The Universal Church Inc

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) was formed in 1977, in Brazil. It owes its origins to a successful evangelistic program conducted by Bishop Robert McAlister, a Canadian missionary in the Pentecostal tradition.
Edir Macedo – who went on to found UCKG – was one of the early converts. With the blessing of Bishop McAlister, he started to hold services under a small park shelter in Rio de Janeiro. His passion was to reach out to needy, less privileged people who were often excluded by established religions. As Pastor Macedo’s services
grew in popularity, he used cinemas and local halls to accommodate growing congregations, attracting people from the streets to the expanding movement. Shortly afterwards the UCKG officially opened its first church
inside a funeral parlor.
Further church openings followed and the movement expanded nationally across Brazil. Today there are approximately 5,000 UCKG churches in Brazil, with the headquarters in Rio de Janeiro holding up to 12,000 people at a time.
Following an exploratory visit to the USA, the UCKG was established in New York in 1987. Today there are churches in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Miami, Los Angeles and many other US cities. UCKG then developed its presence in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Guatemala and Ecuador. There are also churches in Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana. In Europe, it is established in England, Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy,Switzerland and Poland. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the UCKG opened its doors in Germany and the end of communism enabled the church to provide churches for Russian and Romanian people.
The first UCKG church in Africa opened in Angola in 1992. It is now active in South Africa, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Kenya, Lesotho, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Uganda and many other countries on the continent. In Asia, the UCKG is established in India, the Philippines and Japan, where the first 24-hour church is based.
The UCKG is currently in over 100 countries and is still expanding.
Pastors & Bishops:
The meetings and conferences are conducted by a fully trained Pastor or Bishop. These are men of God (and in some countries also women) who have embraced the ministry on a full time basis. They do not have other employment and their only aim is to serve God by serving and helping the congregation and others in the community that need assistance. On gaining more experience, Pastors may then be chosen to serve as Bishops.
Assistant Pastor:
Assistant Pastors will also be present in the services and their role is to assist the Pastor or Bishop. They also have embraced the ministry full-time to help others. After some years of experience, many of them will be consecrated to become a Pastor.
Assistants:
Assistants are voluntary helpers who dedicate some of their free time outside their daily life of work, family, domestic duties etc, to this calling. They have been chosen from among the congregation to assist the Assistant Pastors, Pastors and Bishops and to serve the members of the church.
You will find that most Bishops, Pastors, Assistant Pastors, and Assistants have been through personal problems in the past before they started attending the church.
Through the teaching and prayers they received at the UCKG, they used their faith and overcame these situations. They have all had a personal encounter with God and have undergone a self-transformation. They are therefore willing and capable of assisting people through difficult situations.
What We Believe For nearly four decades, The Universal Church expresses its faith and belief in a living God, basing its daily activities and teachings in the Bible, for it reveals the power that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have to
transform and save lives. In addition, through events, groups and community programs, it shares wisdom that is beneficial to help others to enjoy a better quality of life. Below is the list of the beliefs that form the foundation
of The Universal Church:
• We believe in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in their original writings as fully inspired by God and accept them as the supreme and final authority for faith and life.
• We believe in one God, eternally existing in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
• We believe that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born by the virgin Mary and is true God and true Man.
• We believe that God created man in His own image; that man sinned and thereby incurred the penalty of death, physical and spiritual; that all human beings inherit a sinful nature, which causes actual transgression involving personal guilt.
• We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, a substitutionary sacrifice according to the Scriptures,and that all who believe in Him are justified on the ground of His shed blood.
• We believe in the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus, His ascension into heaven and His present life as our High Priest and Advocate.
• We believe in the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory.
• We believe that those who repent of their sins, receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, and hold fast to Him are born again by the Holy Spirit and become children of God.
• We believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, empowering believers for service with accompanying supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, and in fellowship with the Holy Spirit.
• We believe in the divinely ordained ministries of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher.
• We believe in the resurrection of the just and the unjust, the eternal blessings of the redeemed, and the eternal banishment of those who have rejected salvation.
• We believe that the one true Church consists of all those who have been redeemed by Jesus Christ and regenerated by the Holy Spirit; that the local church on earth should take its character from this conception of the spiritual Church and, therefore, new birth and personal confession of the Christ are essential for church
membership.
• We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ appointed two ordinances – baptism in water and the Lord’s Supper – to be observed as acts of obedience and as a continual witness to the facts of the Christian faith; that baptism is the immersion of the believer in water as a confession of the Lord Jesus in burial and resurrection, and that the Lord’s Supper is the partaking of the body and blood of our Savior in remembrance of His sacrifice until He comes.
• We believe that divine healing seen in the Old and the New Testaments is an integral part of the Gospel.
• We believe the Bible teaches that without holiness no man can see God.
• We believe in sanctification as a definite, yet progressive work of grace, commencing at the time of the new birth and continuing until the end of one’s life.