The first service of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God was held on July 9, 1977, where an old funeral home once operated in the Abolição neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.
However, the evangelistic work did not begin there.
Years before, about three kilometres away, in a bandstand, a young evangelist named Edir Macedo, armed with a speaker, microphone and the Bible, preached the Word that transforms lives.
Attracted by those words of faith, many people would gather to participate in these meetings in the park.
When the evangelistic work found a place to be carried out, many of those people continued to participate in the services at the new address.
What no one imagined was the scale that the Universal Church’s work would reach: from a space with a capacity for 225 seated people to today thousands of temples spread across the world.
As the work grew, new doors were opened, always with the sole purpose of spreading the Gospel.
The 1980s were marked by the acquisition of the first radio station and the creation of Unipro, which published books and evangelistic materials.
In the 1990s, ‘Record’, a Brazilian TV channel, and the newspaper ‘Folha Universal’ arrived.
In 2001, the Universal Church entered the internet age with the launch of the News Portal, ‘Arca Universal’, which is now ‘Universal.org’. The church crossed borders and initially reached the United States, then Europe and South Africa.
All this progress did not happen thanks to favourable conditions. The secret to all this – or rather, the basis of all this – is faith.
The growth of the Universal Church and the thousands of testimonies of life transformation attracted opposers and people who were uncomfortable with the work carried out by the church.
False news was constantly spread against the Universal Church and, on May 24, 1992, Bishop Edir Macedo was unjustly arrested. However, this arrest marked a before and after in the work of the Church and catalysed a dizzying growth.
Today, the Universal Church operates in 148 countries. The most recent countries on this list are Serbia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. And this is only the beginning as we aim to continue fulfilling the Lord Jesus’ order to take His Word to all nations.
