Foreign.

Hello and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

This is a weekly interview show where we sit down and talk with authors, thought leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world.

New episodes release every Friday.

My guest this week is Reverend Dr.

Yuri Brito, who serves as a Senior Pastor of Providence Church, where he's been since 2009.

Born in northeastern Brazil, he's lived in the United States for 30 years.

He earned a Bachelor's in Pastoral Studies from Clearwater Christian College, an MDIV and the DMin in Pastoral Theology from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.

Pastor Brito founded Kyperian Commentary and is the host of the Perspectivalist Podcast.

He serves on the boards of the Theopolis Institute and New St.

Andrews College and is the Senior Fellow for Pastoral Theology for the center of Cultural Leadership.

Pastor Brito was elected on September 28, 2023 to a three year term as the Presiding Minister of the Council for the Communion of Reformed Evangelical churches, or the CREC.

He's been married to his lovely wife Melinda for 21 years and is the father of Abigail, Ezekiel, Ephraim, Elijah, and Ezra.

Pastor Brito, welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

Thank you, Will.

It's a delight to be with you.

It's a joy to talk to you, sir.

This is the first time we've had a chance to have a conversation on the podcast and I've very much been looking forward to it because you've been on a bit of an adventure lately.

I have.

I have been essentially traveling for the last, well, since really the beginning of January, but at a very concentrated fashion.

For the last six weeks.

I've been to three US States and three countries around the world.

What were the three states in the three countries?

I was in Arizona, in Idaho, in Louisiana, and I think there's actually a fourth state that I forgot right now.

And then internationally I was in Calgary, Canada, and then I've just returned from a 17 day trip in Asia where I spent 5 days in Manila and outside Manila in the Philippines and then in Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan for about 10 days.

So I'm still adjusting to American time zone here.

It's quite an adjustment, as you may know.

I was going to say, do you know what even, do you know what time it is?

I mean, I mean this in a literal sense.

Really.

Yeah, yeah, it really is.

One of the things that's been very unique about my job is the, is the reality that I'm having to do a lot more time coordination with people around the world, with our pastors in the Ukraine and in Japan and in Brazil, where I'm originally from.

And all these things require an enormous amount of cohesiveness in order to make it work.

And so it's interesting, there was a season, I think it was a specific day about three months ago, where I had four consecutive meetings, all zoom meetings with four pastors in four different time zones.

And my Google calendar could simply not harmonize what was taking place.

But anyway, well, so this leads to actually a question, is what is the.

The role of presiding minister because of the CREC you and I met at Fight Laugh Feast?

I believe it was back in October, end of October, early November, just before the election.

And it was at that time you told me about some of your work in Washington, D.C.

which we'll get to, but I hadn't realized.

I knew that there was a lot of travel in the United States, but I hadn't realized that it was an international role.

So maybe you can explain a little bit about where the CREC is today and did you expect this much international travel when you came on board and what's going on?

Yeah, that's a good question.

You know, the CREC is around 26.

We're in our 27th year now of existence.

And so God has been very gracious.

We began as a very humble, humble collection of churches, three churches initially, that sort of decided to come together and pursue unity of vision.

And now those three churches have turned into around, honestly around 153 worldwide.

The majority, of course, are here in the United States, but we have a significant growth.

In fact, this morning I spent some time dealing with other potential church plants around the world.

And so the fundamental role, I think, of presiding ministry according to the Constitution, is essentially to represent the denomination at a public level.

And so that's my role.

So wherever I travel, I do lectures regarding what I believe to be the fundamental features of our denomination, where I would like to see it continue in the years ahead.

But really the.

The area that I think is the crucial area of what I try to do as presiding minister is to be, even though I'm not in my 70s, I'm only my mid-40s, just to be a pastor's pastor, to be a bishop's bishop, somebody who oversees the work of our churches and tries to offer our local shepherds guidance in how to deal with ecclesiastical issues, how to deal with difficult situations within congregations, and how to best sort of navigate the their movement as they attempt to bring harmony to their congregation.

So there's a real unique role which goes from not just Spokesman, but also shepherding the pastors in our denomination.

That, to me is a real noble.

As you were reading my biography, I'm constantly sort of reminded of the fact that virtually all my education has been in pastoral theology.

You know, my pastoral theology degree was my bachelor's degree and then my M.

Div.

And my doctorate were all pastoral theology.

So it's one of the few things that I think God has sort of given me in a concentrated fashion.

And I'm grateful and humbled by this role.

I don't know if I expected the role to be this demanding at an international level.

I knew this was going to be the case at some level, but I didn't realize that there was going to be such a desire for international churches to come in.

And ultimately, the way I've divided.

This is a note.

The way I divided my three year term was I wanted to spend the first year focusing on our American churches so I would have a better sense of where they are, engage their particular role in the country.

And then the second year, which is.

I'm in my second year now, there was a very.

There was intentionality in focusing our international bodies because we are, you know, fundamentally an American denomination.

But what I have seen in my travels internationally is that there is that the CREC has a.

I'm sure I'm coining this term, but it has a translatability element to it, meaning that what we do liturgically in the United States also translates well to other cultures.

You know, I just came back from Japan and the Philippines and I'll be in Brazil doing a conference in a couple of months.

