Brazil: leaving ministry in local hands

We were excited to have mission partners Rosie and Stu Bayford in the CMS office this week and to hear them reflect on their mission journey over the past seven years. We praise God for the energy and love they have invested in people in Olinda, Recife, supporting girls at risk through their work with safe house ReVive and pioneering a community market that repurposes surplus food for families in need. Pray for girls at ReVive to continue to grow and flourish. Pray for the community market, now in local hands, to go from strength to strength and continue to find local suppliers to work with. Pray for Rosie and Stu and their daughter as they re-establish themselves in the UK.

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Video transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to Hope from the Edges. I’m Andy Roberts, CEO for CMS.

In the next few minutes, we’ll bring you inspiring updates from three different edges of our world, stories of resilience, transformation and hope that your gifts and prayers are making directly possible.

First, we go to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where local church leaders are stepping onto the front lines of a critical health crisis. Then we cross the ocean to Brazil. For a mission story that happens to be very close to my heart. And finally, we’ll return to the UK to celebrate a remarkable story of community resilience and a grand reopening in Carlisle.

We begin today with a sobering situation unfolding in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The country is currently facing its 17th Ebola outbreak in 50 years, with over 1,000 suspected cases. And more than 200 tragic deaths already officially reported. The epicentre is in Ituri province, but confirmed cases have reached the major city of Goma and crossed borders into Uganda.

If you’ve kept up with CMS mission efforts in DRC, you’ll know this crisis is compounding severe humanitarian and political instability. Over 10 million people are currently living under the control of M23 rebel authorities. An ongoing conflict has forced the closure of local airports, severely restricting the flow of vital medical supplies and response teams. In these incredibly vulnerable, volatile spaces, the Church is proving to be a primary safety net and lifeline.

CMS mission partner Martin Gordon, the Bishop of Goma, reports that local churches are uniquely positioned to respond because they remain among the very few institutions truly trusted by the community. This local trust is a matter of life and death. Widespread public mistrust of health authorities has unfortunately fueled scepticism about the virus’s existence, even leading to two treatment centres being set on fire.

Drawing on their hard-worn experience, the Diocese of Goma is mobilising rapidly. They’ve already circulated vital pastoral guidance on tracking symptoms, introducing strict hygiene and sanitation standards. And managing medical referrals safely. Plans are also underway to equip local schools and churches with temperature screening equipment, launch awareness conferences for clergy and teachers, and partner with local journalists to actively combat misinformation. Because this involves a rare strain of Ebola, for which there’s currently no approved vaccine or cure, containment through community education is our most critical line of defence.

Bishop Martin is calling for urgent prayer for protection over health workers and wisdom for church leaders. To learn more and to stand with them, please visit our website.

Now let’s travel to Brazil for a story close to my heart about how the posture of mission is changing and the beautiful fruit of local leadership.

Many years ago my wife Rose, who is from Brazil, and I felt a call on our hearts to help protect vulnerable girls from exploitation. We founded Revive International. Now, when I had first arrived in Brazil as an 18-year-old gap year volunteer, a young local woman named Elise became my translator. She also joined our dining room table prayer meetings and eventually became Revive’s very first paid employee.

When the time came for Rose and I to move to the UK after 15 years, we faced a choice. Rather than bringing in another foreign leader. We chose to step back and entrust Revive entirely into the hands of Elise and the local Brazilian team. We wanted to intentionally dismantle the mindset that subtly implies that leadership must come from the outside. And when we told them, they burst into tears. Under Elise’s leadership, Revive has thrived. The team have listened to where the Holy Spirit has been moving, bravely transitioning the work away from large residential institutions or safe houses, toward pioneering a growing fostering service. It is a living testament to Psalm 68, which reminds us that God sets the lonely in families.

The same shift towards collaborative, locally rooted mission is beautifully reflected in story of CMS mission partners Stu and Rosie Bayford. During the seven years serving alongside Revive, they partnered with a local church to pioneer a community market in an underserved neighbourhood. Rejecting a dependency-heavy handout model, they built a system where local families could buy food at deeply reduced rates, preserving agency and dignity. The market grew into a thriving community hub, a space for shared prayer, parenting workshops and other seminars. Through these relationships, three local sisters came to faith and were recently baptised.

And just like Rose and I did years ago, as Stu and Rosie now return to the UK, they have handed full ownership of this market over to a dedicated team from the local church.

This is mission at its best, where all parties are listened to, working in genuine partnership, building up each other’s gifts, and stepping away so local leaders can flourish.

