The Challenge of Brazil 17-5-91 — George Verwer

Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to focus on Brazil. We thank you for what you're doing there. We just thank you especially for Humberto and Sylvia and Desio and Elma. We thank you for their lives.

As they have been recently married, we ask you, Father, to give them the strength and the grace to lay that solid foundation in their marriage. Thank you for Jose Feliciano. We praise you, God, for the team you've raised up there in Petropolis and the lineup team, Lucy up there in Recife and the Hendricks in Rio de Janeiro.

We thank you for the team also laboring in Santos and Sao Paulo, David Fern and others. Lord, we ask you for major breakthroughs for the ship along us to visit to Brazil. We thank you for the spirit of expectation that's building up.

We ask, Lord, as this tape goes out to our prayer groups and prayer partners and on teams that there may be a great stirring of intercession for Latin America for the ship visit, but even more for the ongoing work.

We thank you for every Latin American that's now out working with OM in some part of the world. We thank you, Lord, for the church's vision in some cases to want to send out. We thank you for Latin American sending churches, and we're looking to you for far more to happen in the months and years to come.

Strengthen us now, Lord, that this burden we receive today may stay with us and that we may be serious intercessors for Latin America. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, as most of you know, I just recently returned from Brazil.

Brazil’s Strategic Importance for World Mission

I would have liked to have gone to other Latin American countries and originally wanted to go to Argentina since I speak Spanish, not Portuguese, but it did seem that for this visit, and already my next visit is starting to be planned, that I should go to Brazil.

However, I was able to meet people from other parts of Latin America, especially some OMers there at Petropolis in our training center, and also have considerable time with Frank Dietz, who's the field leader for the Latin American field.

I'm not going to attempt to speak on a lot of different Latin American countries in this very short presentation, but rather focus more on Brazil since that's where I've just come from. My main burden really is to share prayer requests and prayer burdens because they really do need our prayers.

I feel as so much the church can learn from Brazil, and it's true also of Chile, of Argentina, and other Latin American countries, but I'll focus perhaps on Brazil. I think Brazil can be such a great encouragement to us because we are laboring in countries where we're not seeing huge response.

In fact, one of the main things I spoke about in Brazil was the 100 million Muslims of India. Many, many Brazilians, even those in missionary-minded churches, and they have some phenomenal ascending churches.

They are not a majority, but they have them, and we can learn something from those churches. But many of them have not heard of the challenge of 100 million Muslims in India. They are gearing in as they think of Muslims to the Arab world, which is great, but we know the whole Muslim thing stretches right across the whole of that great zone of North Africa and Asia, and when we compare 100 million Muslims of India with 147, Cyclopædia Britannica annual, which I have actually in front of me, gave the population for 89 as 147 ,404 ,000 in 1989 for Brazil.

The interesting thing is that the population of Brazil in the year 2010 will probably be 487 million. Phenomenal population growth. A country of just enormous range of people. Remember, this is a country as big as the United States.

I have a proper kind of projection map on my wall in my office back in my home that shows countries, as you look at them, more the size they actually are, and you can clearly see on that map, more than on this map, that Brazil is as big as the United States, excluding Alaska.

The variety in Brazil, my exposure to Brazil, and let me just clearly say, I am no expert on Latin America. Thousands of other people can report on Brazil better than I could, but it's a country of huge resources, natural resources, people resources, financial resources, business resources.

It's just quite staggering. It's a great mistake if we think of Brazil as sort of just a poor country. We hear these statistics about huge amounts of poor people. We also have those statistics from the United States, actually.

There are poor people, as in every country in the world, there's tremendous suffering. Drugs is a big problem, and Matthew shared the other day how he went down into Sao Paulo and met little children who were getting high, sniffing glue.

All these problems that we find all over the world can perhaps be magnified in Brazil because it's a huge country of 147 million people, and there are plenty of poor people. But there is a giant middle class in Brazil, and there is also considerable, considerable one.

This is why some of us don't any longer like the third world terminology, because where do you put countries like Brazil? What does the third world mean? I think it was Joseph de Souza that reminded us once in an India meeting or a general meeting that maybe we should think of it as the two-thirds world because of the importance, the size of the population.

