Editor’s Note: Scott Canion, a North American partner, traveled to Dallas, Texas, with James Riley for a gathering with a group of Latin American church leaders. Scott leads a small cluster of house churches in the New York City area. Here, he shares about this intentional time for celebration and of equipping Latin American leaders in the United States, Spain and across Latin America.
“Last week, in the Dallas area, I participated in a four-day gathering of leaders from church networks from across the Latin American civilization, along with leaders who are planting churches among diaspora communities in North America. James Riley, from BILD International, was there to provide some training in how to use the BILD resources to shape churches and train leaders. And Mario and Amuy Monroy were there shaping the entire time into a fruitful dialogue with strategic planning, resulting in a unified network. In addition to James and the ethnic leaders, there were several of us who function as coworkers with the BILD team, basically as an extension of their team, but who fund ourselves from our own self-enterprising work and are supported by our local church communities. We joined this gathering to encourage these leaders; to reinforce the teaching and conversations that were happening; to better understand our own role in developing a global network of churches; and to deepen our relationships with one another as we work together across this network for the purpose of shaping our own church communities around the patterns and principles from the book of Acts.”
The following short stories share a brief glimpse of some of the situations the leaders in attendance are experiencing in their ministries. Scott expands more on these stories in his blog post about the gathering that can be found here (link).
Establishing churches as families in the St. Louis area
In Dallas, Scott met Juan, a leader who has had no previous connection to BILD. Juan and his wife had been tasked by their supporting agency to plant traditional churches in the St. Louis area. The goal was to form worship services and acquire space in a building. He seemed discouraged that he wasn’t making progress toward meeting these goals. Currently, all he had were two small groups of people gathering around food, fun, and conversation.
However, as Juan began talking with Scott and James, and hearing other leaders talk about how their churches meet each week to eat a meal together, sharing the bread and cup, and how that is essential for building true community that is rooted in the sort of gospel-shaped, selfless love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13, Juan began to be visibly encouraged and even excited about the possibilities.
Those present in Dallas were able to answer questions and talk Juan through how he could begin training leaders to help him, and how he could continue infusing those situations with the gospel to help bind them together in the truth of what Jesus accomplished and what it means for churches today.
Juan was a different person after this interaction, participating with fervor and vigor and asking questions so that he could return to St. Louis empowered to begin solving problems and making progress in his situation.
Shaping a network across the Latin American civilization
Scott first met Mario Monroy and his family at the 2024 BILD Summit in Ames. In June 2025, Scott had the opportunity to travel to Spain when the Monroy family, and families in their house church, hosted a gathering of European church leaders. These leaders are shaping and establishing church leaders and churches across Europe. (Click here for story)
Scott shares some of the obstacles Mario and his family have faced and overcome in the 15 years the Monroy family has been in Spain. When Mario discovered the concepts and paradigm of Christ’s plan to build His church as a global family of families, it made all the difference. He left the traditional church with the desire to plant a simple church community out of his home. He began to work hard at orienting his own marriage around these principles, then extended that out to his children and then together they began to sacrificially invest in a few young families and over the course of the past seven years a small cluster of simple churches have emerged who are self-sufficient, freeing him to do the same thing in other places. Mario’s field of work has continued to expand, now including both the extensive Latin American civilization around the world and various parts of Europe.
Mario’s own example, his intense, hard work, and the investment he has made in relationships with these key church leaders across Latin America paid real dividends in Dallas, as these Latin American leaders came together, helped one another solve problems and left with plans to continue their new partnership as a one-minded network who will continue to strengthen and help one another.
Planting deep roots in a transient community
One of the main reasons Scott chose to participate in the Latin American celebration in Dallas was because of the relationship he has developed with a Garifuna leader in the Bronx who is working hard to reconfigure his traditional church gathering of 70 people into a cluster of church families who meet regularly in their homes to eat the Lord’s supper and build one another up by bringing their own reflections on the gospel, and together figuring out how to process their lives through it.
This leader brought three young men from his church to this symposium, so that they could better understand what he is trying to accomplish and can assist him in making it a reality. He is working to develop them as leaders in the church.
In one of their discussions, someone asked them what their impression was of this symposium, and they expressed that while these ideas were new to them, they were excited to continue learning together and that it was their strong desire, to shape church communities that are effective at breaking the cycle of violence and fractured relationships in the tough neighborhoods they live in and help bring healing to a broken community.
Click on the stories below for a more in-depth look at Scott’s time with our Latin American church partners.
Introduction story: It's All About Family
Story 1: Ready Player Juan: Establishing churches as families in the St. Louis area.
Story 2: Butch and Sundance: Enjoying our lives together as an extended church family
Story 3: A Quiet Man: Shaping a network across the Latin American civilization
Story 4: The Honeymooners: A love less ordinary
Story 5: Street Cred: Planting deep roots in a transient community
Story 6: Stop Wait… Wait… Waiting… Start Becoming Faithful Leaders