By Josimar Salum
As far as we know, the first Brazilian Minister to start a Portuguese-speaking church in New England (for Portugal migrants) was Pastor Joel Ferreira. While in Brazil, he was a Baptist who belonged to the National Baptist Convention – a Charismatic denomination.
This church plant probably took place at the beginning of the 1980s. The church grew to about 500 members. Pastor Joel returned to Brazil in 1991, and after that the church suffered some “splits.” The original church is still there with about 50 members. Today there are about ten churches in Massachusetts that were born from that pioneer church.
Armando Penha was the second Brazilian Minister who started a church, but now for Brazilians migrants.
In February 1985, a pastor came to Boston from Parana in the south of Brazil invited by Pr. Alvacir Marcondes, who started the First Assembly of God in Boston. His name is Ouriel de Jesus. He is one of the most influential pastors in planting and developing churches, not only in New England, but in the United States and abroad as well. Today he is the pastor of the World Revival Church in Somerville, which has had as many as 2,000 members at one time. The main church in Somerville, Massachusetts, just leased a new building to seat 5,000 people.
Under Rev. Ouriel de Jesus’ supervision, the Brazilian Assemblies of God in Massachusetts experienced a tremendous growth. The Brazilian Assemblies of God Church’s influence spread out to other states as well: South Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Florida, California, and Georgia. Pastor DeJesus also established churches in England, Australia, and Japan and many in Brazil. Pr. Ouriel and the churches led by him were dismissed by the Assembly of God – USA due to a controversy over a book he published, The Eternal Triumph of the Church, and some practices they began to adopt in 2002. Today the World Revival Church has 28 churches in Massachusetts.
There are at least another three Assemblies of God groups working in New England. Some of the churches that Pr. DeJesus started left his movement and remained as Assemblies of God. Other Assemblies of God were started independently from Pr. DeJesus at the same time he was planting churches. Pastors Pereirinha, Abraao de Almeida, Welber dos Santos, Eronides DaSilva, Noé Rosa, Joel Assis are some of the leaders who started other churches all over New England. Today there are in total about 80 Brazilian Assemblies of God’s churches in Massachusetts.
New Church Planting Movements
Recently a new church planting ministry led by Pr. Jefferson Neto came from World Revival Church. Today this ministry has about seven churches in Massachusetts.
The Foursquare Gospel Church arrived in 1990 and currently (2007) has 22 churches in New England. Eighteen of these are in Massachusetts.
The Church of Christ led by Rev. Wayne Long established in 1984 the HCM - Hisportic Christian Mission with the vision to reach Portuguese Speaking People in New England (Hisportic stands for Portuguese as Hispanic stands for Spanish.) They have planted so far 48 churches - 38 of them in New England. Some of these churches were pioneer churches in many towns.
Pastor America Neris and her daughter, Pastor Maria Neris, for example, started churches in Natick (now it is located in Framingham) and Springfield, MA. There are more than 70 Brazilian-Portuguese Speaking churches in Framingham today.
In 1990/1991 Rev. Aristones Freitas and Josimar Salum planted the first Brazilian Church in Worcester, MA. Today there are about 35 Brazilian Portuguese Churches in Worcester alone.
There was a new planting church movement started in 1990 among the ABC-American Baptist Churches in Massachusetts (TABCOM), although few churches were planted before 2000. However, this movement gained force from 2001 to 2004 when about 20 new Brazilian Portuguese churches were planted in Massachusetts and Rhode Island under the New Church Panting Coordination of Pastor Josimar Salum. Pastor Salum was hired by Rev. Linda Spoolstra – TABCOM Executive Minister to respond to the demand for new churches to reach out the Brazilian Community.
One of the churches planted, “New Life Baptist Church,” led by Pastor Jose Costa, Jr. planted many others churches. As of today (2007) there are more than 20 new churches that came out of this church, five of them here in Massachusetts. Pastor Costa’s new church planting movement is still strong and operating.
The TABCOM new church planting movement among Brazilians diminished after 2004 - due to issues of doctrine and marriage - after a resolution on Marriage, as an exclusive union between a man and a woman presented by one Brazilian Church at 2005 TABCOM Annual Meeting was rejected. Most of the ABC Brazilian Churches became disillusioned with the denomination after this episode.
In 1997 Rev. Jay Moura started a new church planting movement with CB’ Shalom – International Shalom Baptist Community, and in three years planted about 7 new churches in Greater Boston.
