitate trips into Mexico, recommended stateside churches partner with IMB missionaries and established Mexican Baptist churches because of their regional familiarity.

 

Due said, “We have pastors all over the country begging for help.”

 

Baptists flood the border, he said, but few go deep into the interior where the spiritual lostness is overwhelming. In regions like the Heart of Darkness where the Cantus serve there are cities with no evangelical churches and those that have a Catholic church most often do not have a full-time priest.

 

It is small groups of committed and called mission teams that can have the greatest long-term impact. Those involved in ministries along the border and within the heart of Mexico agree what the nation needs is not a continued presence on the border but a move into the depths of the country by American churches committed to a long-term relationship with missionaries and churches.

 

For those who truly feel called to uphold their commitment to go to the border, the SBTC recommends three vital changes in the usual routine:

—Do not go unless the Lord is sending you there;

—Take small teams—no more than can fit in a mini-van;

—Go more often;

—Establish good communications with in-country contacts.

 

Each of the SBTC representatives said they feel secure traveling to and from Mexico on a daily basis. Part of their assuredness comes from their familiarity with the region and the people living in Mexico. Also, they said, working in a less conspicuous fashion does not draw unwanted attention.

 

A positive development, one mission worker said, is that people in the churches in the U.S. are having to rethink why and how they do missions. Churches and individuals who are truly called to work in Mexico will and should come.

 

Amid the danger, Cantu has seen fruit born. Bible studies are starting and churches are taking root. In one town, 70 people have come to Christ and are awaiting baptism, he said.

 

“Don’t let fear captivate and control,” Dorman said.

 

Spearman added, “God’s always at work. He gives blessings to those who do come.”