House Church Seminar

This last weekend we had a seminar on house churches for our church family. Bryan and Jacqueline Bost, from São Paulo, led the seminar. They have been missionaries in Brazil for 31 years and have seen and done many wonderful things in their ministry.

They worked in São Paulo for 20 years and Manuas for 5 years doing what we did in the beginning of our ministry here: having different ministries and activities to attract people to a strategically located building. For the past 6 years they have been back in São Paulo working with house churches.

When they returned to São Paulo in 2001 they had made the decision to work with house churches, without recruiting any other Christians to help them. For 2 months it was just Bryan and Jacqueline - staring at each other! Today, there are so many house churches and Christians participating in the house churches that they don't have any kind of a count. They have no idea how many disciples of Jesus have become involved! That is awesome!

We asked Bryan and Jacqueline to come to Porto Alegre to share their experiences and their stories with us. We wanted our church family to be encouraged by what the Lord has done with house churches in São Paulo and what he can do with house churches in Porto Alegre; Brazil; and the rest of the world. In total, we had 10 hours of listening to and interacting with this wonderful couple. Many of our members were able to participate and have walked away with more vision for what is possible.

I think the most important thing we learned is to pray constantly and to be faithful disciples of Christ. God will do the rest!

The 2 pictures above are from part of the seminar on Sunday morning.

The 2 pictures below are from our worship service that took place Sunday afternoon. You can literally have church anywhere - we met in a bowling alley!

Men's Ministry

Renato, Lauro & Alexandre preparing to eat the meat at our last study!

Back in April I posted an update about a sexual purity class that the men here were going to start. A little over a week ago (June 16th) the men of our church family finished a 10-week sexual purity class using the "Every Man's Battle" book and workbook. We ended the study with a celebration churrasco (bar-b-que) at our house.

This class was an amazing opportunity for growth on various levels. As I stated in the previous post, we had a few purposes of this study:

1. strengthen and grow our relationships with the Father.
2. strengthen and grow our relationships with our wives.
3. view women with the eyes of Christ; with respect.
4. strengthen and grow our relationships with other men.

I believe that we not only met these goals or purposes - we hit them head on! We spent a lot of time in prayer and praise to our Lord and God; and we confessed sin, bringing us to a closer relationship with our God. We learned how to better treat our wives and how to give them our full attention - starving our eyes of sensual images outside of our marriages. We talked about how to guard our minds and our hearts from Satan's attacks with sexual lust and how to "make a covenant with our eyes" (Job 31:1). We spent time in meaningful conversation and confessed sin; opening doors for deeper relationships and trust with the other men in the study.

The Lord used our sexual purity class to renew all of us and to renew our ministry. The men's ministry in our church family hasn't ever had a real foundation. Now, we are standing firm! I believe that the Lord has some wonderful plans for the men of this church family. This study was just the beginning...

We are planning on our first men's retreat for the weekend of July 13-14. I will be using the book "Wild at Heart" to help us discover our masculine hearts and how God wants us to use them for the Kingdom. Beginning on Saturday, July 21, we will start our next 10-week study using this book by John Eldredge.

I am very excited by the changes and transformations I have already seen in the men who have been participating in this ministry. It is my prayer that the Lord would use all the men involved to bring more men of the city into our family - extending the Kingdom in Porto Alegre.

Visiting around the bar-b-que...

Lauro prepares the meat for our meal.

Paulo Renato and Mario have a deep conversation after the study.

Some of the guys digging in!

Regis tells more stories about that "big fish" he caught!

The 10-week "Every Man's Battle" study comes to a close with some of the men (and a couple of wives) having a celebration churrasco.

International Matthew Dinner Follow-Up

The following is what the Blume family wrote about their International Matthew Dinner. You can read more about their family and friends and see great pictures on their blog at: www.blumesinbrazil.blogspot.com.

