Pioneer Cuban Pastor Visits Michigan

Rev. Ramon Borrego and his wife, Norma, have been in West Michigan for the last week or so to speak to Christian Reformed congregations and CRC officials about the growth of the Cuban CRC churches in Miami, Fla. They also made the trip to raise support to help them build a new building for their church, Good News Church, which meets now in a building in which a Pentecostal congregation worships.

Good News is limited to holding one service in the building on Sunday mornings and has been allowed use of a classroom for teaching on Thursdays.

"When we get a new building, we will be able to do more ministry," says Rev. Borrego. "We want to work more with the young people; so many who are going into gangs, getting involved in drugs, and dropping out of school."

The church already has a wooded site, purchased by Christian Reformed Home Missions, on which it plans to construct a new facility that will cost $1.25 million. "Right now, we don't have the freedom and space for our activities. That is a hindrance to the church. We also realize that raising money in this current economy won't be easy," says Norma Borrego.

Although he is officially retired, Borrego remains active in the Cuban CRC community in Miami and has taken on the task of helping Good News Church, which he founded, raise about $600,000 so they can build. He was once the pastor of Good Samaritan Church in Miami, the mother church that began in the early 1960s and from which three Spanish-speaking CRCs in the U.S. have been born.

"Good News Church is made up of immigrants. Many of them have come to this country from other countries to start a new life. We try to help them stand on their feet," said Borrego.

The Borregos' roots, especially Norma's, in the Cuban CRC go as far back as the 1940s when Bessie Vander Valk, a member of Bethel CRC in Paterson, N.J., arrived to do mission work in the country. "My grandmother and mother got connected with her and slowly grew into the faith," as did she, says Norma Borrego, who joined her mother’s church, which began as an independent congregation. "We joined with the CRC in North America in 1958 and finally became more permanent."

She met Ramon when he came to help serve as a pastor as the fledgling church grew and began other congregations. They married and planned to continue work in Cuba until Fidel Castro came to power in the late 1950s. "We were forced for different reasons to leave Cuba in 1966 for Spain," says Rev. Borrego.

Not too long after they arrived in Spain, they received an invitation from Christian Reformed Home Missions to start a Spanish-speaking church in Hoboken, N.J. They did that for about six years before they were assigned as missionaries in Argentina. They stayed there five years before returning to the U.S. in 1978 in order that Borrego could become pastor of Good Samaritan Church in Miami. "At that time, many Cuban people were coming to Miami and they had many needs. We opened a medical and supply center to help people. We were able to do a real service for the people. They received food, clothes, medical care, and many of them joined a CRC congregation."

In 1989, Borrego left Good Samaritan and helped to start Good News Church, which is in west Dade County. The church started as a Bible study attended by a dozen people, and by 1992 they had grown enough to organize into a church. Originally, they were in a shopping center and attracted many people. But as the church has had to move because of high rents, it has lost some of its membership. Yet, it continues to do ministry.

"Currently we are a diverse Hispanic congregation with members from more than 12 nationalities. We support national and overseas missionaries in Spain and Costa Rica," says Pastor Hector Garcia, current pastor of Good News Church.

Fifty years ago last summer, the Christian Reformed Church Synod agreed to look into opening a mission field in Cuba and to help support the Reformed congregations that already were in existence there. But that was 1959, when Castro came to power and instituted a socialist regime that slapped many restrictions on the practice of religion. The CRC had to remove the missionary couple it had sent to begin work in the island nation.

Since then, while the CRC has been limited in whom it can send to Cuba and how long the person can stay, it has nonetheless kept ties with Christian Reformed congregations in Cuba over the last half century. Those links have helped to maintain and foster vitality in the Cuban CRC. There are 13 CRC of Cuba congregations in existence right now, but there are also as many as 100 house churches or prayers cells that have developed, says Rev. Luis Pellecer, Latin American director for Christian Reformed World Missions. As many as 5,000 people have been worshiping at one time or another over the years in the Cuban CRC.

Speaking of the campaign to raise funds for a new church structure in Florida, Garcia says that the fund-raising effort is not "ultimately about dollars and cents and bricks and mortar." Rather, he adds, it is about "the vision of seeing lives, and in turn entire communities, transformed through the power and grace of God's kingdom."