I've seen now I've had the opportunity to see how all these.

How our way of doing worship, our way of practicing culture, theology and liturgy, also does translate well to wildly different cultures.

And I think that's something that I've found to be very compelling as someone who's represented the denomination.

And then my final year, which would be next year of my first term, I don't know, the only term, maybe another.

We'll see what happens is I want to prepare ourselves for our national council, which would be in Nashville, Tennessee in September 2026.

And that's when we gather.

Our denomination meets every three years.

That's when we gather all our representatives, delegates, guests from our churches worldwide, and we all gather together for about a week's worth of work and also a wonderful fellowship.

So that's my three years, sort of in outline form.

That sounds like a wild ride over three years, but a very exciting time.

To be heading up a denomination that's having such an impact, definitely punching above its weights class, as I've heard it described.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And I think this is an application also to a local context, is that congregations that may be small in numbers, if there is a commitment to faithfulness and boldness in upholding biblical truth, that small congregation can accomplish much in the public sphere, much more so than congregations that are large but are rather feeble in their convictionality.

And I think that's something that applies also at the domination level, that our churches have a sort of a pre.

Commitment to truth, the kind of truth that has no interest in having a seat at the table.

And therefore, it allows us to be rather bold and approach public topics that other leaders are just not interested in addressing, and we just address them with or without fear.

And so our small numbers allows us to be somewhat confident in our message.

And I trust I've seen actually that as we've grown, that commitment has still prevailed.

I love the idea of a denomination or an approach that doesn't concern itself with being part of the inner ring, as C.S.

lewis describes.

It's like, no, we preach the truth in season and out of season.

And that bears fruit.

It does.

And I think you saw this, we all saw this, of course, during COVID is that whereas many denominations ceased to flex their liturgical muscles, the CREC continued, whereas other groups sort of went into, I don't know, muscular atrophy.

Right.

They just didn't know what else to do.

And the CRC continue flexing, continue building, continue forming bonds and within local churches, and continue preaching faithfully, administering the sacraments, so that when the, you know, the season of COVID sort of ended at a national level for us, we just continued with business as usual, which for us, meaning on earth as it is in heaven, the kingdom of God being applied to all spheres.

It was a.

When this season was over, I say 2023, what we did is we essentially just.

We just.

We were able to put our strength that we had built during those three years into other causes.

And when people, you know, sometimes people will say, well, the CRC only grew because of COVID And that's true, but the reality is we have continually grown.

In fact, I think we have in many ways grown more so in the last two to three years than we did during COVID And so that's in many ways an affirmation that we're not just a seasonal denomination for quote, unquote, apocalyptic moments, but we're also a denomination prepared and equipped In.

In the ordinary, in the common moments as well.

Yeah, it's a little bit like walking carrying a giant heavy weight, and then you put down the heavy weight and you find that you can run.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And that's been illustrated in many ways in our pastors with, you know, a congregation of 30 in, you know, in a city nearby here in Alabama.

That's been also illustrated in our congregation of 50 members in South Brazil.

So, as I said before, it translates well because I think boldness translates into any culture.

And I appreciate you saying that, because that's been my question.

So you just returned from a trip to the Philippines in Japan.

I've spent a good bit of time in Japan.

It was before I was a Christian, but I definitely observed that there was a lack of Christian spirit in Japan, unlike almost anywhere else I had been for being such a wealthy, industrialized nation that I felt no Christian presence at all even before I knew what I was looking for.

And so to know that you went over there for 12 days and to visiting some of your church plants and to also hear that the CREC liturgical method adapts itself to the Japanese culture, that's kind of mind blowing for me.

It is.

And I understand that.

I understand that reaction because I think that's.

In many ways, that's what I felt I was expecting.

In some ways, in my worst days, I was expecting to.

To see something like, well, this was nice in Pensacola, Florida.

But, you know, in this culture here, there's no way this is going to work itself out.

And really, the.

The caliber of the men that we have put in these positions have just allowed our way of doing things to function very effectively.

Obviously, you know, every culture, like the Japanese culture, which is a much more.

I don't know if the word sober is a good word or lucid, as opposed to more vivacious Latinized models.

We see, like, even in the Philippines.

Right, they're very Latinized in the Philippines.

But even in Japanese culture, where people are much more serious in demeanor, there is a way that it plays really well in that culture because the reverence shines forth in a very profound way in that culture that it maybe doesn't in others.

And so the liturgy translates well, but.

But it's going to have its unique sort of motif, unique ways of expressing.

And I have found even, you know, even though you'll find these little unique cultural differences in the way people manifest and express themselves, it is.

I've said this before that I don't speak any Japanese, but when I watch a service In Tokyo, Japan, from our congregation there.

I know the rhythm.

I know what they are saying because there is a uniqueness to the verbiage.

There's a uniqueness to the way you say or sing the doxology, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles, and the Nicene Creed.

So there's a rhythm to all these things.

And I don't have to speak the language.

I know what they're saying because there is a commonality that is universalized because the Gospel is universal.

You know, I hadn't even given a thought to what language the liturgy was done in, but to know that it was done in Japanese just brings a big smile to my face.

Yeah.

And the Japanese people, of course, you know, they're very.

You know, they're not as expressive or emotive, but it does come out.

