SOWETO, South Africa (Reuters Life!) - Jesus wants you to drive a brand new Nissan Navara 4x4. He'd also like you to live in a classy house, use the latest cell phone and wear the snappiest designer clothes.

That was the message from a recent Sunday sermon at the new Soweto branch of Brazil's huge Pentecostal-style Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG).

UCKG is expanding fast in Africa and bills its gleaming new cathedral in Soweto -- which seats 8,000 and has room for hundreds of plush cars in its vast underground car park -- as the biggest church on the continent.

UCKG's "prosperity gospel" message, which tells members to expect financial blessings from God as long as they give "sacrificially" when the collection plate comes around, is proving a hit in the world's poorest continent.

And it holds special resonance for the faithful of Soweto -- a sprawling township once gripped by violence and poverty and now home to a burgeoning black middle class.

"God doesn't want you to be poor and ashamed -- he wants you to drive a new car," the preacher at the new Soweto church yelled into a microphone, to delighted whoops from thousands.