On Friday night, June 15th our house church hosted our first (and it won't be the last) Matthew party. We took the name from the story of Matthew, in the Gospels, when he was so excited about meeting Jesus that he hosted a dinner and invited all of his friends to come and meet this life changing person. We decided to do the same but with a small twist. Because our house church is made up of so many different nationalities (Honduras,Uruguay,Bolivia,Brasil and United States), we decided to have an international dinner and bring a dish from our native country or, as some Brasilians did, from their ancestry. As we continue to teach and learn together, church doesn't mean a club where we go and stay comfortable with the same people. It means sharing the Good News with everyone we come in contact with. This is easier for some than for others. So to take away any discomfort from those who might feel uneasy in asking someone to come to something 'churchy' we decided to have a supper. Our house church, as is very much our nature, decided it would be very informal. It would be a time to invite people to interact with our church family and be a part of our church without even knowing they were doing so. Just be and show Christ to them instead of feeling like something needs to be said. We also decided to invite any foreigners that we knew as well as encourage our Brasilian friends to bring a special dish. Let's just say that God completely blessed our night. We had 40 people in our home and 15 were visitors. This was very encouraging as we even had 6 more of our regular house church members who weren't able to be there because of work and sickness. We had exactly the right amount of chairs for everyone. We had visitors from Russia, Germany, Peru and of course Brasil. The night started with Benay, Bronwyn and Ansley taping different countries names to the backs of every person. It was then that persons job to walk around and ask everyone else (only one question per different person)a question about their country (i.e. "Do we speak Spanish in my country.....Is my country in Asia?"). It was a great ice breaker and really got people talking and interacting. Our brother Silvio then led a prayer for our food and thanked God for everyone in our house, especially our visitors and then we enjoyed hours of eating and fellowshipping with our new friends. We enjoyed food from Brasil, United States, Uruguay, Peru, Russia, Germany and Denmark. Each dish was labeled in Portuguese as well as their native language. Benay and I feel very blessed to have been a part of this night as we were able to see this baby church really be Christ to the lost people of this city.

2 Russians, 1 Brasilian, 1 German and 2 Americans fellowshipping at the dinner!

Bronwyn and Silvio are ready for the game!

House Church #5 and Answered Prayers

#5:

Yesterday was a unique day for us. It was the first worship in our 5th house church! The Salgado family (of whom I wrote about on May 24th) moved into a house in a neighboring town last week. The neighboring town of Cachoerinha (cash-o-air-een-ya) is approximately 20 minutes from our house. To get to Claudio and Rute's house you must drive an additional 10 minutes. Although getting out there takes more time than we normally spend in the car on Sunday, it was well worth the drive there and back to be able to worship and study with the Salgado family. Some of our time was spent talking about how they want to fix the house up, the difference they are feeling in being so far away from the city (1.5 to 2 hour bus ride), how Claudio needs to find a job closer to home (currently works in POA), and how they have a plan to get their eldest daughter, Keity, to school (transportation is an issue).

We also spent some good time singing praises to the Lord, taking the Lord's Supper and studying some passages in the book of Colossians. It was a well-rounded time of fellowship.

Although Claudio and Rute would hesitate to call our going to their home and doing what we did "church", that is exactly what it was and will be the next time we go. They hesitate to call it "church" because they understand the responsibility of leading a church and don't think they are ready for it. At this point, we don't think they are quite ready either. Of course, we are not thrusting them into anything they are not ready for. They are simply hosting a church in their home when Jennifer and I go to gather with them in the name of Jesus. One day though, they will be ready to take it and run with it.

We really see a lot of potential for the Salgado family and their future in Cachoerinha. They are already getting to know the people of their neighborhood. Please pray along side us that they will feel more comfortable and confident as time goes by to eventually lead the house church that has begun meeting in their home, and that they would be blessed with peace and courage during this time of transition (moving from the big city to a little town).

Answered Prayers:

Boy, we have some good ones here! I love and believe in the power of prayer. I just want to put a few of some great responses we have had from the Lord the last couple of days.

1. We have been praying fervently for 3 children (one for just a day or 2, one of a week, and one for a couple of months). One of these children possibly had a kidney problem. Today we found out that recent blood tests showed that there is nothing wrong - stumping the doctors! Praise God! Another of these children has been in the hospital for a week with a staph infection and problems with her kidneys. After a rough first few days she is now responding well to treatment. We are praying that she will recover completely from the infection and the kidney problems. The third child is Ethan Powell. A while ago I posted a blog encouraging you to go to his daddy's website to find out what you could do to help him fight his cancer. Ethan is just 7 months old and is fighting for his life. Today was a major victory for him and his family. Based on test results today Ethan was either going to just be made as comfortable as possible until he passed away, or treatment would resume. Against all human odds, Ethan's tests came back showing no signs of cancer! He is still sick, but they are starting new treatments to help him get better instead of letting him go. I believe that this little boy is a fighter and that he will grow to serve the Lord in ways we cannot imagine!
2. Claudio and Rute Salgado were able to finalize all the paperwork on their new house and make their move. There were so many times when it looked like Brazilian bureaucracy was going to destroy all the hope they had in getting this home for their family. They stayed faithful and the Lord blessed them!
3. Jennifer felt convicted a week ago to commit to praying for the people who don't come regularly to our house church or haven't been in a long time. After just one week we saw a major difference. Yesterday 3 of the 4 people who came to our house were people who had not come in a long time. It seems like a simple thing to pray for those who don't come to church, but it isn't always. There are times when people don't come because of work or travel. There are time when people don't come because they are sick or the weather is bad or they are just plain lazy. It happens that no matter what the reason we can easily become discouraged and even frustrated. When you feel discouraged and frustrated you don't always pray. I appreciate Jennifer calling me back to praying for those who haven't been coming to our house church. We were both touched by this answered prayer and will continue to pray for those who aren't regularly spending time with our church family.

