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Today’s young men and women are eager to serve the Lord at home and abroad. Often the only thing that is needed is a challenge to action. The power of the personal appeal has caused many to leave their nets and follow the Lord to become fishers of men.
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PHIL JACKSON, Facilitator for European Church Planting
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Two church-planting teams have set their sights on Europe. The four families forming the Vienna Team graduated from Oklahoma Christian University. The Olomouc Team, consisting of two couples and three singles, are graduates of the University of Arkansas and will arrive in Olomouc, Czech Republic this fall.
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Three members of the Vienna Team previously experienced Oklahoma Christian’s Vienna Studies Program. All have chosen to leave engineering and related careers for the sake of the gospel. The team is following MRN’s Preparation Process, having already completed a battery of psychological assessments and clinical interviews, a Team Missions Workshop, an Interpersonal Relationship Workshop conducted by Dr. Dale Hawley, our associate director for missionary care, a Church-Planting Seminar, German language courses, a Survey Trip to Vienna, and numerous mentoring sessions along the way. This team has invested a great deal of preparation prior to their departure for the field. Our prayer is that God blesses this team and that their confidence remains in Him, not in their preparation, though the preparation is proving to be an invaluable tool in building a strong team. Spring 2007 is the target date for their arrival in Vienna.
The Olomouc Team is scheduled to arrive in late 2006 in this, the Czech Republic’s third largest city. The team was born out of the University of Arkansas campus ministry, Razorbacks for Christ, led by campus minister Scott Karnes. Four of the five family units on the team have already secured sponsoring churches—three of them in Arkansas. One single woman on the team has yet to locate a sponsoring church.
I serve as the team’s coach through their preparation process and as liaison with European church leaders and sending churches.
The Czech Team has just completed an Interpersonal Relationships Workshop with Dr. Hawley. Over the next several months, they will complete the Preparation Process, with MRN facilitating a series of seminars on Team Missions, Urban Church Planting, and History and Culture of the Czech Republic. Shortly before they leave, we will conduct a Sponsoring Church Workshop so the team’s supporting congregations can meet one another and discuss their common objective in the Czech Republic.
Additionally, other groups are in the preliminary stages of team formation to Europe, including a new team for Warsaw, Poland.
Last fall, Lubbock Christian University’s Missions Director, Jim Beck, asked MRN to present his students with a specific missions challenge. We presented Ostrava, Czech Republic as a strategic site for church planting, one of the top 20 priority European cities identified by the MRN European Advisory Panel. Churches of Christ have done measurably little in the Czech/Polish corridor of Central Europe. Yet within the next eighteen months, we are prayerful that there will be two dynamic teams moving to the region, and possibly two other teams joining them in a few years. Placing four new mission teams in that European corridor would create some regional resources from which each work could benefit. The small existing churches in the area would also be blessed.
Today’s young men and women are eager to serve the Lord at home and abroad. Often the only thing that is needed is a challenge to action. The power of the personal appeal has caused many to leave their nets and follow the Lord to become fishers of men. Many desire to do missions, but without some guidance, nurturing and supportive partners, that desire often remains sterile, finally withering and dying without ever bearing fruit.
A new day dawns for Europe. We are doing what we know to do at MRN. These teams are stepping out in faith. Now will God’s people support and send?
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