BRAZILIAN PASTOR AIMS TO EXTABLISH “ECOLOGICALLY CORRECT” CHURCH
By Eron Henry
If Gilson Fontes da Cruz were to get his way,
Baptist churches around the world would adopt
environmentally sound mission programs.
The senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Cascavel in southern Brazil is heading up a new mission in the northern Amazon
region of the country, concentrated on the borders with Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana. The mission program,
which is in its pilot stage, is aimed at creating “a church that is biblically and ecologically correct, with environmentally
conscious congregations.”
Cruz aims to do several things. First, plant a church for an environmentally conscious worshipping community in the
Amazon region. Second, establish a training institution “that will equip and train persons who are committed to an ecological
mission.” Third, encourage persons at the training school to learn the languages of the bordering countries and territories
– Spanish (Venezuela), English (Guyana), Dutch (Surinam) and French (French Guiana). Fourth, create a “cooperative
community” of 1,500 “ecologically minded persons” as mission agents. A main feature of this community will be a recycling
plant that produces new materials from waste. And finally, have these mission agents interact with people in the various
communities and countries, starting with Boa Vista, the capital city of the northern Brazilian state of Roraima.
It is expected that all phases will be completed by 2015.
In order to achieve these goals, Cruz has engaged several partners, including the Union of Baptists in Latin America, the
Roraima State Baptist Convention, the Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio, Texas, in the United States, as well
as the Santa Helena Baptist Church in Venezuela and the Lheten Baptist Church in Guyana.
Already, Cruz has secured the land for his first church and community from the Roraima state government that will,
among other things, “engage in ecologically friendly agriculture.” The church plant for that community is expected to be
constructed in July of this year, taking only 30 days to complete, thus beginning the first phase of the project. The materials
for the construction will, of course, be “ecologically correct.”
The Brazilian pastor developed this vision after spending a month on the Brazil-French Guiana border where he became
aware of the ecological challenges that the area faces, the importance of the Amazon to the world’s health and wealth, and
the Amazon’s implications for clean air, water, and the survival of important plant life. He became engrossed with the need to
address the environmental problems he saw and to preserve the integrity of the Amazon. The idea of starting an environmentally
sound mission program to “equip missionaries to effect ecological mission” resonated with him.
Cruz’s rationale is based on a concept of environmental stewardship. “When God created the earth and everything there
is in it,” Cruz said, God “put us as administrators of all natural resources and the environment, so we are responsible for
everything on earth.” We, therefore, “have a responsibility to care, preserve and manage the earth efficiently, because we
will be accountable to the Creator.”
PHOTO: Pastor Cruz
22
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