Their desires, the things they love, their passion comes out in different ways.

You just have to have.

You have to have ears to hear.

And that plays out in the worship service as well.

There is a level of really deep meaning that is conveyed in the language and expressive tendency that's not as.

Again, as vivacious as what you would see in South America, for example.

But you got to have ears to hear.

You have eyes to see.

And when you're there, you realize you.

You are in something.

You are experiencing the same level of gravity and weightiness that you would experience in any CREC or other strong reform communities in the United States.

It's just a.

It's a different language.

It's the Pentecostalization of worship that works both in Pensacola, Florida, and in Tokyo, Japan.

What an incredible experience that must be for you personally, to visit so many different churches of the same tradition.

Right.

But around the world in various cultures, from Brazil to the Philippines to Japan.

I imagine you've been some other places as well, just to see the way that this sort of ancient tradition, this old tradition shows up in these modern international contexts.

Yeah, it's a remarkable thing.

And I've had the privilege of visiting, I think, now, close to 50 CREC churches.

So that's one third of our churches.

And I've gone in various places around the world.

South America, Brazil, Chile, Europe as well, England and Canada and a few other places as well.

And I think one of the fascinating elements of it will.

Is that if I'm visiting your congregation in Arizona, for example, and we're sitting, having a meal afterwards, and we're having conversations among men with a cigar or a drink, those same conversations are happening in a different context in a fellowship meal in Mitaka around Tokyo area, it's the same conversations.

And you have to ask, why is that the case?

Well, that's because there is a harmonization of vision that typically doesn't exist in other traditions.

In other traditions, you can walk into one congregation and see a style of worship that's, I don't know, for lack of a better term, sort of much more contemporary by nature.

And then you visit the same different church in the same tradition a couple miles down the road, and you're going to have, you know, something much more traditional by nature.

Well, when you eliminate those categories and there is a harmonization of thought process when it comes to liturgy, that is going to also lead to a harmonization of thought process when it comes to culture and theology.

And that means that our conversations in Tokyo, or the questions.

And I spent several hours in Q and A with different churches there in the Philippines and Japan.

The questions being asked are the same questions I receive when I'm speaking a conference in Moscow, Idaho, or in Lafayette, Louisiana.

And that, to me, is hard to contemplate unless you have distinct categories of thought and life that harmonize and are applied wherever you are in the CRUC congregation.

And I have.

I'm still the more I visit congregations around the country and the world, I still find that to be utterly refreshing and unique in a denominational world where you cannot expect harmony between church A and church balance in the same denomination.

And as the CRUC has grown, that still exists.

And I'm hopeful that as we continue to grow, that will continue as well.

So I have a question that's sort of.

It's not well formed in my mind, so just go with me as I try and talk it out.

So one of the questions that I've had since becoming a Christian is how the faith takes on common characteristics around the world while also preserving local character.

Because I know that from my travels, there's a lot of resistance, resistance to becoming Christian, particularly in Asian countries, because they view it as white, Western and European.

And so there's a resistance to, well, we don't want to adopt, particularly the reform tradition, which is so heavily rooted in the continent that it's an abandonment of their local traditions in a place like Asia, which is totally different.

But what I'm hearing you say, and this sort of fits what my expectation would be that even though there's this tradition that comes from a particular place and time in the world, it finds unique regional expressions that gives it both a local and a universal quality.

Am I kind of getting what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, I think I understand your question.

It's a really good one.

It will probably require a lot of time to develop.

But just as a couple of thoughts here, I think if you have a distinct, what we believe to be a distinct biblical liturgy rooted in an Old Testament biblical liturgical principles, New Testament biblical liturgical principles, that that liturgy, because it's written by a God who created the heavens and the earth, has an adaptability capacity that's far greater than something that's man made or something that lives off the currency of spontaneity.

Right.

You see a lot of this in the United States, where there's what I call the currency of spontaneity when it comes to worship things that are just created on the spot.

When it's translated to other cultures, it doesn't work because it's meant for spontaneity.

It's meant for immediacy, for quick consumption, rather than something that you eat and consume of and enjoy, taste and see slowly.

And I think biblical worship, which has a lot of its roots, I think in reformational Western thinking, is the kind of worship that that is, in many ways it's a piece of art, which means that you have to invest in it, you have to put work in it.

I always tell people that the word liturgy means the work of the people.

And so when liturgy is something that is just meant for fast food consumption, then it's only meant for the consumption of the local person.

But if liturgy, if the people work towards something greater than themselves, then that particular expression can benefit others outside of their local environment.

And that's what I've seen in a place like Japan, which, as you know, is.

I think it's.

I don't know.

I know it's less than 1% that embraces Christianity, but I've seen that the kind of thing that we're trying, that we're offering is something that's very compelling because it has the longevity structure, the longevity DNA within it.

Which means that anytime a culture says, how can I pass this to my children and my children's children, they're asking for the kind of worship that we are providing and that we are suggesting is biblical by nature.

And when any culture in the east begins to ask that question, when it begins to desire something greater, desire a continuity, a concreteness for their family and their children's children, they're not going to be looking for something that can be consumed.

You know, that changes dramatically.

Because if something changes dramatically every Sunday, the likelihood of your children embracing that thing is just Non existent.