The Southern Baptist Convention has also planted many churches since 1995, today under the supervision of Rev. Roberto Souza. There are about 30 of these churches in New England. These Brazilian Church Planters came from the Brazilian Baptist Convention in Brazil, from which The National Baptist Convention came out with the Renewal Spiritual Movement
Non denominational churches
Many Brazilian groups have targeted new church planting projects in New England, especially in Greater Boston, like Fountain of Life Fellowship led by Rev Thomas Walker; Missionary Baptist Church Fellowship led by Pr. Wellington Oliveira, and many others like Pr. Carlos Boaventura with the Church of God in Fall River.
There are about 140 to 180 churches that are non-denominational or are directly affiliated with their denominations in Brazil. We estimate that there are about 420 Portuguese (Brazilian) speaking churches in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and southern New Hampshire (including Nashua, NH). However, the majority of these churches are small, ranging from 30-50 people.
We never did a “serious” survey regarding the number of churches and members. The estimate varies from 15,000 to 20,000 members. The Brazilian population in Massachusetts and Nashua, NH, is estimated by the Brazilian consulate to be 300,000. If we consider the total number of members of all churches as 20,000, that would come to less than 7% of the Brazilian population.
The percentage of evangelicals in Brazil is around 20/25%. To reach the same percentage here that we have in Brazil, we still have a long way to go. And as we reach 20% this will represent 40.000 new members.
Beyond the churches
Beyond the churches, there are a few Brazilian ministries operating in New England with important influence in developing a Kingdom mindset among evangelicals and other Christians.
The Joshua Project founded by Edson and Eneida Porto works with college students with the mission of Intercessory prayer, evangelistic outreaches and campuses church planting support. Since 1999 Pastor Porto has been praying intensively on Harvard and MIT campuses for a revival breakthrough. He was one of the pioneers working in Harvard. Today there are many ministries established on campus as fruit of his intercessory prayers.
Greater Revival Ministries founded by Pr. Josimar Salum in 1999 have been working to establish a bridge among the churches of all nations, especially establishing relationships between English, Spanish and Portuguese speaking leaders. The main vision is to see the Holy Sprit resting on the north land (Zachariah 6:8). The ministry focus is working toward the promise and vision of 1,000,000 New England souls coming into the Kingdom in the next years.
The Brazilian Ministers Network (BMNET), founded in October 2005 by a group of ministers (Josimar Salum, Jay Moura, Elias Monteiro, Thomas Walker, Nolberto Celedon, Naama Mendes, Cleonir Rabelo, Salmon Silva, Heber Goncalves, Edson Porto, Silvino Radke, Marsole & Geralda Sampaio, Marcos Nogueira and many others), has as its main purpose to promote relationships and the vision that the Gospel of the Kingdom be presented with the Power of the Holy Spirit, with Biblical allegiance, ethical austerity, unity, cultural perception and sensibility to all people.
Important Events
One of the first prayer movements by Brazilians was led by Pastor Marcos Nogueira in Salem, Massachusetts. With a group of seven people, they prayer-walked the city on Halloween Day in 1996 and challenged the English Speaking congregations to come out to the street for evangelism. In 1997, 100 people joined them with 70 nations represented with their National Banners. In 1998, 300 people joined them, and many Brazilians were attracted to participate.
In May 2000 a group of pastors led by Josimar Salum, Edson Porto and Jeff Marks rented a helicopter and anointed Worcester with oil, during 21 days of fasting and prayer. On the last day they consecrated 7 gallons of oil and after 24 hours of prayer anointed all entrances of the city. On the following week with Spanish and English Speaking ministers like Caballero, Abel Vilcapoma, Joseph Ford, Joseph And Sharon Bisceglia, Rafael Reyes and others, they had a evangelistic crusade for the first time at the Centrum (today DCU). One paralyzed woman was totally healed and 35 of her relatives came to Christ because of that. The City of Worcester experienced what many believe was the first spiritual breakthrough in a city that never before had experienced revival and in the next two years experienced a big drop in crime rates.
One of the two most meaningful events, without any doubt, was the meeting we had at the Fleet Center in Boston in December, 1999. In this event, we joined together with the Spanish churches. We gathered 14,000 people of all denominations and independent churches. It was a great celebration of unity that had a remarkable impact on the Brazilian ministers and churches. Since this event, it has been easier to bring together ministers of different churches for times of prayer, communion, and relationship. The New England Council of Portuguese Ministers among Brazilians was a key organization to help to organize the event. BMNET was created in November 2005; after three years the Council was dismissed.
