[Company Logo Image] Latin Growth to Asian Need

Go Up One Level Latin Growth to Asian Need Whom Will I Send Squatters Slum population Families in the Slums Missionary Orders Dev. Mission Structures Sustained Urban Missions The New Friars Church of the Poor 

From Latin Growth to Asian Need

Reference: Grigg, V. (2005). Cry of the Urban Poor. GA, USA: Authentic Media in partnership with World Vision.

There are more churches in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro than in other cities of Latin America or Asia. In Sao Paulo, 5294 churches have been counted, with a greater movement among the poor than in any other city. Many favelas have three or four churches. It is estimated that one third of the above churches, or 3,500, are in the 1086 favelas in Sao Paulo. The majority of these are Pentecostal, particularly Assemblies of God.
   
Evangelical churches in Brazil are also growing. Of the 150 million people in Brazil, 24 million are evangelicals. Some churches are attempting social work programs in the favelas. This response has not yet resulted in significant church planting. There has recently been a significant movement by evangelicals to reach out and establish homes for street children. There are now about 70 evangeli­cal homes for this purpose. Antioch Mission, one of the first Brazilian sending missions, has developed a ministry to drug addicts as well as to street children.
    The church among the poor has largely grown through spiritual power encounters. In Brazil, there are many pub­lic confrontations with the next major religious grouping after the evangelicals—the spiritists.

A pastor in a favela

The stocky pastor motioned us away from the bullet holes in the window. We sat down, and he told us the story of a congregation of 200 that had formed in one of the most violent slums in the world.

Gangs of bandits that functioned out of the community at times came right into the church building for their gang wars. Once a gang returned a loudspeaker system stolen from the church, fearing that they would receive God’s judgment if they kept goods stolen from him.

Another time, a woman walked up the aisle, knife in hand. She slashed at the pastor across the pulpit, missed, and fell to the ground under the protective power of the Spirit of God.

The pastor’s hands shook as he talked. Three years of stress to establish this church were taking their toll. He worked during the days to support himself, and preached and worshiped every night.

We left him in the middle of the road at the entrance to the favela—an unschooled man with the intellect of a professor. A missionary for the slums of Asia?

We founded a new mission to send such men to Asia.

Movement in Latin America- silence in Asia
   
The reasons for such a movement among the poor in Latin America and such an absence of any movement among the poor in Asia are still unclear. In Latin America, there has been a dynamic of church planting in rural areas. Then, as migration has occurred, pastors have moved with their people to the favelas and pueblos jovenes of the cities. This pattern In Asia, however, has not resulted in churches among the urban poor. Some possible reasons might be:
1. A greater dependence in Asia on foreign money, result­ing in pastors who move to the city to obtain middle-class positions.
2. The basic movement in Latin America has been Pen­tecostal rather than mainline evangelical. The concept of the empowerment of the Spirit is linked to ministry among the poor. Mainline evangelicals have tended to be more a book culture among the middle classes.
3. Pentecostal reluctance to require a lot of time in semi­naries and Bible schools seems to encourage the devel­opment of pioneering leaders. In Asia, a Bible-school approach to training leaders unintentionally results in training poorer rural pastors for middle-class status in the cities.
4. The middle classes in Latin America have been linked with the Spanish and Portuguese, who have been closed to the gospel outside of the Catholic tradition. The poor in Latin America, on the other hand, come from the more oppressed indigenous cultures that resent Span­ish culture, even though they may be attracted by the cultural flow in many ways. This is in contrast to the Asian scene, where a positive attitude towards Western culture by the upper and middle classes have meant a responsiveness at these levels to the gospel, which is as­sociated with the West. The poor in Asia, however, see
their poverty linked with the oppression of Christian co­lonialists.

Sending the Latin poor to Asia
   
It is possible that God will raise up some apostles from among the middle-class church of Asia to bridge the gulf to their own squatter communities. Perhaps he will call some rich to live among the poor. On the other hand, why not co-opt some of these trained Latin Americans—perhaps several hundred—to catalyze this? They have the faith.
    In fifteen years, Pastor Waldemar of Brazil, while develop­ing the project Servos Entre Os Pobres under his mission Katros, has recruited 350 missionaries for this task. The Brazilian church does not have all of the finances needed to get them there, nor to enable them to survive. By faith, they wait on God, and press ahead into other Latin countries, for God will overcome this barrier. Other missions in Brazil arrange for their missionaries to spend time in Western na­tions en route to the field as a way to raise money.
    Brazilian culture breeds resilience. The character of a missionary was woven into the history of the people. In their strengths—relationship, worship and spiritual dyna­mism—they may also find their weaknesses. Excessive dependence on Brazilian culture, arrogance towards artisti­cally-poor cultures and a world view leaving little room for loner-types are difficulties that have been experienced on the field.