Finally, let’s return to the UK to see this exact same pattern of local empowerment and resilience at work. In Cumbria, the Carlisle Community Shed, a project involving CMS mission partner Gary Ion, has been a vital lifeline, connecting with people on the margins who are navigating loneliness or mental health challenges. Through practical, hands-on workshops, the shed provided a safe space for people to find community and purpose. And to explore faith in Jesus too.

However, in October 2025, the project hit a major financial roadblock and was forced to close its doors. The tools were packed away, the contents were moved into a storage unit, and the doors were locked. But the story didn’t end there. What followed was an incredible outpouring from the local community, refusing to let the space of hope disappear.

A powerful local outcry sparked a special fundraising campaign. Thanks to that local determination and prayer, the Shed recently celebrated a grand reopening. Gary shares that the new location is even better than before, featuring a spacious workshop, a dedicated social area with sofas and an indoor game space.

Thank you so much for joining me for these updates from the Edges. And for the prayerful and financial support that makes these breakthroughs possible.

Please consider sharing this video with your church, small group, or anyone who needs a reminder of how God is moving in our world today. Until next time, we are so deeply grateful for your partnership as together we follow Jesus.

With Jesus
With each other
To the edges

ENDS

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Andy Roberts reflects on the changing shape of mission from his personal experience of founding ReVive International in Brazil – and why true success meant stepping aside and letting local leadership flourish.

In May we had the joy of welcoming Elise to CMS House in Oxford.

Elise is the current leader of ReVive International in Brazil, the organisation Rose and I helped to start many years ago in response to the abuse and exploitation of girls in the city where we were living. Many of those girls were being harmed by the very people who should have protected them. It was heart-breaking, disturbing and impossible to ignore.

Seeing Elise here in Oxford reminded me how long the journey of mission can be. It also reminded me how much mission changes over time – if we are willing to let God disturb us, challenge our assumptions and release things into the hands of others.

Moving from “Gringo” to local leadership

I first met Elise when I went to Brazil as an 18-year-old gap year student with SAMS. I was helping with a street children’s project connected to a local church.

Elise was also part of the church where I met Rose. A few years later, when Rose and I were sensing a call from God to begin some kind of ministry among vulnerable girls in the city, Elise and her husband Felipe joined the prayer meetings around our dining room table as we asked God what he wanted us to do.

When ReVive became a reality, Elise became our first ever employee. Again, it began around the dining room table. I have often thought that some of the best things in life begin there: with prayer, friendship, food, uncertainty and a shared sense that God is inviting us into something we cannot yet fully see.

Over the years, Elise grew with ReVive. She became part of the leadership team Rose and I invested in for more than 15 years. And when the time came for Rose and I to move to the UK and follow God’s call into the next phase of life, CMS asked us a very reasonable question: would we like CMS to find another mission partner to take over from us and lead ReVive?

I remember thinking at the time: if another foreign mission partner needed to come and replace us, then perhaps we had failed in one of the most important tasks of mission leadership.

Far too often, mission work has been built around the foreigner, the founder, the person with access to money, networks or power. And then, when that person leaves, the work collapses – because knowledge, resources and leadership were never truly shared. We can dress that up in spiritual language, but sometimes what we have built is closer to our own little kingdom than the kingdom of God.

Overcoming the internalised colonial mindset

Right from the beginning of ReVive, we wanted to invest in local leadership. We had seen this modelled badly elsewhere. We had seen founder’s syndrome rear its head. We had seen people protect power rather than release it. We did not want to do that.

So, when the time came, we told Elise and the other Brazilian leaders that we believed they were the right people to take ReVive forward.

I still remember their reaction. They burst into tears. They told us they had assumed another “gringo” (foreigner) would ome and lead. They were taken aback that we were willing to entrust the future of ReVive to them.

That moment has stayed with me. Because the colonial mindset works both ways. It is not only something held by those who come from outside. It can also become internalised by local leaders who have been taught, subtly or explicitly, that leadership must come from somewhere else.

But the gospel tells a different story. The Holy Spirit is not the possession of one culture, one passport, one institution or one sending nation. God raises up leaders from the edges, through the local church, within communities, among those who know the language, the wounds, the hopes and the possibilities far better than we ever could.

And under Elise’s leadership, ReVive has thrived.

That does not mean it has stayed the same. In fact, one of the signs of healthy mission is that it keeps changing.

