When Music Opens Doors
“We didn’t start from zero. We started from ten below zero.”
That is how Pastor Lucas describes the ministry environment in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
The city sits in Brazil’s least-evangelized state. Churches have closed. Missionaries have left. Congregations often labor in isolation. For Lucas and missionary Steve, bringing the Metro Big Band to Porto Alegre was much more than scheduling a series of concerts. It was an opportunity to see whether music could open doors that had been closed for years.
IT DID.
Lucas watched people hear the music from the street and come inside. One young man was headed to play basketball when the sound caught his attention. Ball in hand, he turned around, entered the venue and stayed for the entire performance.
Steve saw another kind of door open when the marketing director for a network of high-end shopping malls heard the band.
Her response?
“Come play in any of our malls anytime—especially at Christmas.”
But some of the most meaningful moments for Lucas and Steve happened away from the stage.
They watched Christians from Baptist, Evangelical Free, Assemblies of God and Brazil for Christ churches work together to make the events possible. In a place where denominational barriers had been difficult to overcome, people were serving one another, setting up at each other’s churches and working together for the Gospel.
They saw Pedro, a gifted young saxophonist limited by an ultra-beginner instrument, receive a professional saxophone from the band. His father watched him begin playing it that very afternoon with incredible joy.
They watched members of the team stop and talk with a woman who was cleaning at one of the events. Their kindness affected her deeply.
“You treated me differently than I’ve ever been treated at an event,” she told them through tears.
Before the day ended, she asked for prayer for herself and her daughters.
“God spoke to me today.”
Then came Sunday evening.
The Metro Big Band performed at an Assemblies of God church that seats 800–1,000 people. It had not been full since the pandemic. That night, it overflowed.
The 80-year-old pastor who oversees churches across the state was celebrating like a teenager.
His question afterward was the question Lucas and Steve are still asking:
“How can we continue this?”
For Lucas, the answer begins with recognizing what God has already done.
“The band’s presence here, the band’s ministry here, the band’s hearts here…has made an eternal difference.”
And the doors are still opening.
Global Missions Project’s work extends around the world, with musicians serving on mission nearly every month. Porto Alegre is one story, but there are pastors like Lucas and missionaries like Steve in communities around the world asking the same question:
“How can we continue this?”
Your generous gifts to the Global Impact Fund help provide an answer. They help underwrite the expenses that keep musicians on the mission field, strengthen the work of local pastors and missionaries, and allow us to respond when new opportunities for ministry open.
The musicians are willing to go. Local ministry partners are ready to receive them. And in places like Porto Alegre, we are seeing what can happen when they come together.