Seeds of New Creation

When at the end of 1999 both CRCNA agencies left El Salvador – here the story is complex and details are left out – a new agency was formed called “Casa Semillas de Nueva Creacion.”  It is a national interdenominational non-profit; currently the Director is Lic. Gerardo Reyes.  The Board president is the “Reformed/Pentecostal” pastor of mega-church “Elim.” Ministries such as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Timothy Leadership Institute are also under the umbrella of Semillas, along with others.

From the Vision and Mission statements:  “We long to see people, churches and communities in El Salvador transformed by the Gospel…so we accompany (them) in strengthening their gifts and capacitites, so that together we can energize the Kingdom of God.”

So now funding that was raised for the “Word and Deed Project” all these years will continue but be channeled in coordination with/through “Casa Semillas.”  Additionally, monies will go to support both that office (“Casa”) and some of its cooperating agencies. This is part of the “re-alignment” referred to elsewhere.  This space will occasioally be updated to feature other ministries and their contribution to ministry and witness in El Salvador.

Editorial by the President of Seeds

Mario Vega

After Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged at the Flossenbürg concentration camp, his body was taken to the crematorium along with those of others executed that same day. He had no grave, no epitaph. His ashes remained nameless, mixed with those of other victims of Nazi terror. But those who sought to erase him failed to understand that there are testimonies that do not burn in the ovens.

Bonhoeffer is recognized today by many Christian traditions as a modern martyr of the twentieth century. His theological work remains enormously relevant because it forces the Church to ask itself not only what it believes, but what it does with what it believes. His theology was not born in the quiet of a desk, but at the painful crossroads of the Bible, political crisis, persecution, moral responsibility, and martyrdom.

Bonhoeffer was martyred because he refused to subordinate Christianity to an inhumane and cruel ruler. He refused to comfortably preach sound doctrine while turning his back on the regime’s victims. For him, obeying Christ was not repeating correct truths from a safe place; it was following him even when that obedience brought loss, disgrace, prison, or death.

Bonhoeffer was martyred because he would not accept that the church could enjoy religious freedom while remaining indifferent to the suffering of the persecuted. He understood that the church could not limit itself to demanding protection for itself while the State trampled on the lives of innocent human beings. A church that defends only its own comfort, but not the wounded on the road, has forgotten the Lord who identified himself with the least of these.

Bonhoeffer was martyred because he believed that Christian truth demands public confession, not cowardly neutrality. For him, at certain moments in history, silence ceases to be prudence and becomes complicity. That is why he refused to consider Nazism a merely political matter, unrelated to ministry and the Christian conscience. When evil organizes its laws and demands reverence, the church cannot take refuge in pious neutrality.

Bonhoeffer was martyred because he refused to accept the comfortable separation many pastors made: “politics is one thing; ministry is another.” He rejected that division because the political power of his time demanded idolatrous silence while it destroyed lives. He understood that confessing Christ meant discerning when the State had ceased to be a servant of the common good and had become a demonic power.

Bonhoeffer was martyred because he believed that when the State abandons its vocation to preserve order and protect the innocent, and transforms itself into a machinery of abuse, persecution, and death, the Christian cannot simply stand by and watch. Obedience to God may come to demand resistance. Not a resistance born of hatred, but of responsibility; not a frivolous rebellion, but a painful response to an evil that could be neither blessed nor ignored.

Bonhoeffer was martyred because he did not conceive of the pastor as a religious employee tasked with holding services, saying prayers, and avoiding conflict. For him, the pastor was a witness for Christ prepared to suffer. That vision clashed with the model of those who preferred to keep their positions, their congregations, their salaries, and their safety under an abusive regime.

Bonhoeffer was martyred because he would not allow the church to sacrifice innocent victims in order to save itself. He knew that the decisive question was not only whether the Church could keep functioning, but what it should do in the face of a State that persecuted, excluded, imprisoned, and killed. A church that survives by keeping silent may preserve its privileges, but it loses its soul.

Bonhoeffer was martyred because he did not make the preservation of life his supreme value. His faith in the crucified and risen Christ allowed him to see death not as a final defeat, but as the consummation of his testimony. Therein lay the decisive difference between Bonhoeffer and those who chose to survive without complications. Others kept their voice, but used it with caution; he gave his to the truth. Others protected their lives, but lost the power of their testimony; he lost his life, but his testimony keeps speaking. The regime could burn his remains and deny him a grave. What it could not do was bury his obedience.

Senior Pastor of Misión Cristiana Elim.  May 11, 2026 in El Salvador Now newsletter