International Matthew Dinner

The following is from an email that our teammate, Kevin Blume, sent out tonight. I think that this will give you an idea of the kinds of things we are doing in Porto Alegre to reach out to people. When Kevin has pictures of this dinner I will post them for you to see.

In our house church we have been emphasizing the importance of sharing the Good News with our friends and family. One of the reasons our mission team felt led to move from a more traditional church type setting (meeting once a week in a big building) to a network of house churches (meeting in homes three times per month with a big celebration, with all of the house churches together, the last Sunday of every month) was because in our 5 years of being here we rarely saw any one attracted to the big worship style, big events (bring a friend day, etc.) or big building. People might come for a big, well marketed event but would rarely, if ever, step back into the church building. But, when we opened up our homes for cook-outs, suppers, watching soccer games, going to or playing soccer games, etc and invited our not yet Christian friends they would usually show up. The people in our city have a fear of something that looks and feel "churchy" to them. Our team saw these things and realized that the Spirit was asking us to change what we were doing to meet the people where they are and show them Christ in our everyday lives.

Our team has adopted a saying of 'Stop asking God to bless what you are doing and start doing what He is blessing.' We are applying this throughout our various house churches.

Our house church is made up of people from Uruguay, Bolivia, Honduras and obviously Brasil and the United States. It's fun to listen to our group get together for any event (house church, small group, cook-out, whatever) because you will almost always hear conversations in English, Spanish or Portuguese. We have bi-racial, bi-country and bi-lingual couples. It really is a mixture of God's family. Building on this unique situation, we have decided to have an International dinner that will be a Matthew party. If you remember the story in the gospels, Matthew, immediately after leaving his tax collection booth and following Jesus, invited his lost friends to a dinner the very night he met Jesus to break bread with this unique man. He wanted to share this exciting person with all of his friends.

This is what we are planning for tomorrow night. Each family will bring a dish from their country of origin and a friend. We told our house church that you would not be allowed to come in if you didn't bring food and a guest. Okay, so maybe we didn't read that part in the Bible but it helps us, in a lighthearted but serious way remind ourselves that this is an evangelism supper. Let's just say that Benay is worried about having enough space in our home. What a great problem to have.

As of right now, we already have commitments from a lady from Peru, a family from Germany as well as Russia. The kids have also been inviting their friends. We are teaching and learning together that church is the people and not the place. What better way to introduce our not yet Christian friends to Christ than a very informal supper together. To be honest, most of our friends who have made a decision for Christ since we've been here were introduced to Him through a supper, soccer game, our kids, etc. It's good to be reminded that everyone can and should evangelize, and this supper will be a non threatening way for our church family to do it.

I know that when these people come and are a part of our group they will want to come back. I believe that. The Spirit of God moves strongly in our house church. We laugh all the time and we love being Christ to new people and to each other.

We ask that you pray for our supper tomorrow night. That those who don't know Christ will be introduced (through actions, words and observing) to him. We ask that you pray for this to be a good first or second step, towards Christ, in the lives of those who will be here with us.

We will try to post photos sometime in the next few days.

Thank you in advance for your strong prayers for this dinner, our family and this ministry here in Porto Alegre.

Peace in Christ,

Kevin

The AFCSA Chronicles:

It has been a while since our team has had a campaign group in Porto Alegre. This year we welcomed a group of 18 Aggies (Aggies For Christ South America) to work along side us for several days. The campaign has them traveling to 6 cities in about as many weeks. The particular project that this group worked on in Porto Alegre was quite special. We had them out at the Chácara Rehabilitation Center building a new dormitory for the men that live there. The dormitory will have 5 bedrooms and a bathroom. It will house 20 men (4 per room). The following is a day to day chronicle of the Aggies' time in Porto Alegre (photos included).

The Aggies For Christ South America team

Day 1 (Wednesday, May 30th):

The Aggies arrived at the bus station downtown at 8:30am. We picked them up and took them to our house for a pancake breakfast and an orientation. After the orientation they walked to the nearby mall with Jennifer for lunch at the food court. In the afternoon we went out to the Chácara to take a look around. After they got the full tour of the Chácara we brought them back to our house where they were picked up by their host families.

Day 2 (Thursday, May 31st):

We started each day bright and early. Since the Aggies were spread out all over the city with their host families we made it a part of our routine to meet at a local shopping center each morning. Once we all arrived we would have a little "pow-wow" and get loaded up to go to the Chácara. This morning in particular was really cold. The day before was the coldest day in Porto Alegre since 1919! We made it out to the work site and got started right away. The men that live there had already laid the foundation, so brick laying was our main task. One group began the process of mixing fresh concrete while the other began laying bricks. Work began around 10am. We broke for an hour lunch and then continued working until 5pm. The Aggies needed the morning to get the feel of it, but once they figured everything out there was no stopping them!