The second most meaningful event was The Call New England on September 22, 2001, a prayer-fasting movement of all churches, mostly young people - including American churches. On September 1st, Edson Porto, Josimar Salum, Gilbert Thompson, Paul Taylor and others rented a helicopter and anointed Boston with oil. Ten days later two airplanes departed from Boston Logan Airport and hit the Twin Towers in New York. Some believed that the anointing of the city was crucial to protect Boston from a terrorism attack. Despite Mayor Menino’s words calling people on TV to not come to Boston on the day of The Call due to an imminent terrorism attack 11 days after the New York attack, 50,000 people showed up on Boston City Hall Plaza for a Sacred Assembly of 12 hours of fasting and prayer. The Brazilian churches were greatly involved in this movement with 7000 Brazilian young people participating in the event.
Crises and Challenges
Due to a heavy economic depression in Brazil since 1982, the Brazilians started immigrating to many parts of the world. Until then, Brazil was not an “exporting people.” That economic crisis reached the churches in Brazil and some pastors immigrated to the United States, trying to have a better life. Others were sent by the churches as they became aware of a greater concentration of Brazilians especially in Greater Boston.
Many were not sent by their churches, but when they arrived here, seeing the need of churches, they started their own.
Some of those pastors came alone, leaving their families in Brazil. As a consequence, some of them fell in sin, with wrong attitudes and adultery. Due to the repetition of these cases, in some places the church suffered some loss of good reputation among the people. It took some time to recover its good image.
In the last five years, it has been very rare to see such a thing among the pastors.
To say nothing of the language, culture, weather, laws, or documentation (we can speak hours about these issues), we think a challenge or difficulty that we have experienced is related to the buildings where we hold our services. The churches needed to rent church buildings for their services from American churches. As we had our services on Saturday and Sunday evenings in the beginning, it was not difficult to find churches to rent. But when other ethnic groups started doing the same, and the number of new Brazilian churches kept growing, the rents went up and many had to look for other places to meet. Many started having services in “tents.” By “tents,” I mean they were always moving from one place to another. But lately, God has blessed the Brazilian churches financially, and many are buying their own buildings.
Greatest Needs
There is a challenge that many Brazilian Speaking leaders are becoming aware of. It is that the second generation is growing. They speak and write English better than Brazilian; they have a different culture from their parents and they do need a “church” which embraces them with their identity. If the Brazilians do not begin offering English speaking services, or in a better way, do not offer a meeting with the cultural nuances of the second generation, it will not be able to keep their sons and daughters.
So at least we do need to find a way to have bilingual services, or find a way to have more interaction with American churches. Otherwise we will face big problems in the near future. There are some churches which are finding their way to reach out to the second generation and also to make an integration effort towards this goal. Some churches are merging with American churches in the effort to strengthen the English speaking congregation and to solve the issue of the young people.
In terms of Diaspora Mission, the Brazilians must understand that they are here not only to reach Brazilians, but to reach Spanish speaking people, English speaking people and all the nations who live in this melting pot called New England. The Brazilians are welcomed by the Arabic people, for example. It should take this advantage seriously to begin to reach out to the Muslims with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
So the Brazilian churches must not be entrapped by the American Dream, but become more Mission Driven to the nations. There are many churches which are doing a great missionary work back in Brazil, but the missionaries sent to other nations are so few that we can’t say that there is remarkable and significant missionary work towards the nations of the world done by Brazilians. There is an awakening on the horizon as some ministers began to travel to other nations and missionary organizations are beginning to be established to reach the nations through New England.
Final Comments
1. Generally speaking there are good relationships among the Brazilian ministers. We meet once a month to pray, plan, share information, and of course, to eat together. In the last two years BMNET have promoted two congresses with about 120 ministers attending the seminars during the day and an average of 700 people attending the evening celebrations.
2. The Brazilians keep coming from Brazil, although in the last year very few. On the other hand the Brazilian families are opening businesses, buying houses and establishing themselves in the land to stay.
3. With the number of Brazilians coming to the United States on the rise, the churches are growing. Many Brazilians get saved here. There are frequent water baptisms.
4. The churches are being better structured to receive and give better support to new members.
5. We anticipate that the number of churches will not increase, although the membership will grow not only with aggressive evangelism but as a result of the upcoming revival. As the unity among leaders is strengthening, the split element will be diminished.
6. The manifestation of Unity among leaders will increase tremendously during a time of persecution and suffering due to immigration law enforcement and economic distress. Many Brazilians will leave the country, but those who stay will experience a tremendous time of prosperity and refreshment from the Lord.
7. There will be a great manifestation of Unity in the Church at large – Brazilians are wide open to the manifestation of the Unity of the Body - as leaders from all the nations discover the necessity of relationships in order to establish the Kingdom of God in New England.
Contributors to this article:
Wayne Long, André Kuhn, Wallace Carmo, Carlos Boaventura, Salmon Silva, Cairo Marques and others
October 13, 2007 - 5:45 PM
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