World Cup Churches: 25. Brazil

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

A few years ago I was going about my business in Wood Green Shopping City a mile or so from where I live.  A young woman was enthusiastically giving away a free newspaper and, either because of something she said or by glancing at the paper, I realised this was a kind of Christian thing.  

The initials UCKG meant nothing to me.  Once I worked out that U stood for Universal I was quite suspicious as for some reason that is a word favoured at the cultic and extreme margins of Christianity.  

As the conversation continued it became clear that the girl was not antagonistic to someone from a Baptist Church (of course not knowing I was a Pastor).  This was a good non-cultic signal.  Yet at the same time she was not remotely interested in my church or anything about it: she was there solely to recruit to whatever the UCKG was.

Curiosity led me to find out later what I had met with - as I still didn't know.  I learned that this was a Pentecostal denomination founded in 1977 in Brazil and part of the great, growing exponentially, get-rich-quick Protestant movement in formerly Catholic Brazil.

Which brings me to a church in Brazil built 2010-2014, the HQ of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and a larger-than-life rebuild of the Old Testament Temple of Solomon:

The eccentricities of this campus are legendary, but before we dismiss its (unintended) hallmarks of parody we should note that it has been visited by two Brazilian Presidents.  In its homeland it is a serious business.

You may feel that imitating Solomon's Temple is a bit grand, even for a money-spinning Neo-Pentecostal enterprise.  In which case you'd be underestimating the enterprise because this building together with its imitation Ark of the Covenant is way bigger than poor old king Solomon's effort - we are trying to impress a lot more than the Queen of Sheba these days.  Indeed so much bigger that Solomon's original build was more like a large scale model prototype.

This may seem out of step with the supposed founder of its faith, a carpenter from Nazareth.  But it is well in step with the founder-pastor of the enterprise itself who is 'worth' over a billion dollars.  Though we may want to tease out the meaning of 'worth' in this context . . .

And perhaps it is better to remember that Solomon's temple was not a prototype of a church building but of Christ himself and his people.

Our Church Flags: 4. Brazil

Some flags are easy to draw.  This is emphatically not true of the Brazilian flag - I pity the elementary school child trying to reproduce it:

The representation of the night sky has stars for each state - not so unusual - but the number of states (27) and their representation as actual southern hemisphere constellations produce a flag that makes the United States or Australian/New Zealand starry flags a doddle to draw by comparison.

On the flag the night sky replaces the Imperial insignia that was on the flag when the Empire of Brazil was a colony of Portugal.  It represents the declaration of a new start one night!

So at Christmas it reminds us of the Christmas night sky from which the angels brought the message of a new Ruler who would bless humankind with true peace.

World Cup Blogs: 4. Brazil

When I was growing up Brazil was synonymous for me with one thing - brilliant football - and one person - Pele.  As ever, in this 2018 World Cup, Brazil are one of the favourites - though their star tends to shine less brightly than it did those years ago.

Yet today when I think of Brazil I do not only associate it with football.  Instead I associate it with the rainforest, or more specifically, the shrinking of the rainforest.  Below are two satellite images 14 years apart, the first the remaining rainforest, the second that which was there in Mato Grosso in 1992 (courtesy wikipedia).

There are many things that rudely put football in its place and perspective and this is one of them.  Would we rather have a great World Cup or reduce the worldwide losses of rainforest from its current level of - wait for it - over 70 million acres a year?

God has made us stewards of creation first and made us to be footballers as a somewhat lower priority.

Pre Seasons

The new Football League season kicks off at about the time everyone is off on their holidays.  The reason is next summer's World Cup in Brazil and the need for the English season to be wrapped up well before it.

 

Here, then, ends preseason.  This is a strange time of sweaty endeavour to get fit for the winter to come.  In blistering heat the lads run themselves into shape for the wet and windy nights in some football outpost on a Tuesday night in November and blistering heat is a distant, incredible memory.

 

The disconcerting thought occurs to me, though, that the actual season is also a preseason - which is why it starts so early.  Beyond the parochial ranks of the local supporters the big world of football is looking at next summer and the season for which we have just had the preseason is itself a preseason.

This week hundreds of local families in and around Wycombe will have sent their children and teenagers to Lighthouse Holiday Clubs and Fresh Cafe youth nights.  These are brilliant events.  We are very blessed to have them.

 

Certainly one way of approaching Children and Youth ministry is that it is a kind of preseason.  This is alarming for two reasons - the most obvious being that children and young people are real people (and may not make adulthood) and need to know forgiveness and faith right where they are. The second reason is that the attrition between children's ministry and adult faith is appallingly high.  No truism seems less true now than the old maxim, Give me the child for seven years and I will give you the man.

 

I am somewhat of the view that, like the season about to unfold, the whole season of life is preseason.  Admittedly the World Cup with its gathering of the nations under a near equatorial sun seems a distant dream right now.  Yet it is shaping everything about football in months to come.

 

And so our whole life, even to what we misleadingly describe as our last breath, is a season that is really a preseason.  And under the same Son that we now live, the nations will gather for the Real Thing and the momentary things of preseason will give way in the shadow of its glory.

 

Maranatha.