Some of the greatest prayer burdens we have, of course, are in connection with Lagos, too. But I think before I get to that, I have the greatest prayer burden of all, and it's based on Matthew chapter 9, that the Lord of the harvest would send forth laborers.

Brazilian Churches as Sending Churches

The Brazilian church is ready to send out workers into the harvest. They are, contrary to some stories going around, they are able to get money out of the country. There are Brazilians working in many different parts of the world, not huge numbers at this present time.

One of the meetings I took was in an outstanding missionary-minded church in Sao Paulo, in the suburbs of Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo has about 24 million people. I guess there's different ways of measuring a population, but that's what I was told.

I seem to spend a lot of my time traveling around to get from one end of Sao Paulo to the other, and then I went outside the city to visit Andrew and Gaynor Saunders and do pray for them as they are living out in a farm about an hour out of the city, beautiful, lush jungle forest area, and that was a real sort of change of pace.

And they are taking children and adopting them. They have adopted two more, I believe. Matthew, do you remember? The Swiss man down the road has adopted a number. But their burden is to sort of launch and see a movement in which Brazilians will more readily adopt children.

Apparently this doesn't happen very much at present. Americans fly down there, and we met some people in California adopting. That's complex, but it happens. It's also controversial. So remember Andrew and Gaynor Saunders and this new ministry, and they certainly sent their greetings.

But back to this church in Sao Paulo, I can honestly say, ministering Sunday night, there must have been 2 ,000 in the meeting, that that church is as much a sending missionary church, any church I've been in the world.

Well, I have been in the future, including the United States for Drapery, and it was really overwhelming. Now, they are one of the pace-setting churches, so don't judge all of Brazil and all the churches by this one church.

On the Monday night, and generally, missionary speakers, we don't take meetings on Monday night because people don't come. But on Monday night, they must have still had, certainly the lower part of the church was packed.

It seemed like there must have been 800, 700, maybe more people. I am told in Brazil that I tend to understate things. I thought I was speaking to 500 pastors in a big meeting in Sao Paulo, and Desio corrected me that he thought it was 1 ,500.

I've now gone back to the 1 ,000 figure. Perhaps we should have stood and counted them. When I gave an invitation at the end, we also have meetings on Tuesday night and Wednesday night there. Many stood voluntarily.

In fact, very clearly, and I told them this in my meetings in Brazil, there are more Brazilians who want to go than you have sending churches and finances in the hand ready to send. So that's another major prayer request.

And I praise God that Desio and Humberto and our board members, I spent my last night in the home of the president of the board, they want to see this money coming from Brazil. But I believe there are ways that we can help even our own team here, not with huge amounts of money, but sometimes smaller amounts of money to just help certain things get started because they've been under enormous financial pressure.

They haven't purchased all the books in Portuguese that perhaps they'd like to have for meetings, for missions conferences. Again, there's an amazing range of books in Portuguese. The average Brazilian Christian has not seen many.

Many Brazilian Christians are not big into reading books. Someone said to me, I don't know if this is true, that Brazil has gone to great generalization from a nation of largely verbal communication years ago, and many people, of course, were unable to read and write in some areas.

And we're going back some years. But they've gone from verbal communication immediately into the video. And you'd be amazed, video recorders, television, the video shops, that quite a few Brazilians are not readers.

Now, that's what someone told me. I'm not sure if it's true. Certainly, our meetings did not prove that because they went for our books like we were giving them away. And Desio was very encouraged with a couple thousand dollars of book sales since total sales all last year.

It was about $10 ,000. And I immediately sent a fax to Vera to put a couple thousand dollars in the Brazil account over in our bank in Belgium to go out to other parts of the world. And in turn, I bought some more books there in Sao Paulo, most of which we already sold.

I am convinced that one of our ministries in Latin America is going to be the ministry of getting out the books. They don't know Calvary Road. They don't know some of the other great books that could be such a blessing to the church.

In Spanish, we have Priority One coming off the press soon. We have Grace Awakening coming off the press soon. I don't think they're in Portuguese yet, though my knowledge is not complete of Portuguese books.

Brazil is a country of tremendous variety of churches. Here again, we hear generalization. And perhaps one of the strongest messages of my little sharing about Brazil is that in my mind, the road we took to be open to what God is doing in the charismatic movement and among Pentecostal people, even though that's not our original OM roots, was probably the wisest decision, one of the wisest decisions in the history of OM.

