GMO Brazil
Brazil is the largest country in South America, the sixth-largest economy in the world, and home to the largest group of Global Media Outreach volunteers outside the United States. Last month I was privileged to spend eight days visiting our GMO co-laborers in Campinas, Brazil — about a two-hour bus ride from the airport in São Paulo.
My trip to Brazil had two purposes. The first was to produce GMO’s basic evangelism and discipleship web video content in Brazilian Portuguese. The other purpose was to record several interviews and gather other footage to create a video documenting the model that has emerged with GMO’s partnership in Brazil. We would like to launch similar partnership in other countries.
The GMO Brazil story began in 2006 when some former missionaries, Brad and Victoria Myers, learned about GMO through their church in California. They realized the potential for this ministry in Brazil, a country where internet access is increasingly common. They then asked our leadership if they could help facilitate training and recruiting volunteer online missionaries in Brazil.
Brad and Victoria went to Brazil and presented the GMO vision and strategy to their friend, Pastor Marcos, and others in Campinas. The pastor’s church, Igreja Baptista El Shaddai, provided a small office space and some funds to help get things started. One of the church’s members, Paulo, began the task of translating GMO’s email response system and training materials into Portuguese. Paulo is now one of our “super volunteers” and helping GMO recruit online missionaries in other Latin American countries.
|
God’s supernatural blessing, working through the commitment of our partners, has transformed a handful of volunteers into a movement of over 500 online missionaries spread across Brazil. In addition to their own country, these believers are having a global impact by responding to Portuguese-speaking people around the world: Portugal, Angola, the United States, and many other places.
From the start, the GMO Brazil partnership has included several other pastors and churches. Today, over 100 churches from multiple denominations have joined the effort: Baptist, Nazarene, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, Foursquare, and more. Besides involving their members in global ministry, this provides a natural and solid link for those being reached online in Brazil to connect with a local church — a key goal of our ministry.
Victoria Myers met up with me in Brazil and helped organize a celebration for GMO Brazil. (She also helped interpret both the language and culture for me.) On Saturday, September 26, one hundred twenty people gathered at a hotel in Campinas to celebrate what God had done through this ministry partnership. Some flew in from 1000 kilometers away, while others drove 5 or 6 hours to be there.
It’s impossible to put into words the great joy and blessing it was for me to be with them — to witness the spiritual kinship and unity of purpose they shared with other GMO partners in the US and around the world. With my friend Paulo as the interpreter, I had the privilege of telling the group about some of GMO’s future plans and announce some new web sites being launched in Portuguese.
Even though I had practiced with some with Spanish-speaking volunteers in Orlando, doing interviews in Portuguese was quite intense. I would ask a question, which was then interpreted, the interviewee would respond, and then I would get a quick interpretation of what he or she said. But I ended up with some great material from Pastor Marcos, Paulo, three other pastors involved with GMO, several of our online missionaries… and a couple who came to Christ through one of our web sites!
Since I also needed to capture some other footage of Brazil, I spent a day shooting in São Paulo — it’s the fourth largest city in the world and, of course, has some world-class traffic jams! I was accompanied by my interpreter and two men from Pastor Marco’s church as my guides and security guards. Even though I saw just a sliver, I was struck by the tremendous diversity of people in this city of 20 million — there’s even a “Japan-town.”
I was able to master a few basic words and phrases in Portuguese. And, of course, I had to sample some of the local cuisine… including a “Brazilian hot dog” which is hard to describe, and was kind of tasty (but later required several tablets of antacid). You can see a photo of this “delicacy” and other pictures on my web site.
I’m so thankful for the opportunity to spend time with our GMO partners in Brazil. I was blessed by Pastor Marcos’ heart for reaching his city and, through GMO, the world. The members of his church gave me a very warm welcome and it was a unique pleasure to fellowship with them. I’m humbled to be part of a ministry that is involving so many other committed believers around the world in fulfilling the Great Commission. And I’m all the more thankful for my own team of partners who make my ministry possible.
On my last night in Brazil, many of my new friends asked when I would be coming back. I simply replied, “When God allows” — which I truly hope will be sometime soon!
Intolerant Action
“Intolerance is a Beautiful Thing” read the front of a t-shirt I saw recently. The point, of course, was found on the back: “Mother Teresa was intolerant of poverty. Bono was intolerant of AIDS. Nelson Mandela was intolerant of apartheid. Martin Luther King was intolerant of racism. Jesus was intolerant of bigotry.”
