‘The most unsafe place I’ve been in my life’: Southwestern student recalls lessons from the underground church

After walking two hours across a desert in 2018, a Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary student said he attended an underground church in a country he described as “the most unsafe place I’ve been in my life.”

And he means a church that is literally under the ground of the desert.

“You have to walk, or go by camel, two hours into the desert, and then you have literally a hole, a well, they dig holes. … And inside there they have church. So, it’s literally an underground church,” said the fifth generational missionary from Brazil, who asked that his name not be used for this article, nor the country where he served on a 10-day mission trip.

He explained they dig in the sand until they reach “a threshold of rock, and they have tunnels, so that’s how they operate and have church services underground.”

He came to Fort Worth in 2016 for theological training after earning a bachelor’s in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He earned his Master of Arts in theology at Southwestern in 2019 and now is seeking his Doctor of Philosophy in systematic theology.

Recently, he learned that two of the church members he met on the mission trip had been killed and several other members he trained had been severely beaten. In what he described as “by far the most dangerous” country he has visited, members from the underground church were repeatedly jailed and experienced an attack which was so brutal that a governing official, who is a Muslim, said “it was too much.”

Because of the “severe persecution,” church members and family of the victims “are talking about Jesus” to the governing official and to others. After hearing of the attacks, the Southwestern student shared about his mission trip in the class of Malcolm B. Yarnell III, research professor of theology at Southwestern Seminary.

“It’s easier to teach theology to the locals than to teach culture and language to a missionary,” the doctoral student explained. The mission team, which he asked not to be identified, plants churches and trains leaders who will then plant other churches, he said.

During his trip, he and others trained locals for five days at a time, because “that’s the maximum days they can be absent from their jobs and not raise suspicion,” he said. “They were talking about how hard it is and at the same time how glad they feel, privileged to be under persecution.”

Explaining the mission work, local church members went to a nearby, slightly safer country for their protection. Even there, they had to be cautious, he said. After meeting in a restaurant, a team member watched to make sure no one was watching them, and they went by a van to an apartment. “We stopped and dropped off five team members, and then keep [doing] another round, ten minutes later, five more, then drop. There were 30 people total, and we had to keep doing rounds until all are dropped off.”

Once all were inside the apartment, “the first night, it was not training, it was a worship service.”

While he was there, “I got one of my most amazing history classes in my life,” he said, adding that he asked one of the local church members how the Gospel could thrive in a country like that and how the church even got there. “He didn’t understand my question at first. He kept asking what did I mean by that. Then he gave a lesson for me, his history class for me,” he said.

“He said, ‘Brother, you are talking like the church was never here. The church has always been here.’” The underground church member shared that “it was his father who led him to Jesus, and his father, and the father, and the father, and he talked about seven generations of Gospel heritage in a place that it is for me with western eyes, it is impossible even to reach, you know?”

He paused for a moment. “It was an amazing experience. I still get emotional, and I got emotional at the time. I remember that: The Gospel had always been there.”

The Southwestern student said that generational ministry and persecution are well-known in his own family. His great-grandfather was Italian, and during World War II fled to Brazil, “then Christ met him, he became a Christian and dedicated his life to ministry and the whole family is doing the same.”

“We all come from a Baptist heritage. I am the fourth generation of missionaries in my family. It’s a kind of a heritage. I saw my grandpa doing it, my dad is a pastor, and my mom is with the home mission board in Brazil as a volunteer. My uncle is a pastor; my brother is a pastor; my sister is a missionary. They poured their whole life into Brazil,” he said, then paused with a smile and pointed to the buildings all around the seminary. “I am the only [one] who got out and came to study here,” he said.

He and his wife, whom he described as “a very brave woman,” were married 16 years ago. They have no children, saying, “God decided to bless us in different ways.” Unlike his family, though, he told the mission group he works for that he is not gifted in evangelism or planting churches, but he is good at theology and teaching the Bible. “They said, ‘That’s what we need. We have 2,000 churches planted and if we do not take care of these churches, in ten years, we are going to have 2,000 cults.’” Four years later, they now have 4,500 churches planted, primarily from churches producing other churches.

If the locals cannot understand biblical doctrines, such as the Trinity, “it is very hard,” he said. “Some of them will even go back to Islam if they do not understand.”

Recalling a lesson he taught, “I told them that if I understand God completely, then He is not as transcendent as I preach that He is. To be as majestic as the Bible says, then it is a requirement that I must not comprehend Him completely. Then it was like,” he snapped his fingers, “‘Oh, so that’s why I don’t understand the Trinity.’ I said, ‘Exactly.’”

He also assured them that “it’s better to keep believing even though you don’t understand than to not believe because you do not understand. If you believe, even though you don’t understand, then you find grace. It is necessary to have a mystery. It’s because of this mystery that I can worship.”

It was not what he taught that changed his life, but rather what he learned. “They have nothing, but they are happier than I am. They have Christ and that is enough for them. It is not a catchphrase. It is not just theoretical. It is practical understanding.”

Theodicy – vindicating God’s goodness despite the existence of evil – is one of the lessons he taught. Still, “They taught me that theodicy is better understood through worship than in a classroom. Their lives, their testimony, is a strong hymn of worship to God.”