And I remember Billy Graham 10 years ago saying something very positive about what God was doing through the charismatic movement. I'm sure that frightened a few anti-charismatic people and people who tend to go around criticizing.

And I just felt so happy when Billy Graham made that statement. I carried it in my Bible for some years. And surely in Brazil, 75 of everything that's happening, 75 comes from that side of what God is doing in the world today.

Now, people who attack this, they find some extreme group and there are some very extreme group. And a lot of people in your major Pentecostal denominations and more balanced charismatic fellowships, they are actually speaking against and opposing some of this really raw extremism.

And yet it's so easy when you have such a range of different kinds of people that come under the charismatic or Pentecostal umbrella to just say something that isn't true. And I praise God that I believe through my own visit and hopefully through the ship visit that our heart linking with the biggest denomination of Brazilian Assembly of God will really grow.

Now, the Assembly of God in Brazil isn't the same as the Assembly of God in England. I can assure you they are far more conservative. I don't need to go into details, but Brother Desio with his beard, not able or allowed to interpret in the meeting.

And I think as we work together with different fellowships, we have to accept that different people have different convictions on these issues. It's easy to belittle people who have something that we feel is legalistic.

Do we not have any legalisms in our land? Any judgmentalism in our land? Any phariseeism? In fact, you name any sin and we can find it in Operation Mobilization where we're supposed to be in the midst of a grace awakening.

And I praise God for the Assembly of God there in Brazil. The Lord opened the door. They told me I was going to speak to 50 pastors of the Assembly of God. There were over a thousand in this meeting. And the heads of the denomination were up on the platform trying to figure out exactly who I was.

It was an amazing thing how I got in there. And I did have a very good interpreter. It was just an exciting time. They were not just pastors, but elders. And then later on, I was wrestling with the fact that my time there got extended.

I really felt I couldn't afford three more days in Brazil when I was on my way there looking at my schedule. But that was partly because Matthew and I went on a two-for-one ticket, and that had to be 14 days.

The last three days were the key days, really, of the whole trip. It was all great. The last three days, that big meeting with those Assembly of God pastors and all the ramifications of that. We had our ship people there with all the posters, back to all those churches, and a lot of other things connected with that.

Building Relationships with Brazilian Leaders

The next morning, we had a little problem. They booked me to speak in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro on the same morning. I was seven hours away by bus. We're dealing with very big distances. Somehow, we managed to get me to speak in Sao Paulo early in the morning, and we moved the Rio de Janeiro meeting back to one, and they sat there for an hour and waited for me to arrive.

It was a big lunch. It was a much bigger affair than I thought. I thought they'd eat lunch while I was on my way. We took the shuttle service. These cities have two airports, one outside the city, one in the city.

We took the shuttle service, even though we missed one. We were an hour late, but those two meetings, as I look back, as far as contact with leaders, as far as contact with people who can really help the ship, it was great.

Pray for the Year 2000 movement. The meeting I spoke at in Sao Paulo on that morning, just before I left Brazil, was the first meeting, the first meeting of the Year 2000 movement in Brazil, at least in Sao Paulo, and they came from all over the country.

Jonathan Santos is a key man to pray for, the head of the Antioch mission. When a ship comes into a country the size of Brazil, it's not a small matter making it even known the ship is coming. I talked to Jonathan Santos, a man of considerable leadership.

He didn't even know that Lagos II was on its way to Brazil. Certainly, I was able to incorporate a few announcements in the ship line of people. David Fern was always there with the posters, and it just dovetailed together, because my visit to Brazil was in cement before the schedule for Lagos II to Brazil, because later on we thought maybe I should go when the ship was there, but that could not be worked out.

I think I helped more by being there ahead of the ship. I really had freedom, and I will tell you, Desio is one of the greatest interpreters I have ever spoken to in 29 years of being an interpreter. I hardly knew he was there.

He's like a machine gun, and we are similar in our size and temperament. I tell you, it was great, and he and his wife, though they have a lot of responsibility, traveled with me to every single meeting, almost every meeting during those 14 days.

I just had an exciting time with those leaders, and a number of them were heads of denominations, and I really would appreciate your praying that we can follow up on it, because we're still, OM in Brazil is a pioneer situation.

