I’m an assistant of a large UCKG headquarters in São Paulo (Brazil). This is where I voluntarily work as an assistant and attend regular weekly meetings. Sometimes, I take my family to the countryside over the weekend, where we own a cottage in a small town. There’s a UCKG nearby, where we attend on Sundays.

The church is very meager. The central AC system gave way to the good old fan; the comfy white cushioned seats we have at our headquarters are replaced by good (or bad) old fashioned wooden benches and we thank God every time the pastor asks us to stand up and pray (which is completely different from the cathedrals and headquarters, where you could easily fall asleep because the seats are so comfortable).

This church has a pastor and an assistant pastor. There are only two pastors to meet the spiritual needs of the entire town; very different from the headquarters, which has seven pastors.

Recently, while traveling from the city to the interior of Sao Paulo, the pastor’s wife suffered a serious car accident and ended up in ICU. The church was shocked. Everyone thought that the assistant pastor would be ministering the services for a while, but to our surprise, the head pastor was there the next day, preaching with an incredible faith, as if nothing happened. You couldn’t find an ounce of sadness in his eyes. Quite the contrary, he was blessing the lives of those who the Lord Jesus entrusted in his hands.

When the assistant pastor of the church got married, he called and asked me if I could help him move. Their only possessions were a box with silverware and dinnerware and a suitcase with clothes. As a matter of fact, I was the one who gave them a tank of gas.

There was another occasion, where I helped my regional pastor move. The only belongings that we had to carry were his suitcases with clothes. That’s it. That’s it. The car he drove and the house he lived in, stayed behind. Only the pastor left.

That’s the life of a pastor of the Universal Church. They don’t have a car, money, vacation, house; they don’t have anything, except for their clothes and their wife.

The pastor of the Universal Church doesn’t even get time to mourn the deaths of loved ones. The pastor of the Universal Church doesn’t get vacation time. He doesn’t go out just to have fun, or plan ahead for the future. That’s because his life is no longer his; it now belongs to the altar, the people and the Lord Jesus.

Many 15, 16 and 18 year old boys think, ‘Oh, I want to be a pastor’, whenever they see a regional pastor, or a bishop driving around in their big cars and calling all the shots.

Many have decided to join the Work of God for this purpose: to be served, give orders, be in charge of people. But whenever their faced with a much different reality, many times even hunger, these same young boys call home asking mommy if they could go back. Or they end up going to another denomination, so they can have an expensive car and a big church.

The only right that the pastor of the Universal Church has is to serve and bless the lives of others; rescue souls out of hell, heal the sick and deliver the oppressed. The only right that the pastor of the Universal Church has is the reward that awaits him in the New Jerusalem.

Many might think that the pastors are losing out on life. Much on the contrary, they’re winning.

Today, I serve God in the atrium and take great pleasure in all the things God has lent me: cars, houses, businesses. However, I’m aware that my pastors, who don’t have any of these material possessions, have a far greater privilege than mine, which is to be on the altar. That gift is greater and more precious than having all the material possessions of this world at our feet. It’s more precious than having all of the money in the world in our hands.

May the Lord Jesus bless you all.

Assistant Carlos Alberto

Source: cristaodauniversal.com.br