Where in the World are the Beans Going Next?: Three Opportunities!

Last week, we mentioned in a post that we have some major decisions in the weeks ahead regarding the future of our ministry. As many of you have already known, our commitment here at IPC-Ealing from the start has been a 2.5 year “short-term” assignment in a healthy IPC church as a soft place to land, learn, grow, and experience cross-cultural ministry firsthand with a lot of different kinds of people from all over the world. We are grateful to have now been approved by MTW for a long-term assignment, which we anticipate moving to this summer.

From the start, we came to the United Kingdom with the intention and understanding that we would be launched out from London and IPC-Ealling to another international context with even greater needs for the Gospel, while not knowing for sure whether that might end up being somewhere else in the U.K., or someplace even “further afield”. As much as we have loved London and IPC-Ealing, we have agreed with IPC-Ealing’s and MTW’s leadership that there are much more pressing and strategic needs that we can help fill to take the good news of Jesus to the nations in places with less access to the Gospel. Even with as secular and “post-christian” as London has become, each of the opportunities that we are now considering moving to long-term this upcoming summer have very little existing Gospel witness within their cultural context. They are all either “post-Christian” or “pre-Christian”. Because we so value and need your continued prayers and support, we’d like to tell you a bit more about the three options that we are considering to help inform and fuel your prayers.

In the past few weeks, we’ve visited MTW teams serving IPC churches or church plants that are each even “further afield” for us than London, each with unique needs particular to their context and team, and we have one more trip coming up later this month. All three opportunities are in major cities that each serve as the national, cultural, and economic capitals of their respective countries where establishing a Gospel-centred church can have far reaching effects on the rest of the country and region, similar to the effect that we have seen IPC-Ealing have througout London and the U.K. Each of the teams in these three cities have invited us to come for a visit to see how God is at work, and to consider with them whether the Lord might be calling our family to come and join them there.

Our trips so far have been to:

• a church planting team in very secular and internationally diverse Oslo, Norway. The dominant people group, Norwegians, like the British, are classified as “nominally Christian” and “partially reached”. Because of an influx in recent years of immigrants from Asia and North Africa, like London, Oslo is now a strategic location for reaching members of unreached people groups living within the city and planting Gospel-centred churches which have a heart for reaching them and their secular European neighbours. The team have been in Oslo for just about a year and a half, and have begun the work of planting Grace International Church of Oslo (IPC), https://gracechurchoslo.org.
• a mission team supporting an established national partner church (though still very much “church-plant-ish” feeling in its development) in a major city in a “post-communist” Muslim majority county in Central Asia that was formerly part of the Soviet Union. It is in that central part of the “Eurasian” continent that is something of a “cultural crossroads” that is both European and Asian, Western and Eastern, Muslim and secular, and both wealthy and poor. For security reasons, it would not be wise for us to tell you the name of the city or country over social media, but statistically the population is 97-99% "Culturally Muslim", and the majority people group and about 17 other people groups that make up their population are classified as “Unreached”. The team leaders have been in the City for nearly 20 years and helped plant the IPC church that is there before handing leadership over to a pair of indigenous pastors who they trained and who continue to lead the church.

Our upcoming trip later this month will be to:

• a team leading a church planting movement in very secular and “post communist” Prague, Czech Republic (also known as “Czechia”, but not to be confused with "Chechnya"), which we are very familiar with from previous visits to the team and churches there. While less diverse than London or Oslo, Prague is both one of the most secular Cities in Europe, and a very strategic location and has significant cultural and economic influence in Central and Eastern Europe. Considered by many to be "The Heart of Europe", Prague has a diverse international population of secular native Czechs and other eastern and central Europeans from formerly communist block countries including Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland, and Germany. Though they once would have been considered a majority Christian nation, after centuries of religious wars, Nazism, communism, and secularism, the dominant worldview of Czechs today is “non-religious” (atheist/agnostic) and are classified as “minimally reached”, just one notch above “unreached people group” status. The Prague team has been in the country since establishing Faith Community Church IPC as an international church plant in 2007 (www.faithcommunity.cz), and planted their Czech speaking daughter church “DoSlova” IPC (Czech for “into the word”, www.doslovapraha.cz) in Old Town Prague in 2017. At this time, neither church is fully self supporting and are both reliant on international missionaries to provide preaching, teaching, worship leadership, evangelism, discipleship, and other critical roles.

Each of these opportunities are unique and have particular needs that we would be trusting the Lord to help fill for them and the communities who they are reaching out to. Each team is healthy and we could see ourselves fitting very well with each of them in terms of our own personalities and gifts. All three locations have English speaking school options for our two younger children, Caleb (16) and Mary (14), and our oldest son Joshua (18) will begin university in the U.K. in September.

This is going to be a very tough decision between three really good options for us and our family, and we would so appreciate your prayers for wisdom and continued support as we launch out to take the Gospel to one of these new locations. Like London, the need for the Gospel in each of these locations is very significant, if not more so, but each of them lack a strong, well established Gospel-centred church like IPC-Ealing and like so many of us enjoy in the U.S. This summer, Lord willing, we will move in faith to one of these locations long-term, trusting the Lord to use us (yet more than anything, trusting in God's faithfulness to His covenant promises, the effectiveness of His Word, and the power of His Spirit) to see His church established and His Gospel to go forth to the nations.

Over the next few days/weeks, we'll be posting some of our thoughts, observations, research, and of course more pictures(!) for each location to help fuel your prayers. Thank you so much for your prayers, support, and care for our family. We could not possibly take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations without you!