Nilva is just one of the many Matthews who opened her home for the My Hope project in Brazil last fall.
More than 840,000 people from some 53,000 churches trained to be “Matthews”–people who follow the Luke 5 example of Matthew (Levi), who invited people to his home to meet Jesus.
On Nov. 6–8, the Matthews invited people to their homes to watch evangelistic broadcasts featuring the preaching of Billy Graham and Franklin Graham, or “A Vow to Cherish,” a film about how Christ can sustain a marriage.
It was all part of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s continuing ministry My Hope World Evangelism Through Television. Learn more here »
Pastors from many denominations had sensed that the church in Brazil needed to build on its commitment to evangelism. They agreed that My Hope would help churches sharpen their evangelistic focus because, in a sense, each Matthew hosted a three-day Crusade, and tens of thousands of people came to Christ–one-by-one in living rooms, businesses and churches.
The event was so large that Maracanã Stadium could not contain it. Too vast for one venue, city or state, it stretched from the sparsely populated Amazon region to the high-rise apartment homes of São Paulo, the world’s fourth-largest city.
The sheer size of Brazil and the number of participating churches means that results are still being collected. Still, some 23 percent of homes already had reported more than 159,000 commitments to Christ.
LEARN MORE:
- Article copy by Kristen Burke, Decision magazine, February 2009 issue. Read the entire article here »
- Visit our My Hope Facebook page »
- See more videos here »
- Read more articles about the project in Brazil »