They're going to embrace the thing that's there, you know, 30, 40 years from now.

But if the thing that little Johnny is experiencing 40 years from now is the same thing that daddy and mommy were experiencing 40 years prior, then that level of continuity is appealing across cultural, cultural lines.

How incredible that there's a cultural universality, there's a local, we'll say adaptability, and there's also a timelessness to it.

What an incredible.

I wouldn't have put those pieces together, but to hear the story, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Well, I want to say, you know, first and foremost that I think that God has blessed the west for the sake of the world and to whom much is given, much is required.

Amen.

Which is why the missiological endeavors have all stemmed from, you know, European, North American context, especially in the United States.

18th and 19th century were wild mythological seasons for us to expand the gospel around the world.

And when you're looking at a place like Japan, who has in many ways intentionally refused the Western influence, however, are open in some ways, right?

I mean, the youth of Japan, and you may notice you know this better than I do, the youth of Japan is very open to Western, Western ways of thinking, right?

It's the, the elderly population, which in many ways is, is dying very fast, that is not eager to embrace it.

So one way to phrase it is what if the sinfulness of the Western patterns embraced by the younger generation in Japan opens the door for the redemptive Western patterns 20, 30 years from now?

I think that's a true possibility.

Japan would not be the first culture that has, has walked in darkness for a long time.

There are many cultures that have walked in darkness for a long time, which means that the longer they walk in darkness, when light begins to shine, it will shine in a much more effective way.

And I'm very hopeful that God will use the blessings he's given us here in the west in terms of our law, our structures, and that he will cover the sinfulness that we have also inherited here in the west through sort of modern sociological patterns.

And I think you see this, you know, Japan again, you're, you're any, any experience through a, a station in Japan, whether it be in Kyoto or Tokyo.

It's, you would immediately notice that there is.

That their silence is very loud, right?

It's a culture that thrives in, in silence and meditation and it's very prevalent.

You may be in a full packed bullet train, as you've seen on YouTube videos, and you probably experience yourself.

But there is an incredible amount of silence and contemplation within.

Right.

People are very respectful by nature and all these kinds of things.

I tend to think I treated.

My reaction to my time in Japan was that Japan is a thunderous expression of common grace that in many ways is setting itself up for a thunderous expression of redemptive grace.

Because if you were to take the gospel work into a place that is righted by nature, respectful of authority, that is polite, whose etiquette exceeds any other nation in my.

Whose customer service certainly exceeds any other nation.

Right.

But if you're actually giving concreteness and objectivity to these things that are there, I think God can do a really good work.

I left with nothing but hopefulness of the work of the gospel in that country.

This is so fascinating for me because a couple of my most popular tweets have been comparing the culture of India to the culture of Japan.

I don't think there could be two more different cultures on earth than India and Japan.

In fact, I had a tweet that was pretty massive compared two of them, actually.

And one of the things that I observed from my time in Japan is once I got outside the cities and gotten into some of the small towns, like, stopping along the way, there was a heaviness that pervaded a lot of these small towns, which I attributed to the older generation of Japanese dying off, that didn't have the youthful dynamism that the cities did.

But I thought that presents a real challenge for Japan because they have declining birth rates, some of the lowest birth rates in the world.

And so as Japan is facing a lot of pressure for a lot of the cult, a lot of the cultural issues that America is facing, we need to bring in immigrants to support our dying population.

Japan has been resisting that.

I've really been hoping for sort of maybe a reformation.

I don't know what the word is, a revival in a sense of Japanese culture.

And I wouldn't have thought, but what I'm hearing you say, and this feels very possible, is that redemptive grace from the west, in a sense, could be the key to that, as the kids of the next generation are open to a lot of these traditions that their parents wouldn't have been.

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a great interest in what Americans think about a host of things.

You know, in Japan, My impression, for my reading and my experience there, the reaction towards, let's say, the political enterprise, for example, is as long as politics is working and doing what's supposed to do, we don't want to talk about politics.

So politics is very rarely mentioned in that kind of environment.

Well, the reality, of course, is that once the younger generation begin to realize that there's no such thing as an apolitical faith and that they have attempted to privatize their inclinations as individualized, atomized, sinful creatures, and they're going to realize as individuals and as a culture eventually that no individual actions remain atomized individual actions.

Any sinful action has corporate social repercussions.

And I think what Japan is seeing right now with the declining birth rate is the social repercussions of a bunch of individualized actions that they thought could remain privatized.

And, and now they're literally dying.

Little by little, they're dying, their culture is dying, their population is dying.

And at some point, somebody, someone, some institution, some larger corpus is going to begin to recognize that as they are already recognized in terms of the birth rate.

That's not something they would have recognized 10 years ago.

So sometimes, I guess my point in summary would be that sometimes a nation needs to reach its, it's apex of absurdity before they realize that they need something greater than themselves to intervene and bring life.

I think that's a message for the world right now, particularly America.

And that's why I'm loving talking about this, because I would want that for Japan in a way that wouldn't require them to abandon their appreciation for their own unique national traditions.

And so a Christianity, a form, a liturgical form that can come in and say, well, we honor your national traditions, your ethnic traditions, while also bringing the light of Christ to it in a very real sense, the best of both worlds.

