Ed Silvoso

Early life

Ed Silvoso was born June 15, 1945, at San Nicolás de los Arroyos, Argentina. He is the son of Omar Edmundo Silvoso and Maria Teresa Troia and has a younger sister, Maria Rosa. They formed an evangelistic team at the age of seventeen when the country was intensely anti-evangelical. He graduated from Colegio Nacional Justo Jose de Urquiza in 1962; seven years later he left success in the marketplace to become a pastor in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Dr. Silvoso married Ruth Noemi Palau, sister of renowned Christian evangelist Luis Palau, on April 20, 1968, and within a decade they had four daughters.

He studied at Multnomah Bible College while organizing large religious events in major South American locations; he then moved to Pasadena, California, to attend Fuller Seminary. Ed Silvoso began working full-time with Luis Palau's evangelistic team in 1970 and became the coordinator for International Mass Media Evangelism. He served as pastor for various congregations, as a missionary with Overseas Crusades (1970–1976), and as a team member with Palau (1977–1980). He launched his own ministry in 1980 and since then has written five bestselling books.

Four Decades of Ministry

Ed Silvoso began as a lay evangelist and national youth leader in Argentina (1958–1969), and over the past thirty years he has become a principal figure in the transformation movement. His definition of systemic poverty has elevated the issue from theory and dialogue to implementation and relief. He founded Harvest Evangelism in San Jose, California, and today it has over eighty associates around the world. Dr. Silvoso hosts international conferences that promote city, regional, and national change through ecumenical ministry.

In 2002, he established the International Transformation Network, a voluntary association that creates alliances between clergy and local marketplaces, and toward that end he travels throughout the year encouraging cooperation between various religious groups. Dr. Silvoso mentors church leaders, as well as heads of government and industry, how to apply the principles of transformation outlined in his books. He has addressed huge audiences in the United States and around the world in arenas and stadiums and at multimedia events.

Harvest Evangelism

Harvest Evangelism was founded in August 1980 and pioneered city transformation beginning with Resistencia. Ed and Ruth converted their weekend home at San Nicolás de los Arroyos into a prayer chapel and retreat center; the purpose was to launch a prayer-based evangelical ministry (1983–88). The site was dedicated on March 24, 1983, and within three years congregations and home groups were established in eighty-two towns. The same approach was applied to more than three hundred cities, and over the ensuring months it expanded to six continents.

Dr. Silvoso is internationally acknowledged as a foremost leader of the Argentine Revival. Thousands have visited over the past twenty years to observe his methodology in order to apply the same principles in their regions. As a result, many have adopted his concept of transformation, and this culminated in his latest volume, Transformation: Change the Marketplace and You Change the World (2007). The ministry is distinguished for dealing with systemic social problems and understanding global marketplace changes, the effectiveness of which is recorded in an extensive series of documentaries.

Transformationalism

Ed Silvoso is best known for his role in transformationalism and is identified as the architect of the modern movement. It blends various religious and social elements to change local communities and the marketplace. The term "marketplace" includes business, education, and government and applies to marriage, politics, culture, and workplace. Over the past decade, he has provided much of the terminology for transformationalism as well as a strategic template to accomplish it. Its intent is to bring spiritual, motivational, relational, and material wealth to local communities.

The movement developed into the International Transformation Network (ITN) that was established to create strategic alliances between pulpits and marketplace leaders. Members are challenged to invest fifty-one percent of resources to eradicate worldwide poverty. The network currently consists of over a thousand active members on six continents. Five paradigms are at the core of ITN, and they involve changes in spiritual climate, public policies, and ecclesiastical institutions. The network urges Christian leaders to participate in eliminating systemic poverty in all its forms.

Ekklesia, “the Church”

Since Dr. Silvoso developed the principles that define the transformation movement, in many ways his latest book is an extension and, to some degree, an application of them. It is entitled Ekklesia, and in this volume he discusses the intent of the early church. He compares what is described in the New Testament to its modern institutionalized form and points out that the term generally translated as “church” originally applied to assemblies in antiquity. He utilizes this concept to distinguish between the three main religious traditions at the time of Jesus in order to rediscover its initial meaning during the apostolic age.

The first three chapters of this book were distributed in limited number, and the full version is projected in late 2016. Dr. Silvoso introduces six transition points that enable the modern “church” a successful return to the type of communities the apostles founded:

1. from personal to household salvation
2. from pastoral to pastoring the flock
3. from programs to lifestyle
4. from events to process
5. from being righteous to being known.

In essence, he defines ekklesia as “an all-encompassing transforming organism.” One of the most important themes in this study is its emphasis on returning to marketplace Christianity, the description of which was previously published.

Transform Our World

Transform Our World.org is a website that amalgamates various services under the auspices of Harvest Evangelism, Inc. and the Transform Our World Network, both under the direction of Dr. Ed Silvoso. It provides a wide range of training and mentoring for marketplace ministers through institutions such as the School of Transformation, Transformation University, and the Transformation Entrepreneurs Institute. The website hosts several social media pages designed to assist the public apply the principles outlined in Dr. Silvoso’s best-selling books and is the only resource of it kind in the world.

In essence, Transform Our World.org serves as an online hub where people from around the world can connect and collaborate. It contributes to or participates in YouTube and Facebook as well as television and podcasts, and posts unique material for the public. This is an essential site, since the transformation movement has spread globally. Its “Adopt Your Street” and “Adopt A Cop” programs have drawn participation from hundreds of local, national, and international prayer ministries and have attracted the attention of the news media. It also produces a weekly broadcast on KFAX, a Salem Radio Network affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Books

Ed Silvoso has written extensively on spiritual transformation in volumes that contain the principles and paradigms generally adopted in the movement. These books provide significant biographical information that helps to trace its origins as well as the personal journey he took that resulted in becoming one of its principal figures.