Portugal from the inside: seven in every ten

I begin this short series with a number I have carried with me since I first read the Portuguese Evangelical Alliance's study of the country's churches, because it explains better than any speech what it means to do missions in Portugal: seven in every ten Portuguese evangelicals live in just three districts, Lisbon, Porto and Setúbal. Put another way, the coast holds the church, and the interior, which is most of the territory, is left with what little remains. The same 2016 study described the church in some regions as "almost invisible", and for districts like Guarda and Vila Real it reported an average of fewer than twenty members per congregation, which in practice means a room with half a dozen families, nearly always elderly, and a pastor who often divides himself between two or three of them.

Those who look at Portugal from outside, with the eyes of someone living in Brazil, tend to imagine a small country and therefore an easy one to reach. But the distance that matters here is not measured in kilometres (from the Minho to the Algarve is little more than six hours by car); it is measured in people willing to stay. The Alliance's most recent reports, from 2023 and 2025, show that churches keep planning new congregations mainly in Lisbon, Porto and Aveiro, while Beja, Castelo Branco, Guarda, Bragança and Portalegre appear, year after year, among the districts least targeted and with the fewest churches planted. It is not a lack of information, since the numbers are published; it is the natural logic of planting where there are already people, resources and results, and leaving for later the place where everything is slower, costlier and lonelier.

I do not write this to criticise the churches of the coast, for it is from them that, God willing, the workers for the interior will come, and it is among them that we serve, at Cascais Baptist Church, which is part of exactly that concentration. I write because, over more than twenty-five years of missionary work, I have seen many cases that confirm the same lesson: to reach the interior there must be strong churches elsewhere in the country, with a missionary vision, willing to invest time and resources, human and financial, with commitment and perseverance, because it takes many years before a church can walk on its own, and even more so in the context of inland Portugal, where people are few, elderly and suspicious of everything that comes from outside. Trying to establish churches in those regions without that backing is, most of the time, failure in the long run, and the map I described above is, to a large extent, the portrait of attempts like that.

This is not a new strategy; it was the apostle Paul's, who planted from centres like Antioch, Ephesus and Corinth, returned to the churches he had founded, sent workers and letters, and mobilised stronger congregations to support weaker ones (Acts 14.21-23; Phil 4.15-16), and it still holds for our day. That is why I understand our work in Cascais as part of that road, not a detour from it: preaching, discipling and training workers in a church on the coast so that, in God's time, it and others like it will have prepared people and enough vision to look at the Alentejo, at Trás-os-Montes and at the Beira Interior the way Paul looked at the regions where Christ had not yet been named (Rom 15.20), knowing that there the fruit is slow, support is harder and recognition almost non-existent.

There are, even so, signs of hope I do not want to hide. The same 2025 survey recorded growth in every region of the country, including the neediest, and in 2025 more than half of new converts were born in Portugal, which contradicts the idea that the evangelical church grows only because of immigration. God has not abandoned the Portuguese interior; He is simply still waiting for someone to go, and for churches willing to hold the ropes for whoever goes. So when we ask for prayer for our work, we also ask that the Lord raise up, in the strong churches of the coast, men and women willing to travel in the opposite direction to everyone else, and congregations willing to sustain them for as many years as it takes.

In the coming editions of this series I will share, always with one number and one reflection, what the data shows about religion in Portugal, about those who declare no religion, and about the recent growth of the churches. All with sources, because I have learned that the trust of those who support us is built with transparency, in the joys as much as in the struggles. The full numbers, with charts and a map by district, are on the "Challenge in Portugal" page of this site.