On the 28th of February 2001, Buck and Luciene moved to the Amazon Basin of Brazil. We lived in Macapá, right on the equator. Why would a web designer give up his career and take his family from their comfortable life in Columbus, Ohio, USA, to live on the Amazon River? We came with a vision to save the Amazon, to tell people about Jesus, and plant a Vineyard church. We have planted a church, and we are turning it over to the national leaders, heading back to the States in Sept. 2009.

 
We were walking down our street, doing a survey and inviting people to church in our modern version of “evangelism”. As we talked to one of our neighbors, he started commenting on the church that is one block away, and about the way they have their all night prayer meetings.

Now, having an all night prayer meeting wouldn’t be a bad thing, except that it seems that their god has hearing problems. They find it necessary to use a very large sound system turned up to the point where the roof beams rattle, screaming at the top of their lungs, all night long. No kidding. It sounds like exaggeration, but it isn’t. I don’t know how many times I have become startled, thinking that there was a fight, only to realize that it was just those church people screaming at their god, at their neighbors, and at each other.



It reminds me ever so much of a very cool Bible story in 1 Kings 18, involving prophets of God, and false prophets of Baal. “Scream a little louder, maybe your god is meditating, or traveling! Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” And the false prophets screamed louder, and cut themselves, and prophesied frantically and danced around in ferocious circles, screaming and screaming so that their god would hear them. And it was all to no avail. Their god didn’t answer. No one responded, no one paid attention. Their god proved to be false.

How much of modern Christianity resembles those false gods of Baal, screaming, prophesying frantically, dancing and weeping and screaming? Has anyone ever done a study to critically analyze whether God answers more prayers screamed in very large sound system or prayers whispered alone in a bedroom?

I know that it is a habit, especially of Pentecostals here in Brazil, to think that they are doing a good thing by blasting the sound system so that all of the neighbors have to listen, with the thought that maybe one of them will hear the gospel and accept Jesus. But talking to our neighbor, he spoke with disdain of that church, and of the way that they perturb the sleep of all of the neighbors, and said that if he lived next to the church he would have had them shut down by now for disturbing the peace. Indeed, even a block away we can hear the screaming, I can’t imagine someone living right next door being happy with the situation.

When we first opened the church, we rented a building a short distance from where we are now at. We were talking to the next-door neighbor of the building we had just rented. They were all smiles, and asked us what we were going to use the building for. When we said a church, their smile vanished. They looked very much like a school child that had just been given a wedgie right before they had to go to the front of the class to give a speech. I didn’t understand it at the time. After becoming more familiar with churches here, I think I now understand it.

Frankly, I wouldn’t want to live next to someone else’s church. It’s kind of like living next to a bar, with less cuss words, and less beer can litter. I mean, our church is on the second floor of our house. I am a pastor. And I don’t much care for “church” the way it is usually done here in Brazil. I like to think that our church is different. I certainly hope it is.

Most of what we know as “church” just isn’t very culturally relative. Somehow we have turned the Bride of Christ, the most powerful force of positive change in the whole world, into a weekly meeting where bench warmers are screamed at by the professionals that they just aren’t doing enough, and they go home feeling guilty and fully determined to do more at some point in the future. By the rise in crime, the rise in divorce, the rise in murders, it is clear that we as the church of Christ are not affecting the culture the way we should be. Somehow, we need to break out of the traditional, sterile, screaming ineffectually on large obnoxious sound systems kind of religion that is doing very little to bring people to know the real Jesus, and reignite the consuming fire of God in the people of God.

There must be something more. There must be an incarnational model, a model of radical Christians going and being, in the society, distinct and yet a part, somehow being a transforming force without just being just weird. We must become an incarnational force that releases God’s people to fulfill their full potential and really transform society from the ground up. I can’t wait to see what that looks like.

Our neighbor concluded his rant against the loud obnoxious church by praising our church. “Now that pastor”, he said pointing at our church, (I had a hat on, he must not have recognized me without my shining bald spot, or more likely, just can’t believe that someone with long hair and an earring could be a pastor, thinking that I am just a member or that we just let the church meet in our home), “that pastor, they don’t bother anyone, they do their church service and everyone goes home, we all sleep at night.”

Somehow, being a church that doesn’t really bother anyone wasn’t really comforting at all either.

Labels: brasil, incarnational, missions, pentacostals

posted by Eduardo Buck at Saturday, February 16, 2008