Lucas Ferreira once saw the message of Jesus with contempt. Now, he shares that same message as a church planter himself, reaching those who, like he once did, resist the gospel.

“I was always very hostile toward the gospel,” Lucas recalls. “I remember terrible things I did to those who tried to evangelize me.” Raised in Umbanda, a Brazilian spiritist religion, Lucas believed in earning redemption through good works. “I judged myself a good person—not because I did things from the heart, but because I thought I had to do them to be saved.”

Despite repeated attempts by classmates and others to share Christ with him, Lucas clung to self-righteousness and performance-based religion. At one point, he did visit a Christian church, but his background in performance-based religion held him back from understanding and accepting the true gospel. Lucas said, “Everything I was taught was that I just had to do more to please God. But I couldn’t keep up. God is holy, and I couldn’t meet that standard.”

Eventually, the burden of trying to earn God’s favor drove him away from faith altogether. “I left the church, walked away from it all, and tried to live life my way,” he says. “But it didn’t work. I felt lost.”

During that season, Lucas says he didn’t experience a single, dramatic moment of conversion, but rather a gradual, undeniable drawing of God. “Little by little, I was irresistibly drawn to the grace of God,” he says. “I began discovering the doctrines of grace. I realized salvation wasn’t in me—it was in Christ.”

Lucas returned to church and began attending Acts 29 church Igreja Batista Vida Nova, where he was discipled and grew in his understanding of the gospel. There, he met others who poured into his life and helped him see God not as a taskmaster, but a Father full of mercy. “God was more extravagant in His love than I was in my sin,” he says. “That changed everything.”

Today, Lucas is preparing to become a full-time pastor and church planter with Acts 29, helping others discover the grace that transformed him. He is being sent out from Igreja Batista Vida Nova to plant another church with the same name in a nearby city called Catalão. 

One of the most meaningful parts of his journey has been asking forgiveness from those he once mocked. “I had the chance to say sorry—and thank you—to people who planted seeds of the gospel in my life,” he shares. “One of them, Benjamin, I had spit in his face. But when I told him I was now a Christian, I could see in his face that it had all been worth it.”

Lucas’s story is a powerful reminder that no heart is too hard for God to reach—and that the gospel truly changes everything.