What Is the Opportunity?

Around 257 million people speak Portuguese, making it the ninth-most-spoken language in the world.¹ Brazil has by far the largest number of Portuguese-speaking people, followed by Portugal, Mozambique, and Angola.

This provides an incredible opportunity to serve Portuguese-speaking local churches with sound, biblical resources. The Portuguese-speaking church is in great need. Since its beginning, it has been deeply influenced by an imperialistic Roman Catholic Church with a greater interest in colonization than in orthodoxy. This has left the door open for the prosperity gospel to make deep inroads in Latin America.

In recent years, however, Reformed teaching has grown in prevalence. The number of people in Brazil identifying as Roman Catholic fell from 74 percent in 2000 to 65 percent in 2010. During that same time period, the number of Protestants rose from 15 percent to 22 percent.² Reports suggest that the number of Brazilians who adhere to Roman Catholicism today may be little over 50% of the population, with a third of Brazilians now identifying as Evangelicals. Second after the English-speaking world, Brazil leads as the largest market for Christian literature.³ Like Latin America in general, Brazil is seeing its first taste of reformation.

In Portugal, on the other hand, about 80 percent of the population still identifies as Roman Catholic, and there is a secularizing influence as in the rest of Europe.⁴

Ligonier has been very active in Portuguese outreach over recent years, including participating in resource distribution at both the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Brazil.

When you donate to support our international outreach efforts, you help Portuguese-speaking Christians rediscover and preach the biblical truths that undergirded the Reformation. Your gift will help us strengthen the global church with trustworthy books, video teaching series, and more. Will you join with us to make these vital discipleship resources available where they’re most needed?

How Is Ligonier Meeting These Needs?

Ligonier Ministries strives to reach Portuguese-speaking pastors, laypeople, and unbelievers from all walks of life through the following donor-supported outreach efforts:

The Reformation Study Bible

To survey the global church is to see false teaching abounding. Whether facing the prosperity gospel or secularism, Portuguese-speaking Christians need sound biblical resources to deepen their knowledge of God and help them recognize and resist unbiblical worldviews. To meet this need, the Reformation Study Bible has been translated into Portuguese, and is available in print. Ligonier, with the help of generous supporters and partner churches, distributed over 3,500 Bibles to pastors and church leaders in Brazil and Mozambique by September 2022.

Online Outreach

Portuguese is the sixth-most-used language on the internet, so translating materials is of strategic importance.⁵ Ligonier’s Portuguese website, together with our Facebook page, Twitter account, and Instagram account enable us to reach further into the Portuguese-speaking world. When you give to support this outreach, you’re ensuring that even more solid Bible teaching becomes readily available and accessible.

On Reformation Day in 2020, Ligonier hosted an online event in Portuguese on Romans 8. The Portuguese online event reached thousands of people through Youtube and Facebook.

There have been thousands of views of our short video Do que se tratava a Reforma? (What Was the Reformation All About?), which was released online for the five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. The two-minute Coram Deo video (Behold the face of God) is available in Portuguese, so more people can discover what it means to be a Christian—saved by God’s grace to live humbly under His authority and joyfully for His glory. Social media is spreading biblical truth far and wide, as the printing press did for the Reformers, and it is equipping Portuguese-speaking Christians everywhere.

The Ligonier Statement on Christology

There is much confusion regarding Christology—the doctrine of Christ—in Brazil, Portugal, and around the world. As the church continues to grow, it is imperative that believers learn the truths of Scripture as summarized in the great confessions of faith. We produced The Word Made Flesh: The Ligonier Statement on Christology to help Christians know what the church has historically taught, providing clarity on the person and work of Christ. The statement has already been translated into numerous languages, including Portuguese, and our goal is to distribute it worldwide. Your gift, large or small, will help achieve this goal.

