Switching From Playing to Preaching

The only thing that separated Lucas Pina from becoming a professional soccer player was bad habits. At 15 and 16, the Brazilian discovered alcohol.

“It was sad,” he said.

When Pina became a Christian at 17, he began attending youth group.

“I started getting very excited and they asked me to tell my story," he said. "It was dramatic because I was involved with drinking and fighting.”

The more Pina shared his story, the more enthused he got about doing it. Later, someone handed him a flyer with these words:

If you have serious business with God, God has serious business with you.

Reading that helped Pina, now 54, realize he wanted to devote his life to serving God.

He entered a Presbyterian seminary when he was 19, after serving a mandatory year in the Army.

Pina returned to soccer, but in a different capacity. He moved to Portugal and worked in missions with professional soccer players. That’s when he got a call from a New Jersey church that ministered to Portuguese and Brazilians.

“I was a Brazilian working in Portugal, so they thought I could help them,” Pina said.

That was 1990, and the beginning of his ministry in the United States. Pina admits his first stint as a senior pastor in an American church was challenging as he adjusted to a new culture while preaching weekly in English.

After New Jersey, the pastor moved to Ohio and Atlanta, where he enrolled in the doctorate program at Columbia Theological Seminary. He juggled classes while working as immigrant ministry coordinator for three Presbyteries (Greater Atlanta, Northeast Georgia and Cherokee). At one point, he worked with 47 immigrant groups.

The pastor has been at for two and a half years. The first building erected on the church's property was a gym, which is rented to the community for indoor sports like basketball and volleyball.

And, of course, soccer.

Pina wants to offer clinics in futsal, which is indoor soccer played with a small, heavier ball within the boundary lines of a basketball court. Pina believes the ball control gained from futsal is invaluable to soccer players of all ages.

He’s talking to a professional Brazilian soccer player who lives in Marietta about leading clinics. And he’s planning an Aug. 27 event for the gym called Sounds on Sixes. It’s a night of music provided by area praise and worship bands that he hopes will become a monthly event.

Pina wants to expand the church’s outreach “to help people know Christ and have a relationship with him. To know and to grow—that’s my biggest passion.”

ABOUT DR. LUCAS PINA

Hobbies: Reading, watching movies and sports.

Family: Married wife Marta in 1998. His two children—a 33-year-old son and 21-year-old daughter—live in Brazil.

ABOUT SIXES PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Sixes Presbyterian is at 2335 Sixes Rd. Sunday school is at 9:30 a.m. and the worship service begins at 10:30 a.m. For more information, call 770-485-1975 or go to www.sixeschurch.org.