Report on 12th Annual International Conference, Bogotà, Colombia, 2007
37,000 people from around the world converged on the El Campin Coliseum in Bogotà, Colombia for this year’s annual convention of International Charismatic Mission Church (MCI).
The convention, which was the 12th International G12 Conference to be held in Bogotà, was held from 22-27 January 2007, and was titled “His hand upon me.”
Such was the popularity of the conference that the church had to run two services for the evening session at the 20,000 seater coliseum: the first for the 11,000 international delegates visiting from other Latin American countries, United States, Europe, Russia and Singapore; and the second for the 16,000 Colombian delegates.
International Charismatic Mission Church, led by Pastors César and Claudia Castellanos was founded in 1983 with just 8 people. Today it considers its membership to be in the hundreds of thousands.
During the conference Pastor Elimerson Provenca shared the church’s vision to reach multitudes with the good news of Jesus and said that the church now “understood that it was time to see visions from God come into reality.”
In the three months leading up to the International Conference the church was mobilised by Pastors César and Claudia for a huge campaign of personal evangelism where each member was encouraged to talk to three people each about Jesus every day. As a result, the church saw over 1,000,000 contacted in three months.
On the opening night American Gospel singer, Ron Kenoly led worship. Pastor and best-selling author Tommy Tenney also attended as guest preacher. Mr Tenney’s book, One Night with the King, was recently made into a blockbuster movie.
Visiting the conference for an evening, the President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, recognised the work of the church in transforming Colombia and said that he had come to receive spiritual input from them. Before leaving the meeting the President agreed to the request of Pastor César to pray with him every week.