In episode 23 of The Stott Legacy podcast, Dr Marcelo Vargas, from Bolivia, speaks to Mark Meynell about how John Stott’s influence changed the direction of his life and ministry.
Dr Marcelo Vargas is the director of the Centro de Capacitación Misionera or the Mission Training Centre. He co-founded this with his wife Silvana, a psychologist who specialises in Family Therapy. He originally studied Electrical Engineering as an undergraduate in Brazil, where he expected to settle.
But he was encouraged by Samuel Escobar and others to return to Bolivia to set up the country’s own Christian student movement to be affiliated with IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students). Having originally met John Stott at a student conference in Brazil, he went on to have many links with him and what became Langham Partnership.
He spent a summer studying with him at LICC (London Institute for Contemporary Christianity) and would in time become a Langham Scholar while he was doing a PhD through the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. He was a contributor to the influential single-volume Bible Commentary produced in Latin America: the Comentario Bíblico Contemporáneo.
– Centro de Capacitación Misionera (in Spanish)
– Official website for the Comentario Bíblico Contemporáneo (in Spanish)