Our third and final opportunity that we are considering for our move to a new mission field this summer is Prague, Czech Republic. As we aproach the completion of our 2.5 year “short-term” cross-cultural residency with MTW and our overseas partner, the IPC, in a healthy and growing IPC church here in London, its now time for us to be launched out to a place with far greater needs for Gospel engagement than even London.
You may recall that we’ve posted about Prague here before, the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic (also called “Czechia”) and the former “Czechoslovakia”. We first first visited Prague in 2019 on a vision trip to consider the opportunity to serve in overseas missions with the IPC mission church there, Faith Community Church (https://www.faithcommunity.cz), along with a few other locations and teams before ultimately being called to serve in London. We absolutely loved our 2019 trip to Prague, and though it was clear to us that the need in Prague for the Gospel was very great, it was also clear that Prague was not where God was calling our family to serve at that time. The situation in Prague at Faith Community Church has now changed over the past five years, however, and we have as well.
There is now almost an entirely different team in Prague serving at Faith Community Church and their Czech speaking church plant “DoSlova” (http://doslovapraha.cz). The needs there have changed, and we’re now in a place to be able to better match up our experiences and gifts with their needs. Just a couple of days before our trip to Oslo, Norway in March, one of our MTW colleagues serving in Prague at DoSlova reached out to ask if we might consider having a conversation with Faith Community Church about their Pastoral search, as they were now in need of a missionary senior minister.
Faith CC’s founding pastor, Phil Davis, a fellow American missionary who first began the work of planting Faith in 2007, has taken on a new role with him and his family returning to the U.S., which has left Faith Community Church without a senior pastor for the past year. Even after sending out several of their most involved Czech speaking families to launch their church plant DoSlova in 2017, the Pandemic, and the past year of transition without a pastor, Faith Community Church is doing remarkably well and have even grown during this interim period. We are tremendously humbled and honoured for the opportunity to be considered for this role. Shanna, Mary, and I visited them from 24 April-1 May and I preached at their Sunday service from Galatians 3:26-4:7, with a Q&A meeting with the congregation following the service. Our time in Prague was very full with meetings with their search committee, leadership team, and elders, tours of schools for Caleb and Mary, and neighbourhoods, but incredibly fun as well. Like many church plants and mission churches in Europe and other parts of the world, they continue to depend on missionary pastors to come help plant and grow churches until they will hopefully one day become fully self sustaining.
As the capital and largest city of The Czech Republic and known as “The City of a Hundred Spires” (the actual number is more like 500) and “The Heart of Europe”, Prague may arguably be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with a metro population of 2.7 million. Prague straddles the Vltava River, with several bridges connecting both sides of the city, most notably the Charles Bridge named for Charles IV, King of Bohemia (1346-1378) and Holy Roman Emperor (1355-1378). Begun in 1357 it is lined from end to end with Roman Catholic religious images and life sized statues of Christian saints. The Charles Bridge is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful bridges in the world and is today only open to foot traffic, connecting Prague Castle on the west bank, one of the largest castles in Europe, with Prague’s medieval “Old Town” district on the east side of the river. Together, these three features, Old Town, Charles Bridge, and Prague Castle are among the city’s most visited attractions, along with many other historical sites around the city. Prague is also home to one of Europe’s oldest universities, Charles University (also named for Charles IV), established in 1347, and offers classes at the undergraduate and graduate level taught in Czech, English, German, French, and Russian, with over 50,000 students from all over the world in over 600 degree programmes, as well as one of Europe's oldest institutes of technology Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Tech!), established in 1707.
While Prague is indeed an incredibly beautiful city, we can assure you that the appeal of Prague for us is not merely for reasons of its incredible beauty, its amazing (and at times truly heartbreaking) history, its great food, or even its world famous beer. Located firmly in the geographic centre of Europe, and sharing borders with Germany, Austria, Poland, and Slovakia, one could argue that the Czech Republic is both culturally and geographically “The Heart of Europe”. It is also the westernmost Slavic nation, however, Czechs think of themselves as “Central European” rather than “Eastern European”, and have at least as much in common culturally with Germany and Austria to their West and South as with Romania, Belarus, or Russia, far to their East. They will correct you if you make the mistake of calling them “Eastern European”.
From 1002-1806 Prague and the surrounding “Czech Lands” of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia sat at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Many of Bohemia’s Kings were also crowned as “Holy Roman Emperor”, ruling over much of Europe with Prague periodically serving as the Empire’s capital city. 19th Century German Chancelor Otto von Bismarck once famously stated that “Whoever controls Bohemia, controls Europe”. Our prayer is that Christ would control Bohemia, Europe, and the ends of the earth, and indeed He does, but we hope very much that Czechs would hear the Gospel and believe in Jesus.
Prague and its Charles University were also arguably the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation under the martyred preacher, reformer, and professor, Jan Hus (or “John Huss”, 1370-1415) who deepy influenced the later German reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546). Jan Hus’s Gospel preaching and writings in Prague set the world on fire and Hus was burned at the stake as a "heretic" at the Council of Constance in 1415 after being given assurances of safe conduct by the Pope and the opportunity to defend his teachings. In spite of Hus’s martyrdom at Constance, the “Bohemian Reformation” continued to spread for the next 200 years until the Holy Roman Empire repeatedly sent its armies to suppress and persecute the Reformation that was beginning and forcibly return Bohemia and Prague to Roman Catholic control. A century after Hus's death as Martin Luther and his Reformation began in modern day Germany (at that time also part of the Holy Roman Empire), Luther and his followers were labelled as “Hussites”, and the early 1600’s saw many Lutheran and Calvinist Protestants migrate to Bohemia to escape religious persecution elsewhere in Europe, especially ethnic Germans, which created a unique blending of Germanic and Slavic cultures in Prague and the Czech Lands.