And when you have the blessings of faithfulness as well, you're looking at a real revival of a nation.

How exciting.

Yeah, I love that observation because I think it's something that I feel very strongly about here in the US we need to preserve who we are as a people.

We need to preserve who we are as a people.

And that's why when people come into our country here, there ought to be an immediate immersion into American history and American tradition.

In other words, if someone comes here and says, I don't want this country for my estimation, then they shouldn't be in this country.

Right.

You don't want to have this.

You know, I want people to love where they're coming from, but I want them to love where they're coming from by quickly adapting to where they are, because I think that provides the greatest amount of fruitfulness.

And so there ought to be sort of an immersion into.

I want people to love the fourth of July.

Right.

I want people to love Memorial Day, the traditions that made America who she is.

And in the same fashion, as, you know, in Japan, people are very, very, very loyal to their traditions.

Those traditions have led to a kind of slow death.

Right.

Any tradition, of course, that's rooted in pagan way of thinking and mystical ways of thinking, Eastern ways of thinking is going to lead to death.

But there is a preservation of cultural ethos that is really, really sublime in Japan.

And there is a sociological way of being that make the Japanese people incredibly attractive to be around.

I've never had such a delight being around Japanese people, because I think what I saw there was a culture genuinely interest in hearing an American voice.

You know, they're very curious to hear what we have to say.

And while they're not confrontational by nature, they are undoubtedly absorbing what's happening.

And I would want them to preserve their cultural uniqueness with the gospel hovering and intervening in every single way.

One particular, I guess, one particular cultural element which I thought was fascinating.

I didn't participate in it for lack of time, but was their tea celebrations.

And did you get a chance to participate in those will when you were there?

I did.

I attended one of them.

Okay.

And one of my hosts actually organizes some of these in the community.

And what he's trying to do is use these things as evangelistic ways of bringing the gospel.

And I thought you're taking sort of distinct cultural ceremonies, but also adding a unique Christian flavor to it.

And so I think there are very creative ways of taking distinct Japanese cultural artifacts, so to speak, or even etiquette, and bringing a gospel ethos to it that would override and give it even greater more meaning and significance to it.

Now, did you speak to.

And then I guess this is a broader question for many of the nations you've traveled to.

Have you spoken to people that have.

They've become Christian and they've experienced repercussions from their family or their communities because the people around them felt that they were abandoning their nation or felt that they were abandoning their people by becoming Christian?

Well, I think I saw this in two different ways.

So just speaking of my experiences in the last couple of weeks in the Philippines, when you become evangelical or Protestant of some form, because the Philippines is so heavily Roman Catholic, and I've always tell people.

And you're a unique person to talk to because I think you understand this application.

When people think of Roman Catholicism in the United States, they don't realize how Protestantized it has been.

And it's highly, highly Protestantized.

Right.

I've told folks about attending Mass when I was in seminary for particular projects, and the priest singing or inviting the congregation to sing Through Amazing Grace or even A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, which I thought was ironic in a thousand ways.

Right.

Roman Catholicism is highly Protestantized, and I'd say also about Eastern Orthodoxy, highly Protestantized when it's practiced in America.

However, if you go to South America, if you go to Eastern Europe, and certainly if you go to Asia, like the Philippines, Roman Catholicism is there in all its raw form.

Its raw form, which means it carries a very heavy dose of mystical religiosity to it.

And it's very much.

It's very much.

It's cultural in a way that you don't see it anywhere else.

And that church is.

When the Apostle John speaks about, I wish you were either cold or hot.

I don't want you to be lukewarm in these traditions.

And in Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, in these particular locations, when it's expressed or manifested, it's certainly very lukewarm.

It demands very little from the observer.

Sometimes it doesn't even demand Christmas and Easter.

It demands just a quick visit to a confessional booth or a tithe.

And so what you see in these places is you see apathy growing very, very sharply.

And so when somebody, however, it's still very much steeped into the cultural nature of who you are as a Filipino, right.

Or as a Brazilian.

So when you leave that environment to become Protestant, Protestantism, by its very nature, is praxeological.

It's applicational.

Right?

It's application.

So at that point, you've already caused an enormous offense to family.

You've already caused an enormous offense to your forefathers.

So that transition is very difficult.

Whether you are in a.

In a.

In a Shintoistic sort of environment, a Buddhist environment, whatever it.

Whatever, or a Roman Catholic, all these traditions bring with it a form of mysticism.

And when you leave that mysticism and you say, you ask the famous Schaeffer question, how now shall we then live?

Then your Protestant faith is going to affect the way you live, the way you relate to your spouse, the way you relate to your children, the way you relate to your environment.

And that causes enormous familial tension.

And I had a chance to interact with several Filipinos who grew up in strong Roman Catholic traditions, and it felt like a betrayal.

They lost their families altogether.

And I've also, of course, when I was in Japan, dealt with many people who had left the mystical sort of spiritualized religion of their forefathers that was.

It demanded very little of them in a religious sense.

But it is so deeply attached and rooted in familial tradition that to abandon that expression is to abandon family.

And so, yeah, you have to count the cost.

And these men and women have.

That was exactly my experience when I became a Christian after growing up Jewish.

And I try to explain to people that, look, this is not unique.

