An unusual story on an alumnus in Brazil, Roberto de Souza Chenk, who is using personal contact to transform the lives of the poor.
“The participative social project strategy created the opportunities for natural and responsible human contact facilitating the sharing of the Gospel.”
Jardim Eldorado is the name of a neighborhood in Palhoça, a city with 140,000 people in the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil. The First Baptist Church of Jardim Eldorado decided to establish an outreach program based on “socially participative projects,” aiming to transform lives by preaching the Gospel and to transform the life-standards of the community through social engagement.
This so-called “socially participative project” is headed by a Haggai Institute graduate (Florianopolis, 2002), the former sales representative Roberto de Souza Chenk, who has been an ordained minister since 2004. He is married to Maria José, who is a registered nurse, and they have three daughters. The whole family is deeply involved in this church-planting project, the strategy of which was written during a Haggai National Seminar at the end of 2002. The intended result is to plant several churches in the surrounding areas of Jardim Eldorado. Within the past four years, Chenk not only established his own local church in Eldorado which now has over 90 members, but also founded two other congregations with approximately 30 people in each one of them. This report describes only a third particular undertaking, another church-planting process installed in a neighborhood called Frei Damião.
Frei Damião
Frei Damião is a slum one mile from Jardim Eldorado, where 600 families live among a recyclable garbage collection. The whole settlement is an invaded area, with wooden shacks, no plumbing or sewage facilities, and no medical stations. It’s a “no man’s land;” not even the police have access to the place. Sickness, drug abuse, and drug trafficking characterize the area’s lifestyle, which also has high rates of violence and child mortality. Only one beautiful public school building stands out in the middle of the area.
The Beginning
Pastor Roberto Chenk’s strategy to reach out to the poor Frei Damião barrio was through personal contact, investment in true friendships, visiting homes, caring for the sick, and food distribution, resulting in a commitment of love for the community. To show his good intentions and commitment, Chenk regularly met with the whole community to discuss their needs and to come up with some possible solutions that could be implemented. This generated great community participation. Of course, Pastor Chenk's focus was on evangelism, discipleship, and leadership training to plant churches, but the participative social project strategy created the opportunities for natural and responsible human contact, thereby facilitating the sharing of the Gospel. This way, the church became involved in providing music classes, Vacation Bible School, evangelistic programs with Youth with a Mission teams, special events, picnics, activities with missionaries from abroad, classes for professional training, a dental care clinic, a computer lab, English classes, and ophthalmologic assistance. The commitment was so visible that locals say passionately, “Nobody has ever done this for us before.”
The Public School
After visiting people at their homes in 2002, Chenk visited the local school and offered his services to teach the remedial program. Once he became part of the children’s lives, he was able to get more involved in their parents' lives. The next year he brought more volunteers to teach religion, as well the remedial program. That was the beginning of everything.
Neighborhood Association
Chenk’s second step was to visit and patiently become a member of the Friends of Frei Damião Association. With this new step, more doors were opened for a social welfare project within the community. In his conversations with the local residents, Chenk committed himself to reviving an old dream of the community's: to build a community center with classrooms, workshops, and an industrial kitchen, which would be used to provide training for the residents.
Missionaries
Pastor Chenk also found help in the US Southern Baptist Convention, and has hosted groups of short-term missionaries who spent 15 days with the Eldorado Church, sharing the love of Christ with the residents of Frei Damião. In 2005, around 200 short-term missionaries spent time in the area. These missionaries included nurses, dentists, and volunteers of all ages who participated in evangelism, leisure activities, construction, and the caring of the sick. In the meantime, the community center is in the process of being built and should be completed by mid-2006. The investment will amount to over one million dollars.
Political Mobilization
Facing such social challenges, Chenk obtained assistance from the local government, intermediating conversations with the City Chamber of Counselors, the Brazilian Housing Agency (COHAB), and the Secretary of Education. Chenk requested the donation of an area of 10.385sqm for the city of Palhoça that, once granted, the city designated 1.750sqm of that area for the First Baptist Church of Eldorado, for the construction of the community center, and a two-story building with 2220sqm. In return, the city of Palhoça is building a health center and a day care center.
The Future
Robert Chenk dreams of starting an NGO to establish new support pacts to offer children’s care, housing projects, and basic sanitation. He plans to multiply the vision of participative social projects to other areas of Brazil, since they are an excellent evangelistic strategy. With that in mind, preaching the Gospel goes far beyond the church’s pulpit. Robert Chenk is today a community pastor.
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