Rinaldo Seixas Pereira, the controversial founder of Bola de Neve Church, which grew into a movement of 500 congregations around the world, died in a motorcycle accident in Campinas, Brazil, on Sunday, November 17. He was 52.
Apostol Rina, as he was known to many Christians, was returning home on Sunday afternoon after speaking at Pregadores do Asfalto (Asphalt Preachers), a bikers’ Bible study at his church, when he fell off his motorcycle and suffered multiple fractures. He died in the hospital later that night.
Bola de Neve Church began in an upstairs room of a São Paulo surf shop called Hawaiian Dreams in 1999. Though the church grew exponentially in the next 25 years, Rina himself suffered personal scandal and controversy, most recently battling accusations of domestic violence that led the elders to remove him as board president in June. At the time of his death, his wife, Denise Seixas, had a restraining order against him after both she and her son (Rina’s stepson) reported that he had acted violently toward them.
Nevertheless, Rina was remembered as “a revolutionary who won many unlikely lives for Jesus, who mobilized the Christian youth of Brazil,” wrote Fred Arrais, a Christian singer and pastor of the Baptist church Igreja Angelim in the northern state of Piauí, on Threads.
“You were a world changer, and in many ways, you changed our world and helped make it possible for us to reach hundreds of thousands of people in Brazil,” wrote Mark Mohr, vocalist of Christian reggae band Christafari, on Instagram. “You were a church planter with hundreds of congregations in over 30 countries.”
Rina was born in São Paulo, Brazil, on April 15, 1972, the eldest son of a Baptist couple, Lídia Colomietz and Rinaldo Pereira. He was born after a complicated delivery, and doctors had to remove him with forceps from his mother’s womb. He had two siblings, Daniela and Priscila, who both went on to become pastors at Bola de Neve.
As a child, he attended Colégio Batista Brasileiro and he later studied advertising, a degree he would one day deploy as a megachurch pastor. But as a young person, Rina drifted away from Christianity, and by the time he was 20, he was addicted to drugs and had contracted hepatitis. After an encounter he later described as giving him a “sense of death,” he reengaged with his faith.
Shortly after this experience, Rina began attending Renascer em Cristo, São Paulo, a congregation squarely within the neo-Pentecostalism movement that first developed in the 1970s and was known for preaching the prosperity gospel and spiritual warfare and broadcasting these messages through their own mass media.
After serving for several years as the leader of the church’s evangelism ministry, in 1999, Rina began his own church with the blessing of Estevam Hernanders, the founder of Renascer em Cristo. The new community would be strongly influenced by what Rina had seen at his former church but would be simultaneously friendly to youth.
A longtime surfer, Rina asked his friends, the owners of Hawaiian Dreams, if he could start a church in their store. When they agreed, at least 130 people showed up to the first meeting. In a story that Rina would recount numerous times, the space held no pulpit or even a table where he could place the Bible. But he improvised, borrowing a longboard and placing it on two chairs, a setup that became a signature feature for the community.
The church’s surf culture wasn’t the only thing that intrigued newcomers. Renascer em Cristo had been among the first to embrace contemporary music as a way to engage and connect with young people. Bola de Neve went further, holding worship services with loud music and strobe lights in bars and concert halls. In the walls, illuminated panels sport catchphrases like “In Jesus we trust” (in English).
The church’s name, which translates to snowball, came from a vision about its growth—“a snowball that, starting small, turned into an avalanche,” as Rina described on the church’s website. In contrast to many evangelical churches in the beginning of the 21st century, the church catered directly to young people through its emphasis on contemporary worship, informal language in preaching, acceptance of tattoos, and a casual dress code. (Bola de Neve’s success in turn influenced many evangelical congregations to employ similar strategies to court young people.)
From the beginning, the church attracted artists, athletes, and other celebrities and maintained its cool reputation over time, counting surfer Gabriel Medina, model Sasha Meneghel, and actresses Fernanda Vasconcellos and Danielle Winits among its more famous attendees. Many of the local Bola de Neve churches also organized “fight ministries,” where congregants attended jujitsu classes, and sometimes took part in church-sponsored competitions.
Rina’s preaching frequently invoked the imagery of everyday life and slang. “In God’s house there’s no spilled milk, no burnt beans, no mushy rice, amen?” the surfer-pastor once preached from the pulpit, as recounted by Eduardo Maranhão in his book A Grande Onda Vai te Pegar (A Big Wave Is Coming for You).
Behind this colloquial style was an attempt ro help Christians respond effectively to contemporary culture. “Jesus used a unique and innovative language,” Rina wrote. “While he preached the content of the scriptures with great accuracy, he also presented biblical teachings in a new and thought-provoking way, through parables, comparisons and metaphors.”
To him, contemporary Christianity had become mild and conforming. “One of the biggest problems facing the church today is the loss of its countercultural essence,” he wrote on his website. “If it is not based on trust in God, the search for the Lord can lead us to strange and dangerous destinations.”
Though the church never announced an intentional international church-planting strategy, the Brazilian diaspora organized and opened local Bola de Neves (with surfboard pulpits) in countries as diverse as the United States, Mozambique, Spain, India, Japan, and Australia, allowing it to claim that it had congregations on every inhabited continent.
As it grew, Bola de Neve avoided much of the negative press coverage that characterized many neo-Pentecostal congregations. That changed this year.
In May, former members of a congregation in Santa Catarina state accused the church of mismanaging donations to a project meant to support female entrepreneurs. (In court, the church denied any irregularities.)
Days later, Christian singer Rodolfo Abrantes issued a video in which he said that he and his wife had been emotionally abused while both were members at the same Bola de Neve congregation and that leaders had accused him of owing money to the church’s record label, Bola Music.
Rina did not publicly comment on these accusations.
Soon they came closer to home. This same month, Nathan Gouvea, Rina’s stepson, said he had been beaten by his stepfather and mentioned him as directly responsible for the abusive management practices that have been reported in Santa Catarina. He also claimed Bola de Neve was a cult. “Everyone is scared to death of the apostle,” he said.
In June, Rina’s wife, Denise Seixas, a fellow pastor at Bola de Neve and Christian singer, obtained a restraining order from the court against Rina, accusing him of physical and psychological violence.
In her statement to the police, she said Rina had punched her in the nose. In audio recordings and videos leaked on social media around that time, Rina was heard swearing and accusing his wife of “hearing demons.”
In that same week, the elders removed both Rina and Denise as president and vice president, respectively, of Bola de Neve. The board also announced the establishment of an ombudsman channel (an email address where people could send complaints to) to address “possible failures and misconduct” and the creation of an ethics council to investigate and deliberate about irregularities.
In June, a former church employee told police that Rina had sexually harassed her. In her testimony, she noted several situations of inappropriate behavior that occurred between 2012 and 2017, culminating in an attempt from Rina to grab her. When she left the scene, she said, she had visible bruises on her arm from the encounter.
Following these claims, in July, a court in São Paulo ordered Rina to hand over all weapons he owned to the police within 48 hours. He informed them that the guns were stored at a gun club and allowed the police to access them.
Following Rina’s death, it remains unclear how the authorities and the church’s leadership will address the allegations of mismanagement, abuse, and assault. In the statement announcing his passing, Bola de Neve Church said only that “in this moment of great sadness, we pray for his family, friends and the entire church that was so blessed by his ministry, leaving a legacy that will never be forgotten.”