This is a global phenomenon, that when you are a member of any.

Any global culture, any ethnicity, when you become Protestant, particularly.

I'm glad that you mentioned that distinction.

When you become Protestant, it's considered abandoning the family.

You're abandoning the family gods or the family traditions or the family culture.

And there are many places around the world where you're considered, like, dead to them.

Like, that's a very real thing.

And so counting the cost is a great way of putting it.

And that's why I wanted to know, like, surely you've met people that have encountered this.

Yeah, I've met many of them, and I've met many of them, and none of them have regretted it.

Amen.

Because the Gospel says that Jesus comes to bring a sword.

And in many ways, the clearest and precise way in which that sword is manifested is by dividing family members.

Right.

And I think this is where we need to always stress that the water is much thicker than blood.

The waters of baptism have a far greater unifying capacity because they're from a God who unifies us.

And even though you're unified into Christ's family, that doesn't mean you have to abandon your local ethnic traditions and not in a religious tradition sense.

But you can still be Japanese.

You could be Japanese and you could be reformed Protestant.

Yeah.

And I think what Christianity does is it makes you a better human in your context.

And that means you can cherish even more.

So where God has.

The Book of Acts says that God has placed us in distinct places.

Right.

He has set the boundary markers.

That means that you can now apply your Christianity to your local cultural elements in a far more effective way than before, because now you're rooted in something divine.

And that allows us to be more rooted in something that is national or something that is local.

And that's the.

If you want to.

In other words, if you want to be a better American, become a Christian.

Amen.

Amen.

Better man, better woman.

What is it the guys have been saying?

Like, grace doesn't eliminate nature.

It's like, correct.

It doesn't it perfects nature and so you can become a better American, a better Japanese, a better Brazilian, a better German.

Right.

Et cetera.

By becoming a Christian, you don't have to abandon who you are to follow Christ.

But I think that there's a lot of fear that that's the case, probably because it's enforced upon by family members who believe that falsely.

Yeah, there's obviously a misunderstanding in some of these categories there.

And I think if, you know, I honestly think that family members who feel so betrayed by these kinds of conversions.

Right.

I think if they understood the repercussions of that conversion, what they would say is they're going to continue to suppress the truth.

But they would say, culturally, I'm grateful that you have become a Christian because you love me more.

As a result, you have a greater sense of your place, you have a greater sense of your duty and.

But of course, you know, the suppression of truth, you know, righteousness causes greater, greater animosity, but it doesn't always have to be that way.

May I ask, did you grow up in a Reformed Protestant family in Brazil?

I grew up in a General Baptist tradition.

My father was a Baptist.

So I guess in theological categories, was he a Four Point Calvinist?

They were the General Baptist in distinction to the particular Baptist.

The particular Baptist believed in limited atonement.

The General Baptist did not believe limited atonement.

And my father was part of that World General Baptist.

He was a leader in that movement in Northeast Brazil.

He died in 1996.

I've often wondered how our conversations would have been if he had lived long enough to interact with me as a grown adult.

But I grew up in a Baptistic environment, a fairly fundamentalist environment, rooted in the Bob Jones University tradition, if you're familiar with that, in Greenville, South Carolina.

But as God sort of brought me to the United States, back to the US in the late 90s, I became acquainted with a lot of reformational material and that kind of set me in a different trajectory altogether.

So in a sense, this is, you know, sort of semi personal.

It's not, it's not like you're.

You come from more, a more tribal region.

For example, you're still a Christian tradition that you were a part of and yet still reforming, let's say, all the way.

That also has.

There's a real step there.

Yeah.

And as I look, as I look back, I realize that a lot of the things that were established, the, the roots and the categories that were established for me early on growing up in a Baptist home were the categories that really, all you had to do is just activate them and they became reformed, you know.

And so I felt like this is.

You know, I'm always cautious when young men come to my office and regret their upbringing or regret whatever.

No, I said that's.

You're not reading the story the way you should.

The story that God placed you in is he placed you in a particular place with people and context and rituals and environments, and God places put you in a position so that you would mature in it and that you would take those categories that were there for you and grow as a result of it.

And so you have to read your place in your story.

And if you had grown up in that environment, sometimes you can take it for granted.

But God has taken you through a beautiful story, and he's writing it so that you would come to where you are at whatever stage of life you're in.

So I want you to see your story as a form of sanctification rather than as a storyline that only began in chapter six.

Now you begin where God placed you, and now he's telling the story through your particular lenses.

And it requires a form of sanctifying grace, learning.

It requires struggling a little bit, wrestling with God a little bit.

But you are where you now.

You are where you are now by the grace of God and by his redemptive kindness.

It's very liberating to see things that way as well.

God's been there the whole time.

Yes.

So would you be willing to share, as you traveled through Japan and the Philippines, some of the traditions that you participated in?

I think you said you were able to see a tea ceremony or you were able to meet someone who did.

I know that from your.

From your substack that you visited some of the temples in Kyoto.

You enjoyed some of the food, I would imagine, as well.

So maybe just, like, share some of your travelogue from.

From your trip.

Yeah, you know, it was a fascinating.

I want to make sort of a distinction between, obviously, my experience in the Philippines and Japan, which are.

