Enrique Chávez Campos (1910—1990)
Country of Origin
-
Chile
Countries/Regions of Ministry
- Chile
Traditions
- Pentecostal
Ministries
- church planter
- apostle
Bishop Enrique Chávez Campos founded the Pentecostal Church of Chile in 1947. He was born in Santiago on May 27, 1910, and at the age of fourteen joined the Methodist Pentecostal Church (IMPCh), located at 40 Jotabeche Street. He was a poor young man who had been abandoned by his father, Erasmo Chávez, and was left responsible for his younger brothers and sister. He began to work and study in evening classes in order to support them.
In 1937 he married a faithful member of that church, Anita Reyes Díaz. Together, they were sent to take charge of the IMPCh in the city of Curicó in 1939. He was anointed as pastor in 1940 after having served as choir director, youth leader, preacher, and assistant to Bishop Manuel Umaña Salinas in Santiago. In 1945, however, he was expelled from the IMPCh for criticizing how the church was handling its finances. Along with about one hundred members of the Curicó congregation, he moved to a nearby warehouse located at 1155 Rodríguez Street to begin what became the Pentecostal Church of Chile.
During the period 1965–1967 he was anointed bishop of that church. After a 1960 earthquake that struck south-central Chile, Bishop Chávez organized, with the support of churches in the United States, the organization Evangelical Christian Aid, which enabled churches to rebuild temples and to cooperate with affected neighbors in restoring damaged infrastructure, as well as to provide food and medicines to poor schools. In 1961, the Pentecostal Church of Chile applied for membership in the World Council of Churches, and in 1968 it reached the Council’s Central Committee. Bishop Chávez was elected to the board of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) in 1982.
In 1985, after being elected president of the National Council of Churches and its social department, known as Evangelical Christian Aid, Bishop Chávez traveled to Ames, Iowa to celebrate a pastoral fellowship with the United Church of Christ of the United States. Following that trip, he fell ill with senile dementia in Curicó and died on November 24, 1990, leaving behind a legacy of Pentecostal churches spread throughout Chile. At present, the Pentecostal Church of Chile has more than 250 congregations and pastors in nearly all the municipalities of the country, and its organization is led nationally by its third bishop.
Bishop Chávez always encouraged church members to ensure that their children attained the highest possible levels of formal education, since he himself only completed studies in music at the Santiago Conservatory. For this reason, the gospel work that he preached enabled thousands of people to overcome poverty.
These notes were taken from the book by Óscar Corvalán-Vásquez, Bishop Enrique Chávez Campos: His Legacy and Thought, CEEP Ediciones, Concepción, Chile, 2012.