New Hope Brazilian Baptist Church: God is “doing great things”
Editor’s Note: Emanuel Carvalho is one of the featured church planters for the 2024 Maguire State Mission Offering. The statewide 2024 offering goal of $900,000 is earmarked to help reach the 16.7 million Florida residents who do not have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, with 100% of all receipts designated to help launch church plants in the state.
POMPANO BEACH–One church. Multiple languages. One gospel.
Planted as a church to reach Brazilians, New Hope Brazilian Baptist Church in Pompano Beach today has attendees who speak Portuguese, Spanish and English. Pastor Emanuel Carvalho, a native Brazilian who has been in America for five years, preaches his sermon each Sunday in his native Portuguese and attendees can listen to the sermon in English on headsets.
Carvalho and his wife, Jessica, originally arrived in Florida for what they thought would be six months. Their mission: to help New Hope Brazilian Baptist Church get back on its feet after experiencing some challenging circumstances and setbacks. Carvalho was the last of three Brazilian pastors who had been asked to serve the struggling church for six months each. Carvalho’s six months turned into five years, and New Hope Brazilian Baptist Church, through its partnership with Send Network Florida and the Florida Baptist Convention, has done more than just get back on its feet. It is moving forward with strategic intentionality.
Still primarily a church made up of individuals with Brazilian ancestry, Carvalho said that the congregation includes second- and third-generation Brazilian families in America and others who have arrived within the past week or month.
Carvalho and his wife understand what it’s like to arrive in a new country with a new language and no family. “Sometimes I felt like I was alone,” he said. That experience drives him to lead his church to embrace newcomers as family. Recently a Brazilian woman, who is new to America, was involved in a car accident; her first instinct was to call church members to help her at the scene of the accident with translation and paperwork.
The church is involved actively in its community with a chaplains’ ministry that ministers to people in jail and in the hospital, a runners’ ministry and 90 small groups. One small group in Lexington, South Carolina, is taking steps to become a church plant.
Because of such community outreach, many local residents, with no ties to Brazil, have found their way to New Hope. Translation technology, through translator headsets, helps all who enter the doors of the church to hear the same gospel message.
While services and classes are in Portuguese, numerous people on staff and volunteers are fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Carvalho said the children’s ministry is abuzz with energy each Sunday as all three languages are spoken simultaneously. Languages, he said, help people not only adjust to a new country but also maintain their ties with their old country. On weeknights, New Hope teaches English classes for adults, and on Saturday mornings, New Hope offers Portuguese classes for children.
Looking back, Carvalho admits the first three years at New Hope were a “big challenge.” Still, he said, “God brings New Hope. God guided us though. With the Holy Spirit and the Bible, we navigated those waters.”
Through it all, he said, “God has been doing great things in our church.” He credits his partnership with Send Network Florida and the Florida Baptist Convention as well as financial gifts from the Maguire State Mission Offering with helping his church “turn dreams into reality.”
He said the church’s mission is not only to receive blessings but to “be a blessing.”
Carvalho asks Florida Baptists to pray “that God helps us to do our mission here in this country and to guide us to understand our opportunities to share the gospel, to help people, to do our best.”