2. Tell us how the church began:
When I moved to Brasília in January 2003, I was under the wrong assumption that many people from my former church would help me. For several reasons the people could not help; and to make a long story short, the church started with only my family. We had no core group or official launch. This was the most difficult part of the project. After perceiving that there was no help, I decided to hire a group of professional musicians to assist with the worship service. This proved to be an extremely important decision. My family and the musicians’ relatives were the initial audience.

I invited a group of friends to the first service and they came. The first service was well organized and attended--we had about 115 people in attendance. The real problem was the second service. I soon realized that my target group in South Lake community of Brasilia would be difficult to reach. First of all, South Lake has very few Christians, less than 1 percent, and has demonstrated no openness to Christianity. People say here, Brasília is “very expensive, very selfish and very difficult.” Soon I came to understand the necessity to bring people in one by one. I prepared new invitations (the first time around, I mailed out 10,000 invitations, and nobody responded!) and handed them out on an individual basis. This was a right decision—through personal invitations, the first ten people joined the church and today we have a stable core group with 100 persons attending.

3. Tell us about Brasília and its people.
Brasília is a very cosmopolitan political center city with more than 2.5 million people. It is a lot like Washington, DC, in that diplomats and lobbyists come from all over the world to live here. Like many places in Brazil, you are where you live, and living in South Lake is the dream of many prosperous people. South Lake’s structures—its museums, palaces, convention centers, shopping centers, office towers and parks—are the glory of the city. Brasília’s people are hardworking and ambitious but also indifferent to authority and lonely.

4. What demographic group are you attracting or seeking to reach in Brasília?
The South Lake area, with about 300,000 inhabitants, boasts one of the largest average incomes in the country. In the heart of South Lake is a community of 30,000 people where the church is located. This community is comprised of highly educated government employees and business people who are Catholic in their religious traditions. While other areas of Brasília are more churched, the South Lake area has less than 1 percent that attend gospel professing churches. For this reason, as well as the importance of reaching the present and future political leaders of the country, I am compelled to preach the gospel to them and to build a strong gospel-centered community in this place. The whole nation can be blessed through the influence of a strong church in this place.

5. How must the gospel be appropriately contextualized to reach this community?
Preaching the gospel in this place is not easy; we are sometimes perceived to be neo-Pentecostal, uneducated and low-class people. I concentrate on preaching the gospel (Jesus) as the supreme conquest, supreme authority, and supreme redeemer. This message can renew our culture from a “corruption state” as well as bring redemption to individual lives.

6. Tell us about the vision for your church.
Bethesda Presbyterian Church aspires to be an intellectually compelling, liturgically rich and culturally relevant church. We desire to be both Christ-centric in our message and have artistic excellence in our approach. In our context that means, we hire professional musicians and use a lot of technology. Even though we are just beginning, my vision for Bethesda is one in which a healthy, vibrant and missional church will emerge that will in turn support other church planting enterprises. Because of its unique context and location, Bethesda will one day be a strategic mother church--supporting daughter church-planting projects.

7. Even though you are in the beginning stages of your plant, what are some important things you are learning?
There are very important lessons to be learned in this project; perhaps one day I can write a book about starting a church from nothing. If I had to do it all over again, I would plan to live in the area for one year before beginning the process of planting the church. I would also want to be more informed about the challenges of starting a church in a non-Christian community and learn how to develop leaders in the South American context. One thing that we have done well is incorporating a good music team from the very beginning, and I think that is an important element for every new church planting project.

8. Now that your church is almost two years old, is there anything that you would have done differently?
Yes and no. We started our church with morning worship for those who were looking for spiritual resources. Everyone I spoke with counseled us to move to an evening service. Every church plant that moved to an evening service in the area closed one or two years later. Is it better to have evening worship?

Each situation demands its own unique plan and decisions. At some points I thought I should have spent more time in strategic planning before starting the church. Planting churches in the affluent areas of Brazil is a new endeavor for us; there are almost no churches in these areas of the country.

9. What are the primary ways your congregation seeks to reach the un-churched?
At this moment, personal evangelism is the most effective way to attract people. I go to the streets and talk with people one by one. Some church assistants are inviting their friends to the service.

10. What important challenges are you facing as a new congregation?
We are facing several challenges at this time. We currently have a core group that assists the services. And on some Sundays we have more than 100 people including children, which is an amazing answer to prayer considering our humble beginnings. This year, more than 50 percent of our income comes from the new congregation, so we are half supported, on our way to becoming self-supporting. I hope that we are self-supporting within the next two years. Other current challenges are the need for more office space, more lay leaders and ongoing encouragement of our leaders.

11. Has anything surprised you about planting a church?
When I decided to plant Bethesda, I already knew how difficult it was to begin a church. When you are a Senior Pastor of an established church--have a great staff and great church--you know that ministering to church people is not easy.

I never thought, however, it would be so difficult for people to understand the gospel in a “Catholic Belt”. I never thought that people would be so resistant to an invitation to visit a church. That really surprised me. At the same time, we have experienced difficulties and God’s grace. God has done amazing things in this challenging project called Bethesda.