Brazilians Learn About Multicultural Ministry in a Post-Christian World and Explore New England’s Revival History
Brazilian church leaders participating in Venture Missions
Seven church leaders from Brazil traveled to New England in July to explore the benefits and challenges of multicultural ministry in a post-Christian world and return home with fresh ideas on how to effectively serve their neighbors from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and other Latin American countries.
The group led by Henrique Freitas de Oliveira, founder and senior pastor of Igreja Batista Candeias, also explored the history of New England church revivals as they prepare to launch their own mission ministries in Europe and North America.
“We have to include people of different nationalities and cultures so that people can feel that they are part of us and that they belong to our future,” said Freitas, who was one of the leaders who attended the Baptist Churches of New England Multiplication Center’s Venture Missions initiative, a ten-day intensive learning experience.
The seminars—the first Multiplication Center classes taught in Portuguese and English—offered numerous opportunities to “engage the culture of New England” and learn from ministry leaders and pastors.
“We have friends here—partners—and we can train our people in New England so that we can reach Europe and the rest of the globe,” the senior pastor commented.
The Brazilians also visited the historic Haystack Prayer Meeting site in Williamstown, MA, which is known as a “seminal event for the development of American Protestant missions,” several sites that are essential to an understanding of the ministries of Jonathan Edwards, Dwight L. Moody, George Whitefield, and John Eliot, and other places where spiritual awakening occurred.
Henrique Freitas de Oliveira (left), senior pastor of Igreja Batista Candeias, preached at New Life Community Church in Georgetown, MA. Lierte Soares Jr translated.
Lierte Soares Jr, who is from Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais, Brazil, led the Venture Missions program from June 27 to July 8. He is pastor of two Massachusetts congregations: Family Church (formerly Framingham Baptist Church) in Framingham and New Life Community Church in Georgetown—and he is the Multiplication Center Director.
He said the mission-minded Latin Americans decided to partner with New England Baptists because they want to train the next generation of their pastors and leaders to become missionaries.
Venture Missions was “a good fit for them” because, Soares added, the seminars gave them a better understanding of the need to contextualize a church plant in a post-Christian culture such as New England. Their visit to the region, he noted, was “the first time ever in their lives that they heard that [a] church dies. They had never been exposed [to the reality] that there are dying churches. In their context, churches don’t die.”
Baptist ministry in Brazil “has grown from a small group of people 150 years ago to 15,000 congregations and 3.5 million people today,” according to a Baptist Press/International Mission Board report.
“It is a very young church,” Soares observed about Baptists in his home nation. “They are now at their best moment spiritually. They came here because of the ‘reverse mission’ concept. They are feeling called by God to do [missions outreach] in Europe and North America as a reverse mission—but this is something really new [for them].”
Brazilian churches, Soares said, don’t have many books or much teaching in their own language on international missions and missiology, “but here in New England we can clearly share with the world that we are doing reverse missions.”
The Venture Missions faculty were:
Mark Ballard, president of Northeastern Baptist College, Bennington, VT, on evangelist Dwight L. Moody, who was the topic of his doctoral research,
John Brownlee, executive director of the Massachusetts Baptist Association, on the power of prayer for ministry longevity and success in New England,
Terry Dorsett, the BCNE executive director, on New England contextualization and his ministry experiences in Vermont,
Antonio Ferreira, pastor of Lovely Church, Peabody, MA, on contextualization of ethnic churches,
Rick Harrington, pastor of First Baptist Church, Haverhill, MA, and the Multiplication Center’s provost, on church revitalization and American revivals with a focus on evangelist George Whitefield,
Ronaldo Santos, a member of Family Church, Framingham, MA, on American revivals with an emphasis on Jonathan Edwards and the Second Great Awakening,
Soares, who is also the BCNE president, on missiology, contextualization, and reverse mission, and
David Um, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church, Cambridge, MA, on “third-culture kids” and discipleship in ethnic contexts with an emphasis on his congregation.
In two telephone interviews that were translated from Portuguese to English, Freitas said he and the others from Igreja Batista Candeias would return home determined to refocus the 2,500-member congregation into what he called a “place where we can have deep relationships” with their Spanish-speaking members and others.
“Thinking multiculturally is a challenge for all pastors in New England and also in Latin America. That’s a good thing,” he added.
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The senior pastor also said he wants his church to relate well “to every person in their particularity” so they can better understand each other and “make them welcome and feel part of the family. A church is a family [that develops] deep relationships and it should be known, not only as a place where we get together, but a place where we love each other.”
To accomplish that goal, he added, “We have to take into consideration that we have to approach [others] in their own way of life. This is something that we are learning, and this Venture training program is helping us a lot.”
Freitas concluded that he is returning home with “many memories” of his visit with New England Baptists. “I’ve learned a lot about contextualizing [ministry] in Brazil and about the challenges that you guys already won here.”
A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor