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Jesús Goez is hiding in plain sight.

He preaches every Sunday.

Runs a feeding program for 600 kids.

Supervises a job-training program.

Operates a recycling program and a bakery.

He does all this to keep his tiny church with its big vision moving forward—while living miles away from right-wing paramilitary squads that have tried to assassinate him.

Goez is not unlike countless pastors, union leaders, and journalists. Each group has become mired in Colombia's fierce ideological war. Leftist guerrillas, private armies, and right-wing paramilitaries—backed by factions within the Colombian army—have torn the country asunder since the 1960s.

The church in Colombia has paid a staggering price in this conflict. In 2004, armed groups murdered 40 Protestant leaders, according to the Council of Evangelical Churches of Colombia. More than 50 congregations closed due to violence. (Nearly 10 percent of Colombia's 47 million people are Protestant.)

"All those funerals. So much death. In this war, the violence, the threats, the death, it penetrates your soul," says Mennonite pastor Ricardo Esquivia, one of Colombia's leading Protestants and peace activists. "So you pray, asking God for strength so that your soul does not become as sad as all the things happening around you."

In 2005, New York's Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding praised Esquivia's efforts, honoring him with the prestigious 2005 Peacemaker in Action award.

Since the 1980s, more than 200,000 Colombians have died in the violence, and up to 3.4 million have fled their homes. Community leaders have been hit especially hard. More than 4,000 union leaders have been killed. The death toll includes 62 Roman Catholic priests, nuns, and missionaries. Four bishops have been kidnapped and one has been murdered. The Catholic archbishop of Cali was assassinated.

"What has happened to me is typical of the things that happen in Colombia," says Goez, sitting in an austere apartment in a town that he asked not be identified. No one in this community knew him until he was transferred here to fill the empty pulpit of a congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia.

"I'm not the only one who has faced this situation," Goez says. "Many others have faced the same. When you do a job that helps people, others don't always like that."

A long time ago, Goez and other church leaders realized that charity alone would not provide a comprehensive solution for the 49 percent of Colombians living in chronic poverty.

Many complex factors contribute to poverty. Private armies have terrorized poor farmers off their land. The oil industry and agribusiness take possession of strategic land to explore for oil or to grow coffee, bananas, or flowers for the florist industry. As a result, millions more Colombians today live in urban areas, working in low-wage textile or food-processing jobs.

Many churches care for the poor through traditional outreach and human-rights advocacy. But there has been a backlash. According to reliable reports from displaced farmers and others, the government's military intelligence has kept the Presbyterian Church of Colombia under surveillance for documenting human-rights abuses.

According to church leaders who asked not to be named, video surveillance tapes of the Presbyterian headquarters in Barranquilla were used during interrogations after a church worker, Mauricio Avilez, was arrested on suspicion of guerrilla activities. Allegations against him were later dropped.

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February 2007, Vol. 51, No. 2