In a world that claims to value tolerance, it is intolerance — the unwillingness to accept or endure an idea, situation, or belief — that is often the catalyst for positive action. It’s more than just disliking something such as tomato juice (yuck) or baroque harpsichord music. Intolerance, for good or bad, rejects passivity and leads to radical action. This t-shirt made me think: What am I intolerant of…?
Intolerance is often equated with hate — but that assumes intolerance is always bad. Christians can be labeled as intolerant for “proselytizing” — that is, attempting to convert someone to our faith (though it is God who is actually doing the converting.) Yet you may have heard the story told by Penn Jillette, a Las Vegas headliner and outspoken atheist (available on YouTube, viewer discretion advised). After a show, a man who had volunteered to participate in the act approached Mr. Jillette and handed him a Gideon Bible. Inside the front cover, the man had written his phone numbers and email if the performer wanted to talk. Mr. Jillette states,“I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. ..How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?”
Mr. Jillette is seeing only half the equation: I think it safe to assume that the man’s action were not about a lack of hate in that man’s life, but about love and compassion. Perhaps the man with the Bible was indeed intolerant — intolerant of the idea that someone might not know the true gospel.
Many in this world believe that the God of the Bible is intolerant. And those who follow Christ cannot deny such a claim. Scripture is clear that God is indeed intolerant of sin. But the good news is that God is also intolerant of the consequences of sin on His creation and the humanity made in His image! Because of His great love, God could not tolerate leaving things this way; His intolerance, driven by compassion and mercy, led to a bold and unimaginable plan to fix everything through Christ.
On an airplane, I sometimes look out the windows and — especially when landing and things become more easily identifiable — think about the people whose lives are represented by the houses, streets, and other buildings I see. In the large city I live in, I often realize that I’m surrounded by people I’ve probably never seen before and may never see again. In both instances, my mind often ponders if these people will ever have a chance to know about Jesus, to truly understand the transforming power of God’s redeeming love.
Maybe this is just how God has “wired” my mind to my soul. But I’ve realized that the more I understand God’s heart, the more I’ve become intolerant… I’m intolerant of the fact that, in the 21st century, someone could live his or her whole life and never have an honest opportunity to know Jesus. And this intolerance moves me to ponder ever more radical actions, ever bigger steps of faith to do something about it.
Summer Project
On June 19, three young men arrived at the airport in San Jose, California to take part in the Silicon Valley Summer Project. They came to spend six weeks this summer as interns with Global Media Outreach. The goal was to allow student interns to experience firsthand how God can use their gifts and abilities to reach people for Christ.
AJ (James Madison University) and Kenny (Penn State) worked with me on several different video projects — including a new, visually-orientated gospel presentation and the Arabic versions of one- to two-minute introductions to the books of the New Testament. Samuel (Ohio University) worked with our programming team on several different projects. Each of the guys also helped answer some of the email responses that come into GMO’s web sites.
Serving as the director of this project has been almost like a second full-time job — especially in the weeks and days leading up to the project. Once the guys arrived, I found myself in the role of project director, chauffeur, manager, teacher, financial manager, activity coordinator, discipler… and more.
Recruiting is one of our basic, not-so-subtle reasons for this summer project. By developing a vision for global online ministry within these students is something God might use to lead some of them into full-time work with Global Media Outreach. Like so many other things with faith, you plant the seed and wait to see what happens.
This is also the summer for Campus Crusade for Christ’s biennial staff conference in Fort Collins, Colorado. I’ve been helping our team plan a campaign to recruit new online missionaries and co-workers from among the 6,000 US staff members at the conference. My primary task was designing a booth for the ministry fair — a major undertaking that took us 8 hours to build, but turned out to be very effective in communicating GMO’s ministry and vision.
As I write this letter, I’m in the last week of a 46-day marathon that includes a month in California for the project, 10 days in Colorado for the conference, and another 3 days in California to wrap up the project before returning to Orlando. I honestly don’t know who has gotten more out of the summer project — me or the students. All this left me with a “good kind of tired” — the kind where you know it’s God who keeps you going, not your own strength. I also believe that God will bring some good things out of this summer, for both me and the ministry. And I’m as thankful as ever for your prayer support!
