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Carlos and Lori Montoya, President of MEDA and Pastor/Elder, Iglesia Bautista Betania, Siguatepeque, Honduras

Recent Update: Montoya Update 2025 December Christmas,

Montoya Update 2025 December SEPE

 
Montoya2016Carlos is president of MEDA (Ministerios Evangelicos De las Americas - Evangelical Ministries of the Americas).  It is a pastoral training facility and seminary in Honduras, working in association with The Master's Academy International and serving pastors and church leaders throughout Latin America, offering conferences, online training, and a 4-year, on-campus degree to equip pastors in Greek, Hebrew, Hermeneutics, Preaching, and Systematic Theology.  MEDA now has a second campus in Nogales, Mexico, near the U.S./Mexico border. 

Carlos graduated from The Master's Seminary in Southern California and in 2001, he and his family moved to Honduras to begin MEDA.  In 2002, they began a conference ministry that grew to reach approximately one hundred pastors and church leaders several times a year.  In 2006, the school officially became a seminary called SEPE (Seminary for Expository Preaching), and the first graduation was held in December 2008.  Since 2008, MEDA has graduated over 150 pastors from at least 8 different Latin HondurasMapAmerican countries.  In 2020, Covid shut down the conference ministry until 2022 when it transitioned to one larger pastoral conference and one large women's ministry conference (over 200 attended in 2022) each year.  These central conferences are now supplemented with several conferences each year where the speaker travels to a location where there is a MEDA graduate to host the conference.  This provides broader exposure of MEDA teaching to more people.  There have been regional conferences in Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, and Cuba.

In addition to his role as president and professor at MEDA, Carlos is a pastor/elder at Iglesia Bautista Betania (Bethany Baptist church) in Siquatepeque, serving alongside 3 other men - Raul Villatoro, Edwin Zelaya, and Jimmy Matute.  Edwin and Jimmy are graduates of MEDA/SEPE.  Raul has served as pastor at Betania since before Carlos and Lori moved to Honduras.  He is now elderly and has encountered severe health problems and has seemed near his deathbed a couple of times, so a majority of the pastoral responsibilities fall to the other three men.  Jimmy was added to the eldership in 2024 to assist with the workload that Raul is unable to do for health reasons.     

Carlos was raised in a Christian home. His parents were missionaries, involved in radio ministry in Bonaire, a Caribbean island. His father, Samuel Montoya, was the Spanish voice for the J. Vernon McGee radio ministry.  Despite the advantage of consistently hearing good teaching as a child and frequently renewing his commitment of faith, by the time he was an older teenager, he was living hypocritically – saying one thing, but allowing friends and pleasures to control his life.  It was in college that several fellow students, who were active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, confronted him with awareness that freedom in Christ is freedom to love and obey Christ by God’s grace. He felt God challenge him to decide whether he was truly going to serve God or himself.  After Carlos got serious about following Christ, he remembered a godly young woman, Lori, whom he had first met in his church youth group in North Carolina. While Carlos was at Chapel Hill pursuing a degree in Computer Science and watching Michael Jordan play college basketball, Lori finished high school and then attended Bryan College in Tennessee. They maintained a long distance relationship.  After Chapel Hill, Carlos moved on to Dallas Seminary for a Masters in Biblical Studies. Two years later, in 1989, when he graduated from Dallas, and Lori graduated from Bryan, they got married and began to work and pay off school loans.  

Carlos went to work for U.S. Airways using his computer skills and became involved in the local church. He participated in outreach to international students and also preached in a small rural church.  During this seven year period, these ministries showed him that his his ability to preach and teach the Bible was limited by a lack of knowledge and skill, especially with Greek and Hebrew languages. He had investigated acquiring those skills at The Master’s Seminary a couple years after they were married, but costs prevented him from attending at that time.

A trip to Romania in 1995 provided a missions experience for the family. Then, in 1997, Carlos got a transfer to Los Angeles with U.S. Airways and began to attend The Master’s Seminary for his training in biblical languages. Three years later, after finishing at Master’s, the family began looking for where God wanted them to serve.  A friend of the family referred Carlos to MEDA in Honduras. The facilities had been built in 1998, and the school was inaugurated in 2000. January 2001 saw the Montoya family move to Honduras.

Carlos serves as president of MEDA, as well as a professor. He and Lori have seven children.  Five are married.  The youngest two are living at home in Honduras.

Prayer Items:

  • Praise for God's care and support for Lori's parents as their health significantly declines - 68th wedding anniversary on 12/7/25.
  • Pray for God's continued care for Lori's parents.
  • Praise for great visits with their kids families - Leslie and Luke, Jonathan and Madi, Jeremy and Andrea, Marcy and Ryan.  This included 8 of their 12 grandkids, 3 of whom are new borns this fall.
  • Praise for Carlos's successful thyroid surgery on November 24 and subsequent recovery.
  • Pray for Carlos and Lori as they have returned to Honduras to re-engage in the ministries of MEDA and Betania Church.

 

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