You talked about the distinction between India and Japan.

Philippines, Japan are just two wildly different, different places altogether.

Primarily because the Philippines, the Filipino people, were colonized by the Spanish.

Right.

And so there's a Spanish flavor even there are particular words in Tagalog which carry very unique Spanish sort of elements to it in the way they speak.

And so for somebody who grew up speaking Portuguese, and I also speak Spanish as well, I could capture these little nuances in their speech patterns and.

And culturally as well, they're very vivacious preaching.

The Philippines is very different than preaching in Japan.

Oh yeah, in the Philippines, they're very responsive people, you know, and in some ways they're talking back to you as you're, as you're preaching.

And I found that very, very compelling.

And I felt in some ways very much at home as somebody who is of a Latin background.

And so the, the, the unique things about the Philippines I thought was, is that their poverty is very extensive.

It permeates everything.

And there is a kind of expected chaos in the way they do life there.

And somehow within that chaos of traffic hour in traffic time in Manila at 5pm the lack of sense of where vehicles are going.

In other words, to drive in the Philippines requires a prophetic gift, which means you have to predict what the guy in front of you is about to do.

And that's very, very different.

And you know this as well.

And I love the food there.

They're so giving.

They have such a high regard for the ministerial office and they're always gifting you with things.

They're always addressing you with honor.

They always want to mark the occasion with a picture.

And I took hundreds of pictures and it has nothing to do so much with, you know, them sort of honoring me as this American, you know, a well known figure.

But really what they want to do, they want to mark the moment.

And I find that compelling.

Some cultures mark moments with journals, some cultures mark moments with photographs.

And the Filipino people is very photographic by nature or even photogenic by nature as well.

They want to remember.

They have a memory that is illustrated through their picture chronology, you know, and so as a result, they're very social and they're very social media savvy as well.

And that was the unique thing.

And when you, when you have a meal in the Philippines, that meal is unending.

It comes in various phases and you eat in abundance and there always is food in abundance.

Whereas in Japan that's very different.

There is an expectation that you finish your food as a way of showing honor to your guests.

Food is artistic in Japan.

The colors, the presentation, the quality, the cleanness of the food is all there displayed in a simple meal.

And they're very eager to make that known to you.

We had some of the most fascinating meals there with the people.

And there is an etiquette that is very much inherent in the food in Japan.

The temples, the organization.

The one illustration that comes to mind was my son went with us to Tokyo and Kyoto.

He's 14 and for a Japanese, he looks like he's 18, 19 years old.

And so in every restaurant we went to, they served him beer because they just assumed that he was 18, 19, 20 years old.

And my son said, no thank you.

And they were very apologetic that he wasn't able to drink beer.

There is a sense in which they are so eager to please you.

And when they can't please you to the highest degree, they feel that they need to apologize to you because they couldn't please you to the highest degree.

And there's something very compelling about that level of mercy and hospitality that I found really, really appealing to that culture.

And my only thought was, what would happen if this culture embraced the hospitality of God, the kindness of the mercy of God.

Imagine now seeing these features being elevated and accentuated to a holy, divine, Christian level.

It would be something to behold man.

And I pray that God will do that work of mercy in Japan.

That was definitely one of the things that I learned from my time there.

Was in America, we take for granted that here most people do a good job because you do a good job.

That's just what you do.

Even if no one's watching you do a good job.

There are other cultures around the world where the minimum standard, like, eh, that's fine, we'll get by.

I think the Philippines is probably one of them.

India definitely is.

But Japan showed me no, like you do an exceptional job at everything because your ancestors are watching or these are our values, like everything that they do, they do to the highest standard possible and how seriously they take that.

And they can take it too far.

They can definitely take it too far.

And that has a psychic burden.

But on America, you do a good job and how much that means to a culture that does take quality seriously.

Yeah, I envision the application of Paul's imperative do all things the glory of God, whether eat or drink.

I envision what Japan does.

But a Christianized Japan, I would envision it would look a lot like that and because of the excellence that's involved in the process.

And I think this is the kind of thing where I think, as you mentioned, America does this in many ways because I think of the vestiges or, I don't know, I might say the crumbs of the Puritan work ethic.

But Japan does it for the honor of their society.

Right.

For the honor of what's come before.

And we just need that, of course, translated into Christian categories.

And I think that sense of glory to God would be beautifully, beautifully portrayed in a Christianized Japan.

What a, what a hopeful, what a Hopeful image.

I've often joked that, like, well, maybe as the west is having declining faithfulness, what if there was a big revival in the east, in Japan and in China, sort of putting the lie, putting shame, a lot of the lies going around our culture right now about the west and Christianity.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, as you know, one of the.

There's such unique differences between Japanese writing and culture and poetry, to Westernize writing and poetry.

And that's why there aren't many theological works translated into Japanese.

So we're working, I do have a meeting, I think in a week or so with an English speaker who was raised in Japan who's beginning to translate some of our CREC works into Japanese.

So we're going to meet and see if we can make some progress in that regard because I really think the Japanese culture needs a robust view of marriage, a robust view of parenting, a robust view of ecclesiology.

These are the kinds of things that have been put on hold for so long because of the differences.

But in many ways, thanks be to God for the technological advances that will hopefully allow us to have a lot of our works from our CRC authors available in Japanese in the next 10 to 15 years.

