Faith and Money Around the World

Antonio

Today we met a Presbyterian pastor named Antonio who does some pretty incredible ministry to raise awareness about struggles, corruption and abuse of power in Brazil. He was raised as a middle class man who spent most of the first 15 years of his ministry in Brazil church planting…where he explains the Church has grown to see their mission as largely evangelical with a focus upon how on the other side of eternity your life will be better…neglecting the call to live into the Kingdom now and love justice. He talked about how here the Church has lost the Social Gospel. There came a point in his life when he had a Damascus Road experience because he could not longer ignore the violence and murder in his city…he felt his faith must call him to actively engage in bringing peace and wholeness to ALL.

So what did he do? He organized his middle class church to stage their first protest on Copacabana Beach…They took crosses and placed one for every person killed in Rio in the last 2 months on the beach…it was 1000. The press came…and the world began to pay attention. He has staged many similar dramatized artistic protests since then…all to point to the problems that Brazil is ignoring.

He works both sides of the spectrum…the right, the left, the drug dealers and the politicians…And his larger Presbyterian Church doesn’t really like to claim him anymore. But the church he pastors does. He lost families because of his radical stance I the beginning but over all more and more of his folks are following him into favelas with drug dealers and prisons with the worst possible conditions. They are using their gifts of dentistry, medicine, law to help them.

He has a ministry called Rio De Paz – River of Peace. They rehabilitate criminals when they leave jail/prison. They transform drug dealers into people of peace. They teach life skills ad job skills through educational classes and their bakery. Because the drug dealers know he seeks to hold the police accountable with their actions and because the police he hold accountable the drug dealers accountable for their crimes – he is able to walk the line with respect from both…though he calls both out in the media and in personal encounters.

As we walked through a favela today we passed a young shirtless man who smiled at me and then hugged Antonio. He just happened to be one of the most notorious criminals in the area…everyone had told Antonio he would never be able to get through to him…but he did. He hasn’t changed his drug world yet but he has built a substantial relationship with him.

There is an area in the favela where the drug dealers would come and lay out the bodies of people they killed as a witness to not cross them…currently this area has been given to Antonio by them to use to build a music educational school for the children of the favela. This is a huge thing for them to have done…to have given literally a place of death to be turned into a place of life. Antonio isn’t soft on what the dealers do…they know he is angry about their actions…but they also know he believes that God’s image is stamped on them as much as it is the police and his middle class congregation. It’s his desire to help them be whole and in touch with that image.

All the places and people I have traveled to meet I am struck that one thing they have in common is there desire and ability to stretch to love ALL people…especially those they disagree with or fear. It is when this kind of love rules in your heart you seem to be able to be the most used and shaped by God’s grace to be near others and affect change! I have much work to do in this area!