Day 3 (Friday, June 1st):

Rained out!

It began raining really early in the morning. I made the decision to cancel our plans of working on the dormitory because you really can't work with cement in such conditions. So, we pulled an audible and took the Aggies to the Emmanuel Society for women. This is a place where women can go to stay if they are homeless and/or ill and have no where else to go. It was my first time to go there, so I didn't really have a whole lot of knowledge about what we were doing. BenayBlume suggested we go and it turned out being a great blessing. We spent about 2 and a half hours singing to and with the ladies there. We prayed with them and hugged on them. Benay brought a bunch of candy that we handed out to them. The highlight for me was taking socks that Jennifer had wanted to give them and actually putting several pair on feet. It is good to have experiences like that to humble us and grow us. I'm glad that the physical work plans got rained out so that we could go do some spiritual work.

The afternoon was much needed down time for the Aggies, who had already been to 2 cities in South America. They hung out at a mall and did their best to stay out of trouble. Although, I will have to say that not everyone was so lucky. Poor Garrett (one of the leaders) tried to lean on a table in the food court that only was supported by one centered leg. The round table top broke off the leg, tipped over, and started to roll away! It was quite a site! I wish I had my camera for that one. Everyone looked to see what was going on and a few people clapped! Everything ended up being alright. The mall staff weren't upset about it. They just wanted to make sure that no one was injured.

Day 4 (Saturday, June 2nd):

Excursion to Gramado!

We had planned a little trip to the mountain town of Gramado for this day. There are lots of little touristy things to do in this town. It is usually a pretty fun trip with visitors. We went around the Lago Negro (Black Lake) together, ate fondue (at least some of us did), and walked around a bit. It was a real quick trip because we needed to be back to Porto Alegre in time for the Aggies to meet the Blume family and their house church for dinner at a Pizza joint. All in all it was a fun day that was full of laughs and lots of food!


Day 5 (Sunday, June 3rd):

We all met out at the Chácara at 10am for worship. Most of our church members, the Aggies, and all the men who live at the Chácara were there. We probably had between 70 and 80 people out there. I never had the opportunity to count, but I think that is pretty accurate.

We had our worship service together, which included testimonies from one of the Aggies (Garrett); one of the missionaries; and one of the men of the Chácara. It was neat to get the different perspectives on the work that we were doing.

We ate a meal together and then those who could stay worked on the dormitory. It was really awesome! We had kids and adults alike out their mixing concrete and passing bricks. It was such an encouragement to see such involvement! I will never forget seeing how everyone worked together on this particular day.


Day 6 (Monday, June 4th):

Monday was our last full day of work. We really got a lot done. I meant to mention earlier that the men who live out at the Chácara were helping us. They are work horses! All together we had about 35 people working on this project. When we left the work site around 4pm on Monday we had completed about 60% of the dormitory. That is pretty good after just 2.5 days of work!


Day 7 (Tuesday, June 5th):

Moving on... to Buenos Aires.

Jennifer, Elisa and me with our "kids", Frank, Sam & Amanda.

You might be saying, "why would there need to be an entry on the day they leave?" "Nothing excited ever happens at the airport!"

Well, let me share with you an awful truth. The adventure usually doesn't end at the airport. That is where it usually begins!

Everyone got to the airport around noon to catch their 2pm flight. As the Aggies were gathering and preparing to check-in, one of them noticed that her passport was missing! She looked through everything. Other people looked through everything. No luck. It was lost. We started brainstorming what to do while the rest of the group started to go through the check-in line. This young lady who lost her passport was one of the Aggies who had been staying in our house. We felt like one of our daughters was in trouble! It was hard to know what should be done. Well, we called the US Consulate and they told us that if we couldn't find the passport she would have to go to São Paulo to get a new one. São Paulo! This was not the option we wanted. We went back home and looked around the house. No luck again. We called to find out what all she would need to get a new passport. With an upcoming holiday on Thursday we knew that this could take a week at minimum, maybe longer.

Well, to make a really long story short, the passport was found this morning in a bag that had been looked through several times by several people. It just plopped out on the floor when it was hopelessly being searched for one last time. I think everyone (even the lady at the US Consulate office) had the same reaction: "Praise God!"

We spent a couple of hours at the airport today getting her plane tickets squared away. She should join the rest of the group in Buenos Aires tonight. It really couldn't have turned out better.

The AFCSA team with some of the men of the Chácara.

The men of the Chácara were incredibly blessed by the AFCSA team. They had been praying for this dormitory for a long time. Before too long we will be able to put the roof on and they can move in.

I would like to say that I was very impressed by the work ethic of the Aggies and their amazing attitudes. They are great examples and definitely left their mark in Porto Alegre! Thanks guys!