Indeed.

Well, speaking of missions to foreign lands, I hear the CRC is planting a church in Washington, D.C.

yeah, well, you're.

Absolutely right, it is a foreign land.

I spent at least two or three times of the year in D.C.

and I'll be there again in September for Netcon, as you know.

And I think that is a culture that in many ways function very much like, you know, it's not.

It thrives in, it thrives in non production.

In other words, they talk a lot about productivity, but they produce very little.

And what they produce bears no fruit.

And they talk a lot about productivity, but their birth rates are very, very, very minute.

And so this feels like a foreign missions field.

And so what we're doing through the work, thankfully, of Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson, the Saints of Christ Church and other works fundamentally to the work of Christchurch in Moscow, is beginning this church plant in mid June, in a couple of weeks.

And you can find, I hope you can put that in your show notes.

Will the introductory Sunday, which I think is mid June, I think June 13, but there's also a conference, but with Pastor Douglas Wilson, that will be taking place I think the day before the inaugural service.

We've accomplished something unique, which is to find a place to rent in D.C.

for over 100 people.

And I think we've succeeded in that the hope at this point, which is it's one of the good problems to have, is I suspect we'll probably supersede the seating capacity for the first Sunday.

And.

And we're very eager to see that work play out because I think it will provide a kind of ecclesial headquarters for our work, the crec.

Obviously, everybody knows Pete Hegseth, but there's a lot of other things happening with CREC members in D.C.

and we're hoping that we can combine a healthy political process of thought with a healthy ecclesial thought process as well.

I am a firm believer that if we don't have a healthy ecclesiology, our politics will suffer.

So the work in D.C.

is a very strategic work.

Men like Douglas Wilson and Joe Rigney are strategic men.

That's why I'm super hopeful that this work is going to begin to establish root in Washington, D.C.

and who knows what will happen in 2028.

It would be lovely to have a sitting American president attending one of our congregations, and you never know.

May that be the Lord's will.

Amen.

Amen.

How exciting to hear that you managed to find a space to rent.

It has seating for 100 people, and you think you'll have more attendees than that.

That's incredibly exciting to hear.

Yeah, we're putting the word out, and obviously a lot of this is just the momentum of the situation here, but we're hoping to see the congregation grow.

And ultimately the goal is to have a minister who is there full time shepherding that flock.

In the beginning, we're going to have ministers fill in the pulpit, administer the sacraments for the first six months.

Well, the ultimate goal is to have a ministry that is functioning on its own with a shepherd that's guiding the individual flock.

And I can imagine it'll have to be a very unique kind of shepherd to shepherd a parish with a lot of people that are very much invested in the political work.

And I'm eager to see what God is going to do in that situation.

I know God will do a good work in putting the right man there in the right time.

And just one final question, sort of piggybacking off of some of the things we talked about with Japan.

How do you see the Reformed liturgical pattern sanctifying, bringing common grace to the land of Washington, D.C.

in the same way it may do in Japan?

Yeah.

You know, I did a talk for a gala about two years ago in D.C.

and it was a wonderful room packed with a lot of D.C.

staffers and a few political figures, and I talked about the centrality of the church.

And afterwards a respectable man who was involved in a lot of unique political work said to me, you know, you missed the opportunity there to talk about things that really matter.

You should have talked about something very different than ecclesiology.

This is very foreign to these people.

And I thought, well, maybe that was a missed opportunity.

But the more I thought about it, I thought, wow, that was the ideal topic to discuss in that environment that treasures power and power that is divorced from the local worship of God's people.

Power is a wonderful thing to pursue if it is guided by the word and the sacrament that is powerful because of Jesus Christ.

When it is divorced of word and sacrament, power corrupts.

Indeed.

But when it is combined with a healthy ecclesiology, when power is given to those who worship the God of all power, then you have a way of thinking carefully about politics.

So, anyway, I think establishing an ecclesiastical environment there where people can say, this is where I will refresh my heart.

This is where I renew covenant with God on Sunday in order to prepare to fight the principalities and powers of D.C.

i think that's the way you ought to think through these categories.

You should not think of politics, divorce from biblical polity, but you should think of politics always engaged first and foremost with the authority of the local church and of Jesus Christ, the ruler of the church.

Amen, brother.

Thank you so much for that.

I think that's a stirring and inspiring message that everyone will be very grateful to hear.

Absolutely.

It's a delight to talk about these things.

I'm really hopeful that God will begin to establish some roots there so we can talk about them even more often.

I am as well.

I am as well.

Well, thank you so much for your generosity of time.

I know that you're quite busy today, so I appreciate having this discussion.

Where would you like to send people to find out more about you and what you do and the CREC as well?

Yeah, thanks for the question.

I have been able to consolidate virtually everything I do to yuribrito.com, yuribrito.com u r-I B-I-T-O.com is where I have my substack, the Perspectivalist, and I update all my readers with the conferences that I'm speaking at, opportunities that I'm involved with, and a lot of my writing.

So yuribrito.com is where you're able to find virtually everything I do the these days.

Well, thank you so much, sir.

I'll be be sure to send everyone your way.

Thank you.

Pleasure to be with you.

Will sa.