Culto

I learned this past Sunday that the people here in Brazil call church services cultos. If you’re like me when you heard this you may have immediately begun looking around for some form of synthetic drink that you would not be drinking. Jokes aside there is something so amazing and so different about the church here in Brazil. It’s not my first rodeo in a Latin American church. There were fifty or so people singing in fifty or so keys. Eight of which, I have never heard in my entire life, but they sang with heart. There were tears, raised hands, and genuine emotion, not the kind that some people do for show. When you get to walk into a church where everybody knows your name (yes older folks, that was a reference to a classic television show). I sat through a service in a different language. I couldn’t understand the songs nor the preacher yet I still walked away with my heart uplifted and a greater sense of who God is and how his people, when they live in community, can make a difference in the lives of the people who walk through the door. The members of this church truly care about each other. Everything I’ve done here in Brazil has been with members of the church. They get together to play soccer. They go to movies. They serve their community for neither service hours nor bragging rights, but rather to be together and spread the gospel. Everyone hangs out, and I mean everyone. I rode in a van on the way back from church to Zanatta’s house. The entire van was laughing and joking from the youngest child to the old woman (the same one who knows how to cut a rug from the party). Everywhere they go they represent what the church could be. I want to borrow a quote from my favorite preacher Matt Chandler. Essentially what he says is, “In the beginning the church a small movement that affected every facet of human society. Now it is a very large movement that is basically impotent.” I completely agree with Mr. Chandler as far as the American church goes, but I don’t think he’s been down in Campo Grande and seen the church here. Whenever I meet someone here they ask, “You are a brother?” they mean a brother in Christ. They are one large family, and they see anyone who is a Christian around the world as part of that family. Don’t here me say that they don’t treat other people who aren’t part of the church with love and compassion. Zanatta alone can’t walk five steps outside his door without people shouting a greeting to him. I understand that I am a nineteen-year-old kid who may be naïve. I am not an expert on what the church is or what it does these days, but I have been going to church for sometime now. What I do know is that this church has made a difference in my life without me being able to understand them. Yes, they may call their services cultos, which has an obvious negative connotation, but the influence of this church on its community that I’ve seen in these few days here in Brazil leaves no doubt that Christ is moving in this place.