July 7, 2025
by Brandon Jones and Lyndell Campbell Réquia, Projeto Etos
For over four decades the Brazilian field of the North American Baptists has invested in theological education in the southernmost state of the country, Rio Grande do Sul. Much of this investment has focused on co-ordinating and teaching at a pastoral formation program that offers entry-level practical training for aspiring church planters, pastors, leaders, and missionaries.
Southern Brazil is the least-reached part of the country with only 2% of its tens of millions of people identifying as evangelical Christians. There are sizable cities of tens of thousands of people in our state without a single gospel-preaching church.
As we discerned how to expand our mission, God brought us to Kairos University. The defining values and character or, one might say—“ethos,” of Kairos matches that of our mission here.
Brazilians love to label things projects, so we use that in our name along with the Portuguese word for ethos, with each letter standing for part of our mission: to Equip, Train, Orient, and Serve. We want to build on our foundation here by coming alongside people as they aim to serve God in their various callings, after taking that initial step of formal training.
Our first two graduates show the potential here. Tatiana directs a non-profit that tutors children before and after school at her church. Her Kairos degree helped her to further understand her role as a servant and as a leader both at church and at work.
Anderson wanted to deepen his theological roots as he answered the call to be a pastor in a small town in the countryside, and his Kairos degree enabled him to have a surer footing for this new role as well as giving him a passion to help his community through counseling at his church. He is now a doctoral student with Projeto Etos, working on a final project that integrates neuroscience with biblical counseling.
This year, Projeto Etos will start a partnership with a local Baptist seminary, offering advanced training to its faculty, staff, alumni, and missionary partners, who are already serving in this region and beyond. Later this year, our team will travel to the border between Brazil and Uruguay to offer intensive training to church planters there. Uruguay is another region that is largely unreached for the gospel.
We are praying that God will continue to raise up laborers among his people here, and that he will use Projeto Etos to help them go farther and deeper in their journey of discipleship—a journey that may include planting a church, revitalizing a dying or closed church (of which the largest city here has dozens), pastoring a church, or even serving beyond the borders of South America.
We appreciate being part of the global Kairos network, where we can together celebrate coming alongside what God is already doing in our various parts of the world and dream about what he might do next. Thank you for dreaming with us.