Brazil’s Pastor Malafaia invests “hard cash” to expand his religious empire in pandemic

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – While presenting the first branch of his Advec (Assembly of God Victory in Christ) in Taboão da Serra (Greater São Paulo) on August 22, Silas Malafaia announced what to expect from another launch scheduled 2 days later, in another city in the state of São Paulo.

The Sorocaba temple would be located in “Sorocaba’s top party venue,” said the Rio de Janeiro pastor. This was the end of a party venue, as the former headquarters of Soriá Eventos – which once hosted Saúde e Bem-Estar com Óleos Essenciais (Health and Well-Being with Essential Oils) and other 3,628 corporate events, as well as a host of weddings and debutante parties – has now become a church.

Advec, in this one and a half year of Covid-19 pandemic, opened twice as many as the 9 spaces opened in 2018 and 2019 combined. At least 3 more are expected by the end of the year, as well as the expansion of other existing ones.

The investment, as he himself told the faithful in Taboão da Serra, demands “hard cash,” because he does not want to “do something unworthy for God.” In 2020 and 2021, over R$20 (US$3.7) million will be at stake.

“I’m not going to say all of them, so that they won’t think I’m the best thing since sliced bread, but most pastors have stopped and returned properties,” he says. The pastors who suffered the most from the loss of revenue between March 2020 and now, he says, are those who didn’t have the culture of electronic donations.

“Our growth was due to the fear of many. And also, I’m not going to pretend to be humble, we have credibility. I have a social network [adding Instagram, Facebook and Twitter] with over 8 million people.” He is also one of the pastors most aligned to President Jair Bolsonaro.

The pastor’s fame comes from his days as a televangelist (he was one of the pioneers on TV) and, nowadays, mainly from social networks.

The “hard cash” needs to come from somewhere. Advec’s headquarters, in the north zone of Rio de Janeiro, has 120 credit or debit card machines, widely used by the faithful rather than cash.

When in-person services were banned, or even when they were allowed but with limited capacity, virtual money transfer was well established. During the lockdown period, the tithes (10% of income) and offerings (amounts spontaneously donated) did not drop much because 85% of collections are made electronically, according to Malafaia.

Pix, an online transfer method that debuted in November with the pandemic already underway, has also helped maintain the cash inflow.

The opening of new churches, mostly in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro interior, is a successful sample of Malafaia’s religious empire. There are other less successful ones. In 2019, Central Gospel, a company owned by Malafaia and his wife, also pastor Elizete, filed for receivership worth nearly R$16 million.

At the time, he blamed the financial crisis “caused by PT” for the situation. He now says that he has reached an agreement with his creditors and “will pay off [what he owes] and emerge from this, God willing.”

In order to replenish the cash for new temples, the pastor says that 3 times a year, “usually in April, August and December,” he promotes a campaign for extra funds for building works.

Malafaia says that people donate their money because they know where it will end up. “This thing [of saying] that evangelicals are a bunch of idiots who do what their pastor tells them to do… The church today has all social classes. I have poor, middle-class, wealthy, university professors, semi-literate people,” he says.

It is difficult to build anything from scratch. His custom is to rent properties and remodel them to accommodate an Advec. “What I spend on a church, with all due respect, could be used to build 4 Worldwide Churches, 4 Universal Churches,” Malafaia says, citing two competitors of neopentecostal lineage, the Worldwide Church of the Power of God and the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.

“If I had a church based on the Worldwide Church system, ‘there’s a pastor’s room, a treasurer’s room, and that’s it’… Oh my, I would have opened 500, 600 churches.”

He opened dozens, from medium to large. Advec has been operating since 1959, but its expansion began in earnest when Malafaia assumed leadership, a position inherited from his father-in-law, Pastor José Santos, who died in 2010. The evangelical brand now boasts 150 temples, 2% of the 8,000 he says he wants to open in Brazil.

Malafaia prefers larger venues, for at least 400 people. “At that time [his father-in-law’s] they made small churches with plastic chairs, fans, and fifth-rate sound. I came in with air conditioning, LED screens, imported sound systems. That’s a lot of money.”

As he said that night in Taboão, the plan is to populate Brazil with the “brides of Christ,” a theological definition for churches, his “heaven on earth branches.” Provided there is plenty of cash.