Challenging assumptions about children’s care

A few years ago, Jesus the Great Disturber disrupted our thinking at ReVive. For a long time, we had assumed that the answer to the needs of vulnerable girls was to open more and more residential homes. That was the model we knew. It was what we had built. It was what people supported.

But over time, God challenged that assumption. We began to see more clearly that his preferred place for children is not an institution, however loving, but a family. Psalm 68 says that God “sets the lonely in families”. That simple truth began to reshape the work and led to the closure of one of ReVive’s homes.

In recent years, ReVive’s fostering service has grown significantly, and that has been largely due to Elise’s leadership. The work has adapted because the mission required it. Faithfulness did not mean preserving the original model at all costs. Faithfulness meant listening again, learning again and allowing God to lead the work into a better future.

I was later awarded an MBE for the work we had led in Brazil – an irony not lost on me, given its attachment to empire. But it was a real privilege, and I remember receiving it on behalf of the whole team. ReVive was never just our story. It was, and is, the story of a Brazilian team, local churches, supporters, CMS, children, families, volunteers and many others responding to the disturbing, healing love of Jesus.

And that, I think, says something important about how mission is changing.

Mission today cannot be about exporting our models, controlling the agenda or assuming that leadership must come from the outside. It has to be about joining in with what God is already doing, building with others, investing in local capacity and having the humility to hand over power when the time is right.

That same lesson has continued through the story of Rosie and Stu Bayford.

Around seven years ago, Rosie and Stu were sent by CMS to ReVive as mission partners. At that time, ReVive was receiving a number of people from CMS who felt called to similar ministries. I helped do some training in mission theology and practice. 

Redefining poverty: from deficit to relationship

One of the key questions we explored was: how does our definition of poverty shape our response to it?

If we see poverty simply as a deficit – a lack of money, food, education or opportunity – then our instinct is to provide whatever we think is missing. Sometimes that is necessary. But if we are not careful, that approach can reinforce unhealthy power dynamics. We have what you need. We give it. You receive it. We remain powerful. You remain dependent.

But if we understand poverty more deeply as broken relationship – with God, with others, with self and with creation – then our response begins to change. We begin to think about dignity, participation, community, justice and shalom. We ask not only, “What do people need?” but, “What gifts are already here? What relationships need restoring? What can we build together?”

Rosie and Stu took that seriously.

As they listened, learned and looked at the wider social issues around them in Brazil, they began to dream of pioneering a community market. But because of the training and the relationships they were part of, they did not want to create a hand-out model that stripped people of agency or dignity. They developed a model where families could buy food themselves at a much-reduced rate.

They partnered with a local church in a very poor community. They worked with local people to identify families and with supermarkets and businesses to provide the food. And, over time, the market became much more than a market. It became a community.

People came not only to buy food, but to stay, talk, pray, learn and belong. Volunteers from the church helped run devotionals, worship and practical sessions. Every few weeks someone would come and speak on a relevant issue: preventing abuse, parenting, nutrition, preparing for work and much more.

And people came to faith. I remember three sisters being baptised in the church after first coming along to the market.

Now, as  Rosie and Stu return to the UK, they too have handed over leadership of this ministry to a team from the local church – a team they have invested in over the years.

That is mission at its best.

Not mission that creates dependency. Not mission that keeps the foreigner at the centre. Not mission that measures success by how indispensable we become.

But mission that joins in, builds up, shares power, releases leadership and leaves something stronger in the hands of those who are best placed to carry it forward.

This is deeply connected to where CMS is going.

Decolonising mission in practice

Our vision is to see our world made new through the love of God as we follow Jesus to the edges. Our purpose is to make disciples of Jesus at the edges. And increasingly, we are recognising that this means mission must be more collaborative, more locally rooted and more willing to be led by those who have too often been treated as recipients rather than agents of mission.

Through our mission strategy, and through work such as Acts 11, we are continuing to ask what it means to decolonise mission in practice. Not as a fashionable slogan, but as a deeply biblical commitment to humility, partnership and the releasing of gifts across the whole body of Christ.

Acts 11 is a fascinating chapter because the church in Jerusalem has to catch up with what God is already doing elsewhere. The Spirit moves ahead of the centre. The edges become places of revelation, surprise and new understanding. The question is whether the established church has the humility to listen, recognise and bless what God is doing beyond its own control.

That is still the challenge before us.

Of course, we are all still called into mission. This is not about stepping back into passivity. It is not about saying that cross-cultural mission no longer matters. Far from it.

