Four Alliance of Baptists representatives attended the annual meeting of Alliance mission partner Aliança de Batistas do Brasil in Maceio during August. Paula Clayton Dempsey, Alliance minister of partnership relations, celebrated the partnering of our two groups and delivered the keynote sermon.

Connie Gates of Alliance-affiliated Binkley Baptist Church, Chapel Hill, N.C., who serves as ambassador for the Alliance to the Brazilian Aliança, led the trip. Along with Paula, the other group members were Roal Carlson of Binkley Church and David Gooch of Glendale Baptist, Nashville, Tenn.

During the annual meeting the group shared in the lively worship services and discussion groups, and observed the Aliança’s business session where they witnessed the election of Olja Barros Santos, pastor of the Igreja Batista do Pinheiro in Maceio, as the group’s first woman president. Both Paula and I brought greetings on behalf of the Alliance of Baptists to the assembly. They heard reports on the Aliança’s mission project in Chã Preta, a rural mountainous village in the Brazilian state of Alagoas. The annual meeting of the Aliança took place in the Maceio church in recognition of its 40th Anniversary year.

A panel forum addressed three major areas of concern facing the five-year-old group: racism, gender equality and ecumenism. Some Aliança member churches are dually affiliated with the Convenção Batista Brasileira (Brazilian Baptist Convention and some tensions exist between Aliança congregations and the other group over the roles of the church in society and women in the church. Other differences of Aliança church congregations include justice issues surrounding homosexuality and ministry to people who are poor.

Prior to and following the annual meeting, the Alliance delegation visited Aliança affiliated churches and missions in Salvador, Maceio, Chã Preta, Olinda and Recife. We discovered all of these congregations had strong community ministries. Gates noted that the churches, while all committed to justice issues, take very different approaches to their work. For example, some churches operate ministries themselves while others choose to work in established social agencies and programs in their community. The Brazilian Baptists are involved with people who are poor or recovering from addictions, health clinics, recycling programs, day care and youth ministries and education programs Including computer training. In addition, they help provide support services for a hospitality lodging center for persons undergoing cancer treatments in area hospitals, offer skills-training classes to help the unemployed and eco-markets for poor farmers without land to sell their produce.

The Alliance of Baptists supports the Aliança de Batistas do Brazil through its annual Bridges of Hope mission offering. This year, a $10,000 gift is earmarked for discretion of the Aliança. The travelers learned that in the last years the funds provided to the Aliança helped support their mission project in Chã Preta as well as other programs.

Currently two Alliance congregations have partnerships with mission congregations in Brazil. The Vasco De Gama congregation, a mission of Igresa Batista Esperança [Hope Baptist Church] in Salvador, is partnered with Binkley Baptist Church; University Baptist Church, College Park, Md., is developing a relationship with the project in Chã Preta, Alagoas.

After visiting in the churches and witnessing the strong commitment of these Baptists to social justice and community involvement, I was deeply moved by their spirit and convinced that they are our Baptist kin.  But after the annual business meeting, I know there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them and Alliance folk.