On 21 June 1621, as part of the of the "Thirty Years War" to “re-Catholicize” then protestant Bohemia, Germany, and Central Europe, assisted by Roman Catholic forces from Spain, Poland, Bavaria, and (oddly) Lutheran Saxony, which apparently disapproved of Bohemia’s Calvinistic monarch and majority, Roman Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II was crowned as King of Bohemia, usurping Protestant King Frederick V of Pfalz (whose father-in-law was the protestant King James VI and I of Scotland and England who the "King James Bible" authorised by and dedicated to). With protestantism defeated, Emperor Ferdinand ordered the execution of 27 Protestant leaders in Prague’s Old Town Square, ending over 200 years of Evangelical Protestantism and religious freedom in Prague and Bohemia, and a new era of religious persecution of Protestants began.
After suppressing the Protestant Reformation in Prague and Bohemia, Emperor Ferdinand returned to rule the Empire from Vienna in present-day Austria, leading to several hundred years of decline and the waning influence of Prague and the return of the Roman Catholic status quo in the Czech lands. Small minority Evangelical Protestant movements continued, represented mostly by the Hussite and Moravian churches, and mostly concentrated in the country’s rural eastern regions of Moravia and Silesia. Czech Moravian Christian leader Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) is a name that many know for his piety, his influence as a pioneer of the modern Christian missions movement, his championing of religious liberty offering asylum to many kinds of Protestant exiles fleeing from persecution in other parts of Europe, as well as his early influence on Anglican/Methodist leader John Wesley.
After the dissolution of the 1,000+ year old Holy Roman Empire by Napoleon in 1806, the Czech lands of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia continued under Austrian rule from Vienna. Austria later transformed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire (AKA Austria-Hungary, AKA The Hapsburg Empire), and Germanic cultural influence continued to increase in Prague and the Czech lands. In 1918, after World War I, the countries now known independently as Czech Republic and Slovak Republic declared their independence from Austria-Hungary and became known together as “Czechoslovakia”, with Prague as its capital. During World War II, parts of Czechoslovakia with large Germanic populations known as “the Sudetenland” were annexed by Nazi Germany and what remained became a puppet state of the Third Reich governed as “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia”. During this period large numbers of Czech Slavs, Jews, Christians, Roma, and others became victims of the Nazi Holocaust with over 2/3rds of Czech Jews either killed, deported, or fled by the end of the war, as depicted in the book and current television series The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which depicts the life and memories of Czechoslovakian holocaust survivor Lali Sokolov at the largest Nazi Concentration camp, KL Auschwitz, just across the the border from Czechoslovakia in Nazi occupied Poland.
As allied forces defeated Nazi Germany, ending World War II, Czechoslovakia found itself “liberated” from the Nazis by the Soviet Union (“out of the frying pan, and into the fire”….), and Czechoslovakia was reborn but now as a Soviet puppet state becoming a single party communist dictatorship behind “The Iron Curtain”. Large portions of eastern Slovakia were ceded to Soviet controlled Ukraine. Christians, Jews, and other religious minorities once again found themselves persecuted, but this time not by Roman Catholicism but Communism. Both Protestants and Roman Catholics alike found themselves persecuted by the Communist government of Czechoslovakia in favour of secularism, with Eastern Orthodoxy being officially promoted as the only state approved and tightly controlled form of Christianity as part of the Soviet effort to culturally “Russify” Czechoslovakia and other Eastern Block nations until the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in what was called “The Velvet Revolution” in 1989. In 1991, the now democratic Czechoslovakia decided to peacefully split in what became known as "The Velvet Divorce", becoming the independent democratic nations of The Czech Republic (Czechia) and The Slovak Republic (Slovakia). The two nations continue to have close ties, with both subsequently becoming members of NATO (1999) and the European Union (2004).
Over the course of their heartbreaking history, centuries of religious wars in which the Holy Roman Empire and the Pope sought to suppress the Protestant Reformation as “heresy” and forcebly return Central Europe to Roman Catholicism, as well as several decades of totalitarian rule by Nazism and Communism, forced conversions, persecution, and secularisation, The Czech Republic is now one of the most secular and “post-Christian” nations on earth.
While Prague has an amazing but also truly heartbreaking Christian history, with stunningly beautiful ancient churches and cathedrals all over the city, seemingly at every turn, Prague is today the capital of the most atheistic country in Europe, with only 0.7% of Czechs describing themselves as Bible believing Christians. On a recent census nearly 60% of Czechs described themselves as atheist/agnostic, while another 30% didn’t even bother to answer the question.
It can be confusing for Americans and other non-Europeans to understand when they come to a city like Prague or London and see beautiful church buildings all around them that 21st Century Europe is largely a lost and unreached continent. Today those beautiful churches all over cities like Prague (and much of Europe) are little more than museums and monuments of a Christian past that in some ways never really existed at all, other than as a Biblically unrecognizable version of Christianity as a socially acceptable instrument of empire and state, vastly different from the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to establish. Often in Europe's history, the very Kings and empires who paid for Europe's beautiful churches were some of Biblical Christianity's cruelest oppressors, and nowhere is this more true than in "The Heart of Europe", Prague, Czech Republic.
Today, Czechs are considered by missiologists to be a “minimally reached people group”, just one level above Unreached People Group status, and deeply in need of Jesus. Sadly, the Czech Republic is today a major hub for sex trafficking, prostitution, and the pornography industry. Both drