Cornerstone Worship Service

Saturday we had an interesting worship service at our church’s congregation. The congregation, called “Bread and the Word” is up on the “hill” behind the church. (These days they don’t much use the word “favela” anymore, but instead the word “community”). This service was to officially inaugurate the construction of their church building. It will be hard for my American and Canadian friends relate to the construction process in a “community”, but let’s just say it’s a challenge. They were meeting in a house which you can actually see if you look straight up (as I was doing) at the photo on the upper left. The pastor’s office is the open window. We have been able to buy a couple of houses and knock them down to build a 3 story building. It will be used for a worship center, classrooms and offices as well. The congregation is used not only for worship services, but many social programs as well. The pastor (you can see him in the photo to the left) was a raised in a community himself so he can really relate to people to whom he ministers. It is not an easy ministry, as the building is pock marked with bullet holes. There is one right in the pulpit of the church. When we arrived for the open air worship service, there were a couple of guys sitting across the street with AR-15 on their laps. Always interesting! The neat thing is that they put away the rifles and turned off the funk music so we could proceed with the worship service.

As part of the service, João preached. In addition, a box of memorabilia was placed in a hole and then we all took turns covering the hole, which is what you see in the video. It was a uplifting and unique ceremony. There were so many people present that there were more folks on the outside than the inside. The whole experience was very interesting so I thought you might enjoy my sharing with you.