With a 37 percent increase in schools over the past decade—now 318—Seventh-day Adventist education in Brazil is booming. Adventist-run schools are deemed some of the country’s most competitive, drawing significant non-Adventist enrollment, and are positioned to help grow the church’s membership, Adventist leaders there say.

“Adventist schools already appear among the best in the country in the teaching rankings from the Ministry of Education,” the Brazilian news magazine Veja reported last September.

But even with the boom in schools, educational infrastructure isn’t matching membership growth. Brazil already has the largest Adventist Church membership of any country—about 1.6 million. But in the country’s largest region—the North Brazil Union, home to some 541,000 Adventists—there is no Adventist school at the university level.

A delegation of world church leaders visited a property there last month, which will be home to a new college in 2010.

“The community there is excited about this new school and the government leaders are excited because the campus is an aesthetically pleasing addition to the community,” said Ella Simmons, an Adventist world church vice president.

“I think what our church is doing in Brazil in higher education, and its understanding of the importance of higher education to the church’s mission—to our bottom line of spreading the gospel to the world—is exemplary,” Simmons said.

The delegation also visited the inauguration of the Santa Catarina Adventist Academy. The state’s lieutenant governor, Leonel Pavan, was helicoptered in for the ceremony. Pavan congratulated the growth of Adventist education in Brazil and told school officials that “investing in education is investing in people.” 

Billboards across Brazil advertise Adventist education—a smiling girl poses next to the slogan, “My father believes in my future, that’s why I’m enrolled in Adventist education.” The unified ad campaign helps keep the church’s individual schools on the same page.

In most elementary and secondary schools throughout Latin America, classes are held in morning and afternoon shifts, allowing teachers to double classroom usage. “You get a lot of mileage out of the square footage of a school,” says Roy Ryan, associate treasurer for the world church.

Still, “there aren’t enough schools,” says Luis Schulz, associate Education director for the Adventist world church.

Church leaders estimate that only about 8 percent of Adventist students throughout the country attend Adventist schools.

But about 70 percent of the estimated 217,000 students attending the country’s Adventist schools are not Adventist. Part of the reason, Ryan says, may be the strong sense of evangelism Brazilian Adventists share.

“It doesn’t matter what your job is or what department you work in, the question is always asked, ‘How does this contribute to sharing the good news of the [church]?’” Ryan says, commenting on the deliberate “completeness” of the church’s approach to evangelism in South America. “Everyone has a role,” he adds.

—Elizabeth Lechleitner contributed to this story