For Dr. Marcos Simas, publishing has always been more than a profession—it’s a calling. “I continue publishing because it’s a mission I must fulfill,” says Marcos, rights director for African, Portuguese, and Spanish languages at Riggins Rights Management, who is based in Brazil.

Marcos watched the Brazilian publishing industry change and grow over the past 35 years–changes precipitated by the economy, the larger percentage of Christians in the population, and the availability of professional training opportunities. He recalls how the economic challenges of the time affected every part of the publishing process—from printing schedules to editorial quality.

“During times of high inflation, imports of machinery and paper, and limited printing presses, everything was more difficult,” says Marcos. “For me, ‘less-resourced’ primarily refers to a time when there was a lack of tools for improvement and editorial quality. Even today, when it comes to creating Christian content, I feel we should offer more training for national and local authors.”

As in many parts of the world, Brazil’s oral culture presents challenges when cultivating writers. Even as the Christian community has grown, developing strong local voices remains a challenge.

“Unfortunately, percentage-wise, there are few pastors and Christian leaders who actually write, or know how to correctly write a text in a more literate way, whether for a printed magazine, a book, or even for the internet,” he says. “We have a relatively large leadership compared to other languages and countries, but this alone is not enough to prepare authors.”

As Brazil’s Christian population has grown from five percent to around 30 percent in recent years, the challenge of sustaining Christian publications has eased as the church continues to grow and publishers are able to monetize content. Despite significant progress, Marcos believes there’s still work to be done.

“Although today in Brazil we have a wealth of content created and disseminated here on various digital platforms, as well as through print products,” says Marcos, “there’s still a need to work diligently on creating content to build a church that has grown an average of two percent per year since 2010.”

In 2008, when Marcos was editor-in-chief of Christianity Today in Brazil, he was introduced to Magazine Training International (MTI) through the DVD course “Managing the Magazine with Confidence and Skill.” That introduction marked a turning point in his publishing journey.

“[The DVD course] gave me a broad overview of how to manage a magazine publishing company,” he says. “Coming from a book market background, I had some understanding of publishing, but not specifically about magazines. This training was crucial for my professional development and qualification, which led me, years later, to become an international MTI trainer.”

That training not only helped shaped his career but also deepened his commitment to equipping others.

“And all of this motivated me and gave me the strength to accept and overcome new challenges, such as editing the first edition of Christianity Today outside the United States for almost 10 years, with my own financial resources, and with more than 80 percent of the content having been produced by Brazilian authors and journalists.”

For Marcos, like many others in Christian publishing around the world, the calling from God to publish gave him the courage to push through the challenges and God provided the training and knowledge needed through MTI. Marcos later served as an MTI trainer in India in 2016 and 2024 and for several online workshops. That calling continues to guide his work today.

“MTI’s manuals and courses have helped me in various areas of the magazine and Christian content business. But my participation as a teacher in international training programs, both online and in-person in India, has made me realize that our challenges here in Brazil are small compared to those faced by the vast majority of publishers in the global Christian world.

“For many, it’s difficult to understand the difficulties faced by publishers in India, Kenya, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and so on. In these countries where Christians are a minority and often persecuted, content creation and dissemination is always more restricted. It’s essentially missionary work, involving significant personal and even family sacrifice.

“I went to India last year to train local publishers and learned that Christian publishers generally avoid promoting their products and meetings through open social media platforms for security reasons.”

His experiences abroad gave him a renewed appreciation for the resilience and faith of publishers working under persecution.

For Marcos, MTI’s impact goes beyond skill-building—it nurtures a sense of global fellowship among Christian communicators. MTI not only provides training and resources to Christians in magazine publishing, but encourages them to publish in their own communities, language, and culture. MTI’s mission goes beyond the professional and into the spiritual. Marcos remarked that MTI also “gives these publishers the feeling that someone is watching and praying for them.”

“Please seriously consider investing financial resources in MTI,” he says. “And MTI will invest in publishers who publish globally beyond English and beyond the world’s largest and most commercial languages.”

Marcos’s story is a reminder that when you invest in Magazine Training International, you’re investing in voices that carry the Gospel to new languages, cultures, and nations.

By Jennifer Howard, Magazine Training International