Our family went to Brazil this summer to visit a cluster of flourishing Anglican churches in the northeastern region of the country. We spent 10 days traveling to three cities and during our time in the northeast, we visited five Anglican churches, met with three bishops and got to know dozens of people involved in the growing Anglican movement in Brazil. Along with the churches, we were able to spend an afternoon at the Compassion Community Center in João Pessoa (to which Restoration sent this year’s Good Friday offering). It was an inspiring trip. We met wonderful people, learned about the Brazilian vision for the Anglican church and based on our experiences, we believe that there are opportunities for future partnerships between Restoration and the churches in northeastern Brazil.
Brazil has long been known as the largest Catholic country in the world and recently it has emerged as one of the largest Pentecostal countries as the religious landscape has shifted dramatically in the last thirty years. There are relatively few Anglican churches in Brazil, but the number is growing. There are many parallels between the Anglican Church in Brazil and Restoration’s denomination, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Both are young denominations that grew out of a painful split with the Episcopal Church and have since grown in affiliated churches, members and coalesced into a global movement. Since it formal adoption into the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) 2018, the Anglican Church in Brazil has grown rapidly in the northeastern region of the country under the leadership of Archbishop Miguel Uchôa. Currently, there are over 70 Anglican churches in Brazil, with the majority congregated in the northeast corner of the country.
Our first stop was in Recife, where we met with Archbishop Uchôa before a Sunday night worship service. Over coffee and a few slices of bolo de rolo we introduced ourselves to the pastors and bishops who were in town to baptize and confirm nearly 50 people that evening. We learned about church planting goals and the strategy the Diocese has implemented to serve the poor families in the neighborhoods surrounding the churches. In Recife, Archbishop Uchôa led a campaign to build a community center for children in the neighborhood that would provide a structured and safe space for children who would otherwise spend their time unaccompanied or in the streets. They planted a church adjacent to the center for families and after nearly twenty years, and many answered prayers, both the community center and church are thriving. We visited the community center and church and were able to meet the children and staff, many of whom were once enrolled in the program when they were children.
After Recife, we traveled three hours to the neighboring state of Paraíba and the city of João Pessoa. We met with Bishop Márcio Meira who planted the Communion Cathedral in 1999 and after a recent season of rapid growth, just finished the construction of their new building which holds 1,500 people and is the largest Anglican church in Latin America. Bishop Meira and the church are following the community center/church model that was so successful in Recife and are now raising money for the community center and school. This is the project Restoration contributed to through the Good Friday offering. We visited the church and the space where the community center will be built once the funding is complete. Bishop Meira’s dream is to start a bilingual school in the building and serve one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city with a Christian education that will offer opportunities for students that the public school system could not provide.
The day after we visited the community center, we attended one of the three Sunday worship services at the Communion Cathedral. The church building and the worship service at Communion Cathedral employs a different aesthetic than Restoration, it has the look and feel of a megachurch. Like any church, worship styles evolve due to a number of variables, but according to the pastors, most of the church members were raised in a Catholic context. Church leaders have been intentional about differentiating the Sunday worship experience in the Anglican churches from a Catholic mass. As a result, there are many more lights, screens and fog machines in the mix than there are on Sunday mornings at Restoration.
We made a strong connection with Pastor Meira and his family during our time in João Pessoa. Nothing has been confirmed, but he would like to visit Minnesota in January and we both agreed to pray about future partnerships and collaboration between our church and the Anglican churches in João Pessoa.
We want to thank you for your prayers. Before we left, Restoration prayed that God would give us a safety in our travels, eyes to see His hand at work in Brazil and to bring the right people into our path during the trip. God answered those prayers. We will see where it all goes, but from what we saw during our trip, Restoration’s Good Friday offering will support what God is doing in northeastern Brazil through the Anglican Church. The support we sent will be a blessing to the children and their families in João Pessoa who will participate in the community center. Who knows, there may be people at Restoration who might participate in the bilingual school once it is up and running.
Thank you again for the prayers and if anyone has any further questions about the trip, please feel free email me (Andrew).
Andrew, Rosane, James and Francisco
