CHI Connect: September 2023
Dear Friends,
Greetings from São Paulo, Brazil! Due to COVID travel restrictions, almost three years have passed since I had the opportunity to visit our Brazilian leaders and regional communities. So much has happened in the meantime! Since launching our community-based education projects in Brazil five years ago, we have grown from 2 communities to over 300 learning sites. Given the rapidly expanding footprint in Brazil, we sensed the need for me to spend significant time in-country this summer, investing in leadership training, consulting with our regional and community directors, and ensuring that our mission partnership remain aligned and mission focused. I am so excited to report that our communities are energized, aligned, and growing rapidly! Aaron Pierce, the National Director for CHI Brazil, will give you a short personal profile below, but I’ll take the opportunity to talk more broadly about some of the opportunities and challenges we face in the Brazilian context.
After talking with numerous directors, parents, and students across the country, the greatest challenge to renewing a vision for Christ-centered human formation across Brazil is no longer primarily logistical or financial. The primary challenge is now one of having the spiritual and moral courage of parents and leaders to retake governance of the formation of their families and communities of faith. This is not just a Brazilian problem; in all of the countries where CHI has a footprint, we all (Brazilians, Americans, Canadians) have outsourced human formation for so long to the so-called experts in our governments and our institutions, especially in post-secondary education, that we have lost any vision for self-governing individuals, families, and communities.
One example I saw last week was at one of our large partnership churches in South Brazil. A local parent was complaining how, at the local (Evangelical Christian!) high school, their son of 14 was one of only 2 children in the entire grade who had not identified as bi-sexual. This with the encouragement and blessing of the teachers and school administrators. Most troubling, however, was the lack of any sense of parental governance: when all the schools are corrupt, where do we go? What is needed is a willingness to move away from the authorized institutional options, and return formation and governance to the rightful authorities: the parents. In this particular case, the obvious answer (pull the student!) wasn’t even considered.
Now, the good news: that partner church is willing and eager to build with us, from K-12 through University, and is bringing enormous resources to bear on community transformation.
If change will happen, it must start with the willingness of parents, churches, and leaders to remove authority from the poor stewards of our intellectual vineyards and reassert their God-given responsibility for human formation.
STAFF HIGHLIGHT
A little about me…
I am a follower of Christ who is daily learning to love and worship Him more deeply, while depending on Him to sharpen my mind, soften my heart and discipline my body. He has used marriage, fatherhood, ministry and sports as the key crucibles for my purification and renewal. My aim in life is to make disciples who make disciples who love God. My wife and I have been pursuing Christ at each other’s side for 20 years and have been blessed with six children. We have had the joy of serving as missionaries in Brazil as well as managing missions around the world. I am a native Texan from Arlington who is passionate about making disciples of Christ and about mobilizing community resources and actors for holistic development. I currently serve as the COO of Christian Halls International, providing leadership to our teams in the US and Brazil. My academic studies reflect intense interests and have included aerospace engineering, political science, and public administration at great institutions such as the University of Southern California, Columbia University in New York, and the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. I recently earned my black belt in taekwondo, a discipline I have been teaching for nearly four years. In my spare time, I love to play sports, hike, play with my kids, and read historical biographies!
~ Aaron Pierce
Friends, we can do this, in our homes, in our co-ops, in our classical school, in our churches, and in our businesses. As we move into the Fall, this is our season for building new partnerships, donor relationships, and designing community programs. If you think we should connect with partners in your community, please reach out and make the introduction.
Dr. Nicholas Ellis
President, Christian Halls International
