Attached are some pictures of our first baptism in the newly refurbished graduate church sanctuary. It has been an ever-increasing blessing.
The story below describes our recent refurbishment and re-dedication of the facility, in partnership with the Princeton Alliance Church.
A tiny excerpt from this appeared in our recent newsletter, but I hated to discard the full version which provides a detailed history and overview of this critical chapter in the story of Hope Unlimited.
Graduate Worship Facility Complete Narrative, Background and Inauguration One Friday morning in February of 2004, Pastor Derli and I were discussing our dream of having a place where we could meet and worship with the graduates on the weekends. Suddenly I had a crazy thought: around the corner from our downtown office was a church. What if they would rent a Sunday school room for us to use? (Churches in Brazil congregate Sunday evening, so their sanctuary was not being used Sunday mornings). We decided to drop by and meet with the pastor that very afternoon. It was a crazy impulse, but at least it would get the train moving down the tracks. Pastor Kelson was extraordinarily accommodating. On hearing about our mission and desire to rent a Sunday school room, he said “We are partners in Kingdom work! You don’t have to rent from us. We have a Sunday School room with a side street entrance. Use it this Sunday if you like! Here is the key! Our facility is yours.” It was an amazing act from somebody whom we had never met before. He actually handed two complete strangers the keys to his church. (Pastor Kelson is now a member of the Board of Directors of Hope Brazil). Pastor Derli and I decided to hold our first graduate worship service that very Sunday. We got on the phone the next day and called as many graduates as we could, and on Sunday, the day, worshipped with a group of about 15 graduates. (Of the original group pictured, 7 are now married, half of those to other Hope graduates). But Pastor Derli had a dream of a facility where he could plan activities for the graduates all weekend, centered around sports for the boys, with a playground and nursery for the kids, and a place for the girls to practice dance and choreography. This would be a place where graduates could bring their friends and their dates, to get them plugged into church in a non-threatening manner. In 2009, Pastor Derli found the perfect place, near to where many of the graduates lived. It was a covered gymnasium with a full size indoor football court and bleachers. It had dressing rooms for boys and girls, and a small cafeteria and canteen. They facility had been built to rent out for neighborhood sports competitions but had fallen into disrepair. . The rent was $1200 dollars a month. Pastor Derli met with the graduates and prayed about it, and they decided to rent the facility. Hope Unlimited was in tough spot financially given the stagnant US economy, and any “expansion” was out of the question. To the contrary, we really had to tighten our belts. However, the graduate church was already completely run and self-supported with tithing from the graduates – so even as Hope’s CEO, I had no say in the manner whatsoever! In fact, Pastor Derli’s vision had always been for the graduate church to financially support the City of Youth, and they had done so faithfully since the church’s founding. Pastor Derli and the graduates named the facility “Redge Espaco Esperanca,” or (badly translated), “Hope Space Network.” The logo is a fishing net, because in Portuguese the word “redge” can mean a computer network, social network, or fishing net. The play on words gives the impression of cutting-edge with the computer connotation, combined with the Christian connotation of casting our nets to fish for men. Finally, the “social network” aspect is comprised of seven inter-related ministries, each headed up by a mature graduate couple or in a couple cases an adult volunteer. The ministries are Leadership, Music, Sports, Discipleship, Children, Evangelism, and Community Outreach. The first services at the new facility were held in June of 2009, in the somewhat dreary gymnasium. Unfortunately, the echo was very bad. The graduates decided to embark on a capital project to expand a room that had been used as a dance studio for the worship services. We had a vision for a “hip” sanctuary that would appeal to the young crowd, along the lines of “café” services in the US, but we did not know how to design what we wanted because there were no examples to copy from in Brazil. One of our partner churches, Princeton Alliance in New Jersey, offered to send down a team to design the new sanctuary. They also offered to supply the sophisticated lighting and sound equipment with church planting funds that would not have been available to the City of Youth’s general budget, so was not competing with Hope’s revenue stream. The Princeton team boarded the airplane carrying all of the equipment with great trepidation, fearing possible confiscation or taxation from the customs police as they entered the country, because of the high duties imposed on imported goods. But God is good, and the immigration authorities wished the team luck and permitted them to bring everything in. The Princeton team hit the ground running. The upcoming Saturday evening service was to be the official dedication service for the new facility. The team had one week to paint the murals and complete all the wiring and sound and light installations on the building before the grand opening. The work they did was amazing. It reminded me of the TV reality show called “Pimp your Ride” where specialists rebuild somebody’s jalopy overnight (though we resisted nicknaming the project “Pimp your Church.”) The inauguration service was standing room only. There were about 150 graduates present, some with their spouses and children. There were also visitors from churches in the community. The invited speaker for the evening was our good friend and board member Pastor Kelson, who had loaned us the space for our first graduate worship service back in 2004. . There could not have been a better culmination to an amazing week. The sanctuary was beautiful and about as “hip” as we could hope for, and the drop-down screens on each side of the room put the sanctuary on a par with that of any youthful service in the USA.. This is what one of the Princeton team members wrote upon returning home: “The Love, Faith and Hope shown by the children, graduates, and staff was beyond words. The culmination of the team’s work during the week capped off by the Saturday night worship service in the new church was more than I could have asked for as a man trying to build my relationship with our Lord and savior. The song "God of the City” echoing out into the community was an experience I will never forget. Seeing the graduate church packed with believers from many communities, including my own, was a true glimpse of how God wants our world to exist”! I do believe that great things are going to happen in that place – and are already happening. Two of the City of Youth’s most productive maintenance employees, George and Luis, are married to graduates from the Hope Girls Ranch. I was worried when Elaine and Damine married outside the faith, but both young men found Christ at the graduate church, and both are now on the leadership team: George runs the sound and light board, and Luis heads up Community Outreach and is preparing to become a pastor and enter ministry full time.. However, the biggest contribution to the Hope Space Network ministry comes not from Luis or George, who controls the sanctuary lighting, but from their children, who light up the nursery with their smiles. And they are the ones all this is really all about.
The evening was like a storybook ending, with no technical glitches. The lights were amazing and the sound filled the soul – and lifted mine, as we belted out God in the City with the refrain (which I sang with tears flowing and voice cracking, believing it to be true with all my soul), “Great things are going to happen in this place, great things are going to happen RIGHT HERE.”