How Brazilian Megachurches Became Global Church Planters

Satellite congregations are popping up wherever a critical mass can be found, from Florida to Portugal to Kazakhstan.

The Florida Center neighborhood is the place to go in Orlando if you are a Brazilian immigrant missing home. From Guaraná sodas to brigadeiro candies, all kinds of merchandise from the South American country are available in stores and restaurants. Today you can also find there Alcance Orlando, a satellite church of a congregation in Curitiba, a city of nearly 2 million in southern Brazil.

The main pastor, Paulo Subirá, moved to Florida with his wife and three school-age children in 2017.

“When I came to Orlando, we met in small groups with family and some friends, as we previously had in Brazil,” he says. After a while, the gathering grew to include friends of friends.

The group became too large to meet at a home and then outgrew meeting at a hotel. “We then understood we should start a church from that group,” Subirá said.

Alcance Orlando now has two Sunday services that meet in a 300-seat auditorium. On weekdays, members gather in 31 small groups spread across the Greater Orlando area. Subirá, whose brother Luciano leads Comunidade Alcance in Curitiba, is currently preparing a young pastor to start a new community in South Carolina with some Brazilian families that left Florida.

Brazilian immigrant church plants in Europe and North America—usually started by well-known local ministries that exist apart from denominational bodies or missionary agencies—are new for Brazilian Christianity. These church plants are the result of the confluence of two phenomena: the growth of the evangelical population and emigration.

The rise of the evangelical faith in Brazil is well-documented. In a 1980 census, 6.6 percent of Brazilians self-identified as ...

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from Christianity Today Magazine
Umn ministry