Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Belo Horizonte - First Presbyterian Church - Family Easter Retreat
We don't generally accept invitations to preach without any additional, strategic, training element, but when Rodrigo Pena from Belo Horizonte phoned with this invitation in February Andrew couldn't say, "No". Not just because he is no good at saying, "No", but because this church is strategic in itself. Belo Horizonte is the third city in Brazil after São Paulo and Rio, and is a Presbyterian stronghold. First has a membership of over 1000, 6 full-time pastors and 22 elders. It is strongly active in church planting and in ministries amongst the poor. The senior pastor, Ludgero Moraes, was present at the FIEL conference in 1997 and has always urged us to live and work in BH. He is (for 8 years) General Secretary of the denomination, and has been a strong influence in a move to reduce liberal influence and reclaim the denomination for classical, evangelical, reformed Presbyterianism. For these reasons we felt that time spent with this church would be well spent.
In the event the visit was wonderful. We had cold feet beforehand - not least to be missing a sequence of Bank Holidays and working very hard. But the fellowship was golden. We hardly knew anyone on arrival: after three days we felt that we had a whole new raft of friends in the heart of Brazil. We have little doubt that further contacts will be fruitful in terms of strategic training opportunities - not least in the beautiful new seminary which we visited on our final day.
We don't generally accept invitations to preach without any additional, strategic, training element, but when Rodrigo Pena from Belo Horizonte phoned with this invitation in February Andrew couldn't say, "No". Not just because he is no good at saying, "No", but because this church is strategic in itself. Belo Horizonte is the third city in Brazil after São Paulo and Rio, and is a Presbyterian stronghold. First has a membership of over 1000, 6 full-time pastors and 22 elders. It is strongly active in church planting and in ministries amongst the poor. The senior pastor, Ludgero Moraes, was present at the FIEL conference in 1997 and has always urged us to live and work in BH. He is (for 8 years) General Secretary of the denomination, and has been a strong influence in a move to reduce liberal influence and reclaim the denomination for classical, evangelical, reformed Presbyterianism. For these reasons we felt that time spent with this church would be well spent.
In the event the visit was wonderful. We had cold feet beforehand - not least to be missing a sequence of Bank Holidays and working very hard. But the fellowship was golden. We hardly knew anyone on arrival: after three days we felt that we had a whole new raft of friends in the heart of Brazil. We have little doubt that further contacts will be fruitful in terms of strategic training opportunities - not least in the beautiful new seminary which we visited on our final day.
# posted by Andrew and Cora @ 11:50:00 pm 