I believe that's one of the reasons sometimes there had been misunderstandings in connection with the situation, and they all remember in Brazil, the first time Brazil was presented to the field leaders to be accepted, it was turned down.

They will never forget that in Brazil. I was able to use that to explain some of the problems that we have in OM International and show that that's not a vote against Brazil and how the next year there was this consensus that Brazil should become full members of Operation Mobilization.

That was something I shared later in the morning when I got to Rio de Janeiro. All these pastors, some of them had come in from Brasilia and from other parts of the country. This is amazing, because that meeting was only lined up 10 days before.

A few came to hear me in Rio de Janeiro when I first arrived on a Monday night after a big weekend. They got excited about what I had to say, especially the chairman of the board and the chairman of the longest committee.

They said, we got to get a big leaders meeting here 10 days from now. That's how we ended up colliding, because we didn't know about the São Paulo meeting, and we said, yeah, let's go for a Wednesday lunch just before I go back to England.

So they got on the phone, and they got these leaders together in an institution that is run also by the man who is the chairman of the longest committee, a man of significant Christian leadership ability that is run also by the man who is the chairman of the longest committee, a man of significant Christian leadership ability and importance in Brazil.

I'm sorry I can't throw out all the wonderful Brazilian names. That meeting also went very well. It had to be short. We sat down and had a tremendous lunch together. And then I started to see this. He had a radio studio, and he started to get the man.

I don't think he asked. It seemed to me he was moving into this radio studio, and he moved me into the radio studio. You don't get a lot of choice on something. Once you commit yourself to a place like Brazil, you just move along.

When you're told, of course, it's great. And he made a tape that will go out over all Brazil and got these heads, very respected leaders, to say how important they believe the Lagos 2 visit was to Brazil.

They were on the spot, and they came up with the goods. I don't know what they thought of Lagos 2 before that radio broadcast, but certainly it's clear after the radio broadcast that these men were committed to Lagos 2.

And I want us to continue to follow up in prayer the Lagos 2 visit of Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, and what's the last port? Down there in the south. I don't know, but we'll have to focus on that fourth port since I had forgotten what it was.

Porto Alegre. It could be Porto Alegre, yeah. Santos, just to say a word about Santos, is a very key port because it's one hour down the road from Sao Paulo. My main missions conference, perhaps the biggest missions conference of the whole trip, was in Santos.

Santos and the Growth of World Missions Vision

And what I'm about to tell you about Santos I think is going to encourage you for many years to come. Dulas went into Santos in 1970 and changed the course of the Church of Jesus Christ in that city. To some degree began to change the course of the Church in Brazil.

Now let's first of all make it clear. God was doing other things at the same time. It's not just our ship. That changed the mentality of the Brazilian Church to begin to think world mission. But certainly Christian leaders in Brazil certainly would say the ship visit was a major factor in this.

There's a man named Edson. Again, the pronunciation every time will be at risk. He is the pastor of that church I referred to in Sao Paulo where they had that tremendous missions conference Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.

I wish I could go. I wish I could go. Just like cement. I mean this man. I said to Edson, hey, how many of these do you have around Brazil? He whispered, well, not too many. He actually was the leader.

He was the chairman of Comibom. So obviously he's an outstanding man when it comes to missions. He's off to South Africa, I think, to minister within the next few weeks. I just mentioned that because God, give him a chance with some of these Latin Americans.

When I'm there in Brazil, I just, forgive my English friends who are here, don't misunderstand this, I wonder what did God ever do putting me in England? I'm sure I've continued to offend English people for the last 29 years, too loud, too aggressive, very un-English.

Brazil is my country. We've discussed moving this entire international coordinating team to Petropolis. We can help with some of the building repairs with our finance or at least Rio de Janeiro. But I think we will settle on the Holy Spirit's guidance to be here in London at least for a while.

There's a lot of energy. There's a lot of emotion. But there is also keen intellect. There's also a tremendous history. It's a very cosmopolitan country where people of different racial backgrounds function well.

Now, one man frowned when I said that down there. So I read from that frown that maybe there are racial tensions. That would be true in any nation in the world. But you go in a church. I'm in the Presbyterian Cathedral in Rio.

