CRM - Empowering Leaders
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TEAM HISTORY The Venezuela team was birthed from InnerCHANGE’s cross-cultural ministry in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the United States. Team directors John and Birgit Shorack pioneered the Los Angeles team in 1987 and ministered there for thirteen years with Mexican and Central American immigrants.
That same year, through their involvement with local, immigrant churches in Los Angeles, California, the Shoracks met Armando Benner, founder of the Venezuelan missionary order, Operación Timoteo (OT), and Gloria Garcia, who has given much leadership to OT. The friendship with Gloria and Armando was instrumental in how God eventually led our team to Caracas. Today we partner with OT in the preparation of Venezuelan missionaries.
In 2001, Lila Blanchard, Steve Scharf and the Shorack family (kids…Johanna, Sep 3, 1990; Marna, Aug 6, 1993; John Mark, Feb 4, 1995) were commissioned to begin the InnerCHANGE work in Venezuela, arriving as a team in November of that year. |
Community transformation: It's our heart beat. It's evangelization and more. It's churches leavening their neighborhoods with the works of Christ in the
power of the Holy Spirit. It's disciples with fire in their
belly to love as they have been loved. lt's small groups and house churches living the
gospel in their communities, being the light and salt of the city. 
Since 1993, when Chet and JoAnn Seapy moved to Venezuela to launch CRM’s first Latin American ministry. Chet had encouraged InnerCHANGE to consider sending a team to work in the sprawling, hillside slums of Caracas, the capital city. 
In 1998, John Shorack led an InnerCHANGE survey team to Caracas in order to discern whether this was the time, in fact, to start a new InnerCHANGE team there. After a second trip in 2000 the decision was made to send a team.