But it is about a different posture.

The posture of modern mission

• Listen before speaking.
• Co-create rather than control.
• Build movements rather than monuments.
• Recognise that those closest to the pain are closest to the wisdom needed for transformation.

When I look at Elise, I see the fruit of that kind of mission.

I see someone who was there at the beginning. I see someone who prayed around a dining room table before there was a strategy, a structure or a name. I see someone who helped bring ReVive to life, then grew into the leader who could take it further than Rose and I ever could.

Mission is changing. It needs to change. But at its heart, it is still the same invitation: to follow Jesus to the edges, to join in with what the Spirit is doing, and to participate in making all things new.

And perhaps the real test of our mission is not whether people remember our names when we have gone.

Perhaps the real test is whether, by God’s grace, the work continues, local leaders flourish, communities are transformed and Jesus is made known long after we have left the room – or the dining room table.

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Brazil: Young people needing forever families

Praise God for the work of ReVive providing care for vulnerable girls in Brazil through residential care and a fostering and adoption service. Please pray for the girls currently in the care of ReVive, that they would know the transforming love of Jesus. Please also pray for more families to come forward willing to foster and adopt and become forever families for these precious young people.

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Brazil: community market

Rosie and Stu Bayford have spent seven years in Recife, where they have been supporting girls at risk through local ministry ReVive, and established a community market which repurposes surplus food to benefit local families. Rosie and Stu and their daughter have now returned to the UK and are finishing service as mission partners. Praise God that the community market has continued under the leadership of locals Marina and Rafael. Pray for more partnerships with local suppliers so that the community market can continue to serve local families well.

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Brazil: forever homes

We give thanks that CMS short-termer Katharine has extended her stay in Recife to continue serving at ReVive’s safe house, supporting at-risk girls with education and to flourish as they grow in understanding their God-given value. Katharine asks for prayer for each of the girls in the safe house to find a forever home, and for herself to continue to grow in her love for Jesus.

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Brazil: starting a church in prison

Mission partners Andy and Kati Walsh work with local church partners in Florianópolis, sharing the hope of Jesus in challenging contexts. Andy and others have been working together to launch churches in local men’s prisons. In one prison, 20–25 believers already meet regularly, currently without any involvement from an ordained minister. Please pray for obstacles to be removed and for favour so that Andy and his team can provide further support and help more prisoners find freedom in Jesus.

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Brazil: preparing to return to the UK

After seven years of serving in Recife, mission partners Rosie and Stu Bayford are preparing to return to the UK in April. Pray for them to end their service well as they wrap up work, and particularly for their daughter, who is just two years old, as the family makes this big transition. Pray for the community market the Bayfords have started, as local leaders take over the logistics of redistributing surplus food to families and creating a space where people can build community and learn more about Jesus.

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Brazil: important meeting

Mission partner Andy Walsh requests prayer ahead of an important meeting on Friday 27 March with the Governor of the San Pedro de Alcântara Penitentiary. “We want to review and discuss our proposal to establish a regular church gathering within the prison. Please pray that the Holy Spirit would guide the discussion, giving wisdom, clarity and grace in our conversation. Ask God to open the right doors in his timing and according to his purposes.”

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Brazil: landslides and flooding

Pray for people in the eastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where at least 32 people have been killed in landslides and flooding caused by heavy rain. As people struggle to look after thousands who have suddenly been made homeless, and rescue workers keep searching for 38+ people who are missing, more rain is forecast for the coming days. Pray for the weather forecast to change, for stamina for rescue workers, comfort for all those whose loved ones are missing or have been killed, and for miraculous provision for those who need it.

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Brazil: loving homes for girls who want to be adopted

Partners Rosie and Stu Bayford work with ReVive, a non-profit working with girls at risk in Recife. They write, “Some of our girls have been adopted or reintegrated with their biological families during the last few months, while for others, the search for adoptive families continues. Our foster care service continues to grow with more training for foster families, and it’s really exciting to see this taking off.”

Praise God that local people have a heart for adoption, despite this being a relatively new concept in this context. Pray for more loving families to be found who are open to fostering children.

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Brazil: evangelistic event

Mission associates Daniel and Sarah Brito Medeiros ask for prayer for a large evangelistic event taking place in a stadium in Recife next week, from 3–6 December. Please pray for health, strength and divine protection for everyone involved in planning, advertising and running the event. Pray for people to hear about it, to turn up and to experience life-transforming encounters with Jesus.

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