I'm in one of the main Methodist churches. These are the old traditional churches in Sao Paulo. I look out at the audience. There's people of all different backgrounds and races. And this is, to me, also a factor in enabling Brazil to be ready for a movement like OM, to be ready to launch out in a cross-cultural situation.

We know, of course, there will be difficulties and struggles and weaknesses as well. Let me just tell you a little more about Santos. Santos organized a Vancouver-type missions conference. I've been there a few times.

And in Vancouver, Canada, a number of churches come together to sponsor a really top-level mission. It seldom happens in the United States. I've been to the Grand Rapids one just a few weeks ago. Very few churches really give it.

When you consider the number of churches, only a few really get behind it, though it is encouraging. In Santos, I think we had 12 churches. They hired a top public school in the center of the city. They had the music.

They had the banners. They had the flags, the fireworks. I mean, that was a missions conference. And I just praise God. Again, there seem to be more people who want to go. And finding the finance for these people is not going to be easy.

Now, that can give a little bit of a distortion because I can assure you there are plenty of churches in Santos that are not necessarily in this direction. There's quite a bit of tokenism. You have that in any situation.

But people who know now, yes, Brazil must send missionaries. Yes, well, that's a nice group. Oh, yeah, Lagos too. But I think Daniel Bianchi, who's here with us this morning, can testify that in most countries of the world, and it's true in Latin America, people can be involved in world missions in a token way.

And we need to pray that this visit of the ship, the ministry of our teams in Brazil, help some of these churches move into a more total commitment. You know, it would be ridiculous to go to a place like Latin America.

Financing Missionary Sending and Reaching People of Wealth

I really believe this with our own finances. And it was Latin America helped us. Because if we're going to see it happen in places like Brazil, the way these people think and their background, we've got to talk honestly, openly, clearly about finance.

My entire air ticket was paid by the Brazilians. They don't want fraternity. They don't want necessarily donations from us. They want to fight to see the money coming from their own people. And their people have money.

One of my big prayer burdens, and I talk to Desio about this about every third day, was how are we going to impact people? We're not very much in tune with people's wealth. I had very little contact. Perhaps one of my failures with people of wealth during my time in Brazil.

These people live in their own world. We are not in that world. But if we're going to see missionaries go out from Latin America, somehow we've got to be willing to contact them. Well, I'm talking about Christians.

I'm talking about businessmen. We're going to have to meet them where they are. We're going to have to learn their language. And they know when I go back again next time, not just going to be missions conference meetings and church meetings and meetings with a team in Petropolis, but hopefully some meetings with business people, people who could help resource work of God.

The tendency is to see that the money has to come through the churches. I still believe that's priority one. But the history of world mission shows that it's not either or. That God uses firstly the churches, but God uses also people of wealth who have a vision for resourcing the work of God.

Some of their money, of course, they will give through their churches. But there are people who also like to send their money direct. We're under considerable pressure in Brazil. The prayer letter has only gone out in the whole year.

So our prayer partners don't actually know what's going on. It's not easy to get a prayer letter launched. Praise God for that missions conference there in Santos. Another one of the highlights was the time in Petropolis, spent a couple of days in the training center in Petropolis.

Training Missionaries at Petropolis

This is a short term training program, six months of intensive cross-cultural missy missy logical training. A number of amazing people have gone down there to teach. Then they go out on teams around Brazil and other parts of Latin America.

Keep in mind that the training center there is not just for Brazil, for all Latin America. The staff is from all of Latin America. By the way, it's a bit of a myth that in Brazil, you can just preach Spanish and you're really going to get through parts.

So I never did that except because in Petropolis, half the people were other parts of Latin America. So I just let loose in my terrible Spanish and taught a number of courses, especially one on, I think I taught them something about finance, finding finance in that side of world missions.

Praise God, place in Petropolis is paid off. The building we have there and the land, one hour out of Rio de Janeiro. Phenomenal road. One-way road going up and down and a one-way road going down. I love to go up mountains if it's a one-way road.

I always find it more difficult, especially when it's a motorway, when you've got them going up and down in the same narrow road. So I love that mountain road up in Petropolis. That's a great time. I purposely took the bus property in the building they had there for so low price.

