|
Emerging Church in the Brazilian Context |
|
|
|
|
Por Gustavo K-fé Frederico
|
|
27 de março de 2008 |
|
Página 1 de 9 In this article I would like to think about the emerging conversation in Brazil. The practices and emphasis of the emerging church have lots of applicability to the current Brazilian context. And I believe that the Brazilian Christian context needs a profound reform, while the emerging conversation can be a vehicle of this reform. Let us see some of the current characteristics of Brazilian Christianity. Brazil has about 160 million Christians: 138 million nominal Catholics and 30 million evangelicals<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[0]<!--[endif]-->. The evangelicals are growing rapidly. They grew from 2.6 % to 15.4 % of the population from 1940 to 2000, that is, almost 6 times in the period. Among the evangelicals, the largest group is that of the Pentecostals and Neopentecostals. In a world context, the southern hemisphere is where Christianity grows most, mainly in Latin America and Africa. In Latin America Brazil is one of the greatest economical powers, if not the greatest.
In its 10 year anniversary edition of January of 2008, Next-Wave's e-zine featured an article where Mark Van Steenwyk makes three exhortations to those involved in the emerging/missional movement(s): “Engage Pentecostalism. The developing world is the future of Christianity. For the most part, the dominant expression of Christianity in the developing world is Pentecostalism." <!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]-->
While Brazil has a great number of evangelicals, it experiences great social challenges: large social inequalities (bad income distribution), unemployment, limited access to justice, violence, child prostitution, bad access to education and health, and corruption, among others. "In a world rank that includes 126 nations, Brazil still appears with the 10th worst income distribution, behind countries like Haiti - the poorest country in Latin America - and India." <!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]--> With the risk of oversimplification, I would say that a great number of the Brazilian Christian churches have problems in their ecclesiology and ortopraxis, and are not demonstrating in effective and practical ways alternative communities that, among other things, would live in such ways as to mitigate these problems. Why would anyone be interested in different forms of church? I believe that many people have good intentions when they care about "preaching of the gospel" or "spreading the gospel". There can be problems, however, when we begin to more carefully analyze and inquire intentions and methods. It's a problem especially for pastors. Many times the desire to "spread the gospel" translates into "attract more people to my church" or "more people in stadiums". "Gospel" and "conversions", therefore, do not have direct relationship with "good news", but with success and fame. Measurements of efficiency or success of a church are usually the number of people that attend Sunday worship. The Neopentecostals maybe will want to include per capita income (and not standard deviation, of course). The initial chapters of the book "The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies" by David Fitch helped me to see other forms of health and success of a local church. I read Fitch focusing on quality and not quantity. It makes sense to me, even considering that after Jesus' death there were only 11 disciples. As I see the emerging conversation in the Brazilian context develop I would not like to see people focusing on church grow methods. In turn, would like to see an emphasis in the genuine interest of people in people. That is, the interest in "having greater churches" must give its way to the genuine interest in people in their entirety, including their realities and relationships.
|
|
Última Atualização ( 03 de novembro de 2008 )
|