Forthcoming Books

Growing interest in the Reformed tradition has sparked an eagerness for more resources from R.C. Sproul and Ligonier. With your giving and prayerful support, we will be able to translate, print, and distribute the following Reformation Trust titles:

• A Field Guide on False Teaching
• A Little Book on the Christian Life by John Calvin
• Are We Together?: A Protestant Analyzes Roman Catholicism by R.C. Sproul
• The Prayer of the Lord by R. C. Sproul
• What We Believe: Understanding and Confessing the Apostles’ Creed by R.C. Sproul

Published Books

• A Long Line of Godly Men profile series
• A Time for Confidence by Stephen Nichols
• By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Me by Sinclair B. Ferguson
• Chosen by God by R.C. Sproul
• Commentaries on Matthew, Acts, Romans, 1–2 Peter by R.C. Sproul
• Everyone's a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology by R.C. Sproul
• Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine on Justification by R.C. Sproul
• Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching by various authors
• God is Holy: An Abridged Version of The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul
• Good News: The Gospel of Jesus Christ by John MacArthur
• If There’s a God, Why are There Atheists? by R.C. Sproul
• John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, Doxology by various authors
• Knowing Scripture by R.C. Sproul
• Learning to Love the Psalms by W. Robert Godfrey
• Lessons from the Upper Room: The Heart of the Savior by Sinclair B. Ferguson
• Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism by Joel Beeke
• Loved by God by R.C. Sproul
• R.C. Sproul: A Life by Stephen Nichols
• Sammy and His Shepherd by Susan Hunt
• Several Crucial Questions booklets by R.C. Sproul
• The Christian Lover by Michael Haykin
• The Donkey Who Carried a King by R.C. Sproul
• The Essential Truths of the Christian Faith: Part 1, 2, and 3 by R.C. Sproul
• The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul
• The Invisible Hand: Do All Things Really Work for Good? by R.C. Sproul
• The Last Days According to Jesus by R.C. Sproul
• The Legacy of Luther by various authors
• The Lightlings by R.C. Sproul
• The Masculine Mandate: God’s Calling to Men by Richard Phillips
• The Mystery of the Holy Spirit by R.C. Sproul
• The Prince’s Poison Cup by R.C. Sproul
• The Race of Faith by R.C. Sproul
• The Truth of the Cross by R.C. Sproul

We also regularly translate Tabletalk magazine articles into Portuguese for distribution in churches and seminaries. Your donations allow countless people to enjoy these popular and practical materials in their native language.

Video Teaching Series available

Our video teaching series promote theological education, and the accompanying study guides encourage students to interact with the material. The following teaching series has been dubbed into Portuguese, and is available through the Portuguese YouTube channel.

• Moses and the Burning Bush with R.C. Sproul

Will you help us translate and dub series to aid more Christians’ spiritual growth in Brazil and around the world?

What Is Needed?

• Dubbing select video teaching series and study guides — $47,572 USD (annually)
• Digital outreach — $34,580 USD (annually)

Funding needs reflect quoted estimates based on April 2024 foreign exchange rates and current translation fees.

How Do Your Gifts Help?

These are only a few of our many international outreach projects underway. We ask you to prayerfully consider supporting our efforts in the Portuguese-speaking and global church through your financial gifts. Your generosity helps translate, print, and distribute trustworthy resources, providing countless opportunities to reach people with the truth of God’s Word. You can donate here.

Our policy is to apply gifts given toward a specific program. If we receive more contributions than can be wisely used for a given project, we apply these funds to meet other pressing needs in our outreach efforts. We are committed to stewarding all gifts wisely toward the goal of proclaiming the holiness of God to as many people as possible. Ligonier Ministries is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

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¹ See https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/ethnologue200 as at Sept 2, 2021

² See http://www.pewforum.org as at May 24, 2019

³ See http://www.pewforum.org as at May 24, 2019

⁴ See http://evangelicalfocus.com as at May 24, 2019 ⁵ See https://www.statista.com as at May 24, 2019