A new missions movement

Someone had drawn a city on the blackboard with a favela on either sidea picture of one of the world’s richest mega-cities, Sao Paulo, with its 15 million people and multiplex of cities, and skyscrapers pointing up into the skies.

As I was preaching to this group with a determination to “push through” until a new mission movement had emerged, the Spirit of God descended! I preached the burden of my heart; preached of the needs of the poor of Asia; of the needs of an Asian church that is unable to reach the poor by herself; of the contrast between the 5200 churches in Sao Paulo and the 132 in the city of Calcuttatwo cities of equal size.

God had prepared this people as he is preparing people throughout Brazil. Of the 30 people who came forward to give their lives for ministry in the favelas, 20 have the intention of going overseas. I looked out to see a sea of smiling facesmen and women with commitment and experience.

The next week, this group gathered again, eager to learn and excited about the commitment they were entering into. For 18 months, their mission had been developing a ministry to the street children. Now they were entering a new phaseministry among the favelados. We talked of the theology and practice of planting a church among the poor. Already there were contacts in three favelas through the ministry to the street children. Team leaders were assigned to evaluate some favelas and prepare to get teams into them.

A church and economic base

That day a new phase had begun—a phase of training not only missionaries from Brazil but missionaries for the poor. In Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the greatest movements among the urban poor of any place in Asia and Latin America existover three thousand churches in the favelas, usually led by favelados who have gifts of pastering and have chosen voluntarily to remain in the favelas and love the poor.

For every missionary, 30 people need to tithe. Can churches be taught a new pattern of giving? Can pastors’ intent on building empires release this money from Brazil to the greater needs in nations now unknown to them?
    We do not expect significant church planting to take place among the Asian squatter areas by people from the affluent West—affluence makes it too hard to live among the poor. Western mission to the poor tends to be defined as development. Traditional Western theology and structures do not meet the needs of the poor. I say this, despite having set up two missions from Western nations to accom­plish this goal, and having an extensive background in community development.
    Foreigners, be they Western or Latin, are an important catalyst for the national Asian churches. But they are only a catalyst. We must model in such a way that indigenous ministries, indigenous leadership and indigenous missions emerge. The aim is not mission. This is too small. Nor is it church growth. This is too limited. The aim is the discipling of the peoplesindigenous, discipling movements among the squatters in a city. These will not emerge from highly fi­nanced mission programs. Missions that would catalyze these must be sending workers who choose lifestyles of vol­untary poverty among the poor.
    God is calling for Latin missions with commitments to lifestyles of non-destitute and incarnational poverty, (and years of voluntary singleness for many) to catalyze indige­nous movements of churches among the unreached squat­ters of Asia.

How much could God do?
   
At the 1989 Lausanne II in Manila Congress, a gathering of many of the world’s evangelical leaders, there was a major strategic focus on the urban poor. Mission strategists had just brought together lists of strategic goals for the year AD 2000, and they were requested to revise these goals, placing a primary emphasis on the urban poor.
    The target proposed was threefold: a vital, ministering church, culturally and geographically accessible to every urban poor person; a movement of churches of the poor in every major city; and transformation of slums and squatter areas. God will do what we ask.

As you read, please bow and pray for:
1.
Two incarnational workers in every squatter area.
2.A church in every squatter area.
3.A movement among the poor in each mega-city.
4.Transformation of slums and squatter areas in some cities.
5.Incarnational workers from among the poor who can affect economic and social structures and
political options.
6.Mission, leaders to make the squatters a priority.
7.A major thrust from Latin America and Filipino churches to other Asian squatter areas.
8.50,000 cross-cultural workers in the slums raising up  indigenous leaders movements of 10,000 in each city.

© Viv Grigg & Urban Leadership Foundationand other materials © by various contributors & Urban Leadership Foundation,  for The Encarnacao Training Commission.  Last modified: July 2010