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In the late 1950s, Latin America Mission developed the Evangelism-in-Depth (E/D) program, which spread in its influence throughout South and Central America and beyond. Growing out of the mission's long evangelistic experience beginning in 1921, E/D became a model for missionaries and missiologists in the 1960s and early 70s throughout the world. After a decade-long series of citywide evangelistic campaigns from 1949 to 1958, LAM launched E/D in 1959. E/D shifted the focus of evangelism from presenting a single professional evangelist in a one-time event to a countrywide, congregation and laity-based, year-long effort. The E/D program for a country consisted of organized prayer, training for lay Christians, preparation for counselors, follow-up of new Christians, widespread publicity, door-to-door visitation, local and regional evangelistic meetings, regional and national parades (illustrated by the photograph above in Venezuela), radio and television programs, and widespread Bible and tract distribution. E/D flourished on a broad scale until 1971 in fourteen Latin American countries, continuing afterward in Mexico. In the late-1960s LAM opened its Office of Worldwide Evangelism-in-Depth to promote the program's use outside Latin America.
The photo above is part of a series in a book used to promote and explain the E/D program. As the manual suggests, "Religious processions and political parades are common in Latin America, but giving evangelical testimony through a united parade is a new idea..." The records of Latin America Mission include many other documents that help trace the development and influence of Evangelism-in-Depth.
Evangelism-in-Depth is just one example from the collections of the Billy Graham Center Archives which illustrate the primary goal of the missionary enterprise to proclaim the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. While missionaries express this in many different forms, including evangelistic campaigns, medical work, church planting, education, theological training, community development, literature programs, radio and television broadcasts, youth work (and LAM had all of these) and more, they share and are shaped by the motivation to witness to the Christian gospel.