Answering The Call
It has been a long journey for me to get to church planting. I grew up in a Brazilian Christian home and surrendered my life to Christ around the age of 12, but in my childhood, it never crossed my mind the idea of being a pastor, and even less the idea to plant a church. I wanted to be a soccer player.
In my teenage years I met the man who would later become my youth leader and my mentor. He was a missionary for Athletes in Action (A Cru ministry) in Brazil. One day my youth leader was inviting people to volunteer at a sports camp, and because I loved sports, I decided to sign up.
When I got there, I was impacted by what I saw. I realized how sports were a great bridge to connect non-believers with the Gospel and since then I felt the calling to be a missionary. When I finished high school, I decided to pursue a degree in Physical Education and that is what I did. Right after college I was invited to go to Senegal to be an undercover missionary as a soccer coach to replace someone who was doing the same and was then returning to Brazil. When I got there, for my surprise, he decided to stay. So, I taught a local Christian coach all that I knew about coaching soccer and sharing the Gospel, and returned to Brazil, slightly disappointed not understanding what the Lord wanted with all of that.
Going back to Brazil, I took my father’s advice to work in the area I studied for years, while helping the local church as a teenager’s leader, and in a church planting setting in a poor neighborhood. So, I worked at gyms, schools, and soccer clubs until I realized I was not making enough money and decided to try other things. I ended up working at a major phone carrier in Brazil. After 18 months working there, I had shared the Gospel with all my coworkers, but I was feeling upset to work there, thinking that I was wasting my life. So, in 2013 I decided to pray asking God to reveal his will and what he wanted of me. I also asked my parents to pray with me, and I decided that if I did not have any other direction, I was going to go to a seminary the next year to get better equipped.
For my surprise, 6 days after I started praying God used two phone calls on the same day to make it clear He wanted me to do ministry work. The first call I received was from my former youth leader, who now was the Athletes in Action National Director in Brazil, inviting me to join staff, because they would have a lot of work for the Soccer World Cup the following year, and in 2016 for the Olympics, as both events would be hosted in Brazil. The second phone call was from my mom’s cousin, who was one of the only believers in my family alongside with my nuclear family. She had never called me before and she lived far away, but she was crying on the phone telling me she did not know why God wanted her to call me, but she knew she should tell me to not be afraid because God was going to use my life. That was the confirmation I needed to know the Lord was guiding me. Two people not related to each other, who lived in different cities and that were not aware I was praying for God’s direction and confirmation, called me on the same day giving me exactly what I was prayerfully asking for: Direction and confirmation.
Well, to sum things up, 45 days later I was moving to another city and being received as a Cru staff to work with Athletes in Action (AIA). There I received some theological training focused on the fulfillment of the great comission. After the success in our projects through the World Cup and the Olympics, reaching over 50,000 people from all over Brazil and athletes from all over the world who heard the Gospel, I was invited to join the International Team at the AIA Headquerters in Ohio. Parallel to that, after the Olympics in 2016, I got married to Lidiane who joined me in ministry. So, we moved to Ohio to work with the international team helping them with a strategy called Church Sport Ministry. In Ohio, our first son Tiago was born in 2020. Nowadays we also have Deborah (born in Florida, 2022), and we are expecting our third child Rebeca (due on October 3rd, 2024).
After 3 years working with AIA International team my wife and I were convinced that the church is the agency God will use to fulfill the great comission, and we felt the need to get a deeper theological training and that’s how we decided to move to Orlando to work in my M.Div. attending Reformed Theological Seminary. Before moving to Orlando, I connected with a Brazilian pastor, Samuel Vitalino who was planting a Brazilian church, Esperança Bible Presbyterian Church (BPC). I have been helping him since its beginning leading the youth group and a small group. The church was particularized in one year and today, three years later, it has about 400 members and three congregations being planted (in Tampa, Fort Myers, and Jacksonville).
As I worked with Esperança BPC, we got invited to go to Jacksonville to see what God was doing. My wife and I decided to go alongside pastor Samuel Vitalino and pastor Samy Anderson. On that meeting we had a time to worship together. My wife led worship, pastor Samuel preached, and I closed with a prayer. After that we had a round of Q&A to understand what was going on and how we could help. That is how we learned that in Jacksonville there is a group of Brazilians who have been praying for a church like Esperança BPC, a biblically solid church in Portuguese. We had around 25 people that night and all those families had the same story, telling us they did not find a good, solid Brazilian church in Jacksonville and they did not feel they belonged in the American church.
On that evening, I remembered what is written in Matthew 9:36: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Since that day I started praying about it, and as I said in the beginning, I didn’t plan to be a pastor but now I see the need for it, I already have the Esperança church’s DNA, and I am about to finish my M.Div. I told the Lord I didn’t feel capable of planting a church but if He wanted to use my family and I for that task we would surrender our will and trust in His will. That made me remember another passage, Isaiah 6:8: “And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”
Right now, I am in my last year in my Master’s degree as I begin the Church Planting Training offered by Orlando Church Planting Network (OCPN). I have been leading a Small Group in Jacksonville with about seven families since February 2024 with the intention to move there next year, and after being ordained, to plant a church there.
I know a lot of people question why to plant a church since there are several churches out there that need workers, revitalization, and so on. So, I want to conclude presenting a quote from Tim Keller’s article entitled “Why plant churches?”, where church planting is defended against four objections:
“Objection A assumes that older congregations can reach newcomers as well as new congregations, but to reach new generations and people groups will require both renewed older churches and lots of new churches. Objection B assumes that new congregations will reach only currently active churchgoers, but new churches do far better at reaching the unchurched, and thus they are the only way to increase the "churchgoing pie." Objection C assumes that new church planting will only discourage older churches. There is a possibility of some initial discouragement, but for many reasons new churches are one of the best ways to renew and revitalize older churches. And a final objection assumes that new churches work only where the population is growing. In actuality, they reach people wherever the population is changing. If new people are coming in to replace former residents, or new groups of people are coming in even though the net population figure is stagnant, new churches are needed.”
“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” (Acts 20:24)