Our Partnership with the Local Church
Our Partnership with the Local Church LAMA, through its ministry, La Montaña Christian Camps, works with private and public schools throughout Costa Rica, but we almost exclusively works through the local church to serve this ministry.
We believe that:
God has placed His authority and ministry to the local church. Camp is not an event intended to experience in isolation. It is part of a process in the life of a young person. The church provides us with the partnership necessary to ensure that each participant at camp comes with a support network that will be there long after the camp is over to disciple and grow these kids into committed followers of Christ. We want to reach the whole country, and the local church becomes the network that we can work through in order to accomplish this goal. Since La Montaña is non-denominational, we can reach across denominational lines to bring Christ’s body together. And it works! We do what we do best, and the local church knows their kids. So we go a long way to facilitate the youth leader’s role at camp by giving them the only responsibility that they need to address – the pastoring of their flock.
LAMA's Approach to Working with Catholic and Protestant Churches
By virtue of it’s history with the Spanish, Costa Rica is a predominantly Catholic nation. Approximately 76% of the total population is Catholic, numbering 3.2 million Costa Ricans. As a non-denominational para church organizations, LAMA and it's ministry, La Montaña Christian Camps, takes an ecumenical approach to working with both Catholic and Evangelical Protestant churches, enabling us to ever-expand our reach for Jesus, and holds to the following: The belief that Christ is head of the Church (Colossians 1:18 - Christ is the head of the body, the church; Christ is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,that in everything Christ might be preeminent.) Submitting to Christ’s priestly prayer for the unity of all believers. (John 17: 20-23 20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. in John 17, for the unity of all believers.) The historic Christian faith expressed in all the ecumenical creeds of the universal church (e.g., the Apostles and Nicene Creeds), “catholic,” catholic literally meaning the universal Christian church--all believers in Jesus Christ.