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Avilez is part of a corps of peace-minded lay workers who face the prospect of being killed and now live in hiding—just like their pastors. In August, Presbyterian Milton Mejia, the former executive secretary of the denomination, left Colombia on a study visa to the United States—but also to escape death threats. A staunch defender of human rights, Mejia's life has been threatened multiple times.

Although Goez is in hiding, he has not given up on outreach to those who ask him hard questions. He told Christianity Today that chronically poor Christians ask their pastors questions like: "'If God loves me, why do we live this way? Why are my children starving if God is good?"

"How do I explain to these people that God isn't responsible for the fact that they have no good place to live, no food to eat?" he asks. "None of that is because of God. This suffering isn't because of [their] personal sin, but a social sin that has immersed this country in misery."

Since the 1960s, Colombia's history has been a complex and bloody interplay of many forces. In 2006, President Alvaro Uribe was reelected to a second four-year term despite his mixed human-rights record. But under his administration (begun in 2002), murders, kidnappings, and massacres have decreased significantly. Uribe created a commission to oversee reparation and reconciliation and began demobilizing 31,000 paramilitaries. But the Latin America Working Group, a Washington-based advocacy coalition, says paramilitaries are getting light punishment, are not dismantling, and are threatening human-rights advocates.

In addition, there has been little progress toward a lasting peace. One major reason is that guerrillas, right-wing groups, and corrupt military units all benefit from the enormously profitable trade in illicit drugs—mostly cocaine and heroin. For years, the government, with U.S. help, has attempted to stop coca and poppy growing with aerial spraying of a potent herbicide, but to no avail.

Armed factions use their drug profits to fight each other as well as the government. Ordinary Colombians trapped in the deadly power struggle don't stand a chance. Pastors who oppose such powerful forces often end up as traumatized as the people they are trying to help.

The Goez family is twice displaced. In 1999, Goez pastored a 300-member church in Saiza, a mountain parish on Colombia's steamy north coast. One day, a paramilitary squadron rounded up 70 men, including Goez, and lined them up before a firing squad, in retaliation for an undisclosed offense.

Awaiting his fate in the lineup, Goez suddenly yelled, "Run!" Immediately, all scattered. Fifty-eight men survived, hiding in the hills, while paramilitary soldiers burned their village to the ground.

Then Goez moved to Cartagena, a northern port city that is home to thousands of other displaced families. When his tiny congregation extended help to the Nelson Mandela Camp—teaching the Bible and offering leadership training—Goez began receiving death threats.

In March 2005, unidentified thugs kidnapped, beat, and nearly drowned the pastor's 15-year-old son, sending the boy home, finally, with a message for his father: "Your coffin is ready."

The torture of his son was almost more than Goez could bear. The family left Cartagena, eventually regrouping in another town with only the clothes on their backs and a boatload of trauma.

Colombia's pastors and their families draw strength not only from their faith but also from each other. Mennonite Esquivia, who earned his stripes working along Colombia's violent north coast and dodging death threats for two decades, has become a key resource for other church leaders and peacemakers.

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February 2007, Vol. 51, No. 2