Hubbards start organization

Alumni enable church planting in lower-class communities worldwide by starting Living Bread Ministries

“The gospel does not typically move from the top down. It doesn’t move from the powerful and strong to the weak. It moves from the weak and it permeates a society,” Patrick Hubbard said.
This belief led Liberty alumni Patrick and Barbara Hubbard to begin Living Bread Ministries in 2004, a church planting ministry among the globally poor.

According to Patrick Hubbard, church planting is typically done with the upper and middle classes, while only humanitarian work is done among the poor.

“We are very unique in that I don’t know of another organization that takes our approach,” Patrick Hubbard said. “We go into a needy community, we plant a local church, and then we equip that church to do a lot of the humanitarian type ministry that other organizations often do. So we are really doing a lot of the same things that your World Vision and other types of ministries are doing. The difference is that we plant a church and then we equip that local church to do that ministry.”

The couple met at Jefferson Forest High School in Bedford County, Va., where Barbara Hubbard came as an exchange student from Brazil. They married immediately after high school and took a trip to Brazil in 1992. According to Patrick Hubbard, even as non-Christians, the couple had a burden for the poor. When they became Christians, the Lord took that burden and turned it into a deep desire to do something about it.

“We started off in a denomination that was very focused on humanitarian type work,” Patrick Hubbard said. “We ended up in a denomination that was more evangelical. But our understanding of the church from early on was that it wasn’t an either or, it was a both, and we wanted to plant churches that were bringing both of those under the roof of a local church ministry.”

They took another trip to Brazil to find churches working with the globally poor, but only found two.

“We spent a few months in the summer of 2004 with those churches,” Patrick Hubbard said. “We were learning about them and working with them. They really helped us shape our ultimate vision for church planting. It was really a vision that was shaped not only by the Spirit leading us, but he used the indigenous church in Brazil to help shape that vision for us.”

Living Bread Ministries is currently in southern Brazil and is expanding into Thailand this year. According to Patrick Hubbard, another unique aspect of their ministry is that natives run the churches they plant.

“It is much easier for relationships to be established, built and nurtured, and so our church planters understand much faster and much easier what the needs of the community are,” Barbara Hubbard said. “If you take a Westerner who, more than likely, has never even seen the level of poverty that we are dealing with, they aren’t going to be able to understand, and they cannot relate with the folks there. When you have somebody that is a national… they can relate.”

Patrick Hubbard said their hope is that the churches will eventually be able to run on their own and then begin their own planting ministry among their people. Currently, 21 percent of the Living Bread Ministry in Brazil is operating on donations given by other Brazilian churches.

“Our goal is to spark a church planting movement within their own people,” Barbara Hubbard said.

Patrick Hubbard said his background in opening and managing hotels helped him in starting the non-profit, but because of the uniqueness of the ministry, it was difficult for people to understand their vision and give support. They started the ministry at “great personal cost,” according to Patrick Hubbard.

“I would say to students who are wanting to start their own ministry, there is a price for following Christ, contrary to the Christian culture kind of bubble that we live in, there is a genuine cost,” Patrick Hubbard. “Just because something is hard or costly, it doesn’t mean that the Lord is not calling you to do it.”

Patrick Hubbard said students should examine their possibilities of plugging into an existing ministry but, if God is calling them to start something new, to not be afraid to follow that calling.

For students who desire to be a part of missions, Living Bread offers many opportunities, according to Barbara Hubbard. She takes teams on short term missions trips, the ministry has internship positions available, and the Hubbards have created an outreach called Bloggers for the Poor where people sign up to use their blogs and social media accounts to spread the word about Living Bread Ministry.

For more information regarding Living Bread Ministries, visit livingbread.org.