Brazilian Christians See beyond Their Borders

MISSIONS

When American missionary Wilbur Pickering began talking to Brazilians about becoming missionaries eight years ago, he felt “like a voice crying in the wilderness.” Today that voice has been joined by a chorus of hundreds of Brazilians who are now taking the gospel into Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Some 1,000 Brazilians currently serve as cross-cultural missionaries both within and beyond the borders of their country. And some mission leaders there have adopted the faith-stretching goal of sending 9,000 more within the next ten years. They are joined by other Christian leaders who think Brazilian Christians should play an important role in evangelizing the world.

Latin American evangelist Luis Palau singled out Brazilians for special attention when he spoke at the continent-wide COMIBAM missions congress last November. “I believe God has a special plan for Brazil,” he told conferees, explaining his conviction that Brazil would be the next major missionary-sending nation.

That conviction is shared by many Brazilian young people. Twenty-five-year-old Eloisa Pasquini has served two terms as a short-term missionary and has seriously considered career missions. “We can see the work American missionaries have done in Brazil and what they have taught us,” she says. “It is about time we go out and put into practice what we have learned from them.” An enormous percentage of Brazilian Christians are below the age of 25, forming a massive pool from which missions may draw for years to come.

Nation Of Contrasts

As an emerging world force, Brazil is rapidly moving out of the company of developing countries. It boasts the second-largest population of evangelicals in the non-Communist world, and with nearly half the land area of Latin America, it is the fifth-largest country in the world. Its gross national product is the tenth largest in the world.

However, despite its large GNP and obvious resources, Brazil’s rate of inflation over the past ten years has been the fifth highest in the world, often running to triple digits. And many believe Brazil’s $108 billion foreign debt is unpayable.

The troubled economy, in fact, presents one of the biggest challenges for Brazil’s emerging missions movement.

The plummeting value of the Brazilian cruzado has decimated church budgets, reducing the value of money pledged by churches. “There is no way you can continue to support a missionary overseas with a soft currency that is going right down the tubes,” says American Richard Sturz, a missionary with the Conservative Baptist Foreign Missions Society. As a result, some Brazilian missionaries have been forced to return from the field.

In view of this, missions leader Jonathan Santos believes agencies must develop new models of missionary sending—methods more appropriate to poorer countries. “We cannot support missionaries in the pattern of the historic agencies,” he says. “This model must change.” He suggests agencies should look for missionaries who are willing to live on less.

“Meanwhile, I am waiting for a miracle,” says Santos, who is president of the 22-member Brazilian Association of Cross-Cultural Missions. But he is not waiting passively. He is president of Antioch Mission, an agency that in its 13 years has deployed some 60 missionaries throughout Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Need For Training

The agency also operates one of the many missionary training centers that have sprung up in Brazil. Nevertheless, cross-cultural missions training remains one of the key concerns of Brazilian missions administrators.

“Our biggest need today is missionary training,” says Rosejlan C. Macedo, an administrator with Mission Amen, the Brazilian branch of WEC International. According to Macedo, there are no missions books in Portugese, Brazil’s official language. He would like to see Western missionaries more involved in training Brazilians and working to communicate a missions vision.

Better cross-cultural training would also help prevent the large number of first-term missionary failures, say some Brazilian mission leaders. “Brazilians are emotive people,” says Macedo. “In Brazil, it is easy to preach the gospel and see fruit. So, when Brazilians go to a difficult place and they don’t see fruit immediately, they are easily discouraged.” Mission Amen is now sending Europe-bound missionaries to some of the less-responsive Latin American countries for internships in order to give them a taste of working in a difficult field.

A further barrier to Brazil’s fledgling missionary effort is their agencies’ lack of experience. Many, if not most, Brazilian mission executives have never been missionaries. One Brazilian student who is planning a missions career says he will apply to a North American agency. He says he would not consider a Brazilian agency because of the lack of field support and understanding of what missionaries face on the field.

“Western missions can cooperate with Brazilian missions by providing the necessary infrastructure,” says Wade T. Coggins, executive director of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, an association of North American mission agencies. “Once they have experienced missionaries, they can build their own field structures; but initially, they are going to have to build cooperative programs with someone who is already there.”

He warned of the danger, however, of smothering the missions impetus of the Latin church by overinvolvement on the part of the older missions. “It will take real cultural and spiritual sensitivity to come alongside and help—to strengthen without smothering.”

Missionary Wilber Pickering has worked for nearly a decade to strengthen the missions vision of the church and to train Brazilian missionaries. He is excited now to see young people volunteering for missions “by the hundreds.” Despite formidable obstacles, he fully expects to see Brazil become a major missionary-sending country. “Brazil has a massive evangelical population,” he says. “We want to harness this tremendous potential and direct it to the world.”

By Sharon E. Mumper.

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