Many people pay that much for a house. Yet we know the terrific battle it has been to pay that off. There are going to be some repairs. There's got to be more things done there. Desio lives up in the center of the city in Petropolis.

It's great to have time with Elba. I hope that you'll make a commitment to pray for that training base. I believe in the next few years, what Desio and Umberto and the team are doing there is going to continue to have an important state of the earth, an important influence on the church in Brazil.

And I felt as I talked to so many leaders that in Brazil, they really want us in OM to be involved. They really want the ship to come. There's a great spirit of expectation building up concerning the ship.

The Cost and Complexity of Sending Missionaries

We want to go and continue with much humility. We want to especially pray for the huge complexity connected with sending people out, especially long-term careers. I think the biggest problem just here is our ticket, two-for-one ticket, 900 pound sterling.

That's not small money in my book. I was paid for by the churches. If I'd gone alone, something other than the two-for-one deal, I could have gotten the price down. But realize every time we send a couple or a family out of Brazil to the Middle East or even further afield, you're talking about a lot of money.

One pastor came to me and said, this Brazilian couple is out with OM, is getting as much money as I get, as salary as the pastor. Question. I wasn't there to hear how Desio handled that particular situation.

There would be other pastors, I'm sure, who might get a little larger salary. But I think we've got to pray the Brazilian church understands that for world evangelism, which they're going to be such a vital part of, there's no cheap.

It's going to cost. And I reminded them that one of the first Brazilians that ever came with Operation Mobilization died of cancer in India. And God used that illustration powerfully among the people.

It's going to cost. I look forward to going back there in Latin America as soon as the Lord shows the way and opens the door. There's Lagos too at the same time. Things are jumping off the rails in Chile.

Siegfried Plaza was up from Uruguay. That thing seems to be growing. Daniel shared a little bit earlier this morning what's happening in Argentina. I'm sure he could share also just what a battle it's been.

After the Lagos goes, big fanfare, and a few full-time staff are battling hard. Denomination, not interdenominational. Anything interdenominational will be uphill all the way. But I believe there is a change coming.

And the 2000 movement, visit of the ship, especially our own testimony is so incredibly important. I believe it's going to help increase unity and ability for denominations and different groups to work together in world evangelism.

Praise God for the privilege we have, even on this team, every other team in O .M., to be a part of what God is doing in Brazil and Latin America. Frank Dietz has had a phenomenal impact there, has tremendous respect as a man of the word and a man who represents what God is doing in world missions.

And pray for Frank and Emily and the little team there in Sacramento as they just really quite gently try to oversee what the Holy Spirit is doing in Brazil and pray for financial breakthroughs for them as well.

Elba is actually from Puerto Rico. And when we think of Latin America, I think we've got to remember Puerto Rico as well as the other Latin American countries and Central America. None of these countries, sooner or later, want to be left out of there.

That's big. That's a big challenge for us. It's not an easy challenge. God's timing, finances, coordination, dealing with whatever Satan may try to throw at us in the midst of this. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for what you're doing again in Latin America.

Prayer for Spiritual Depth, Unity, and Financial Provision

We feel our part is so small. We feel intimidated, in some ways, by the greatness of what you've done. As we think, even supposedly, the number of believers in Brazil may be over 25 million. Just staggering.

And the other countries with, in some cases, similar huge numbers of believers. We know some of these are big. We know the enemy's trying to bring in extremism. We know there's always such a lack of deep Bible teaching when so many respond so quickly to the Gospel and your church grows so big.

And Lord, we ask for wisdom and discernment and grace as we attempt to move with what your Holy Spirit is doing in Latin America. You know our own financial situation. That we want to reach out more. We want to help do more.

And yet, so often, we can't even pay our own bills, which we face even at this very moment. Lord, raise up more intercessors for the whole world. Raise up those who would be willing to financially support Latin Americans, at least perhaps in early stages of their launch into world missions.

And we trust you. We look to you to give the unity, the grace, and the wisdom to keep this work, the work of OM in Latin America, on track. For your glory. As there's such a range of challenges, complexities, as we will face disappointments and discouragement, heartbreaks, as some people get back from the field to Brazil and find it difficult to readjust the life in Brazil, to readjust the life in their church.

Give a grace awakening in these people and strengthen us as we as a team and other teams who've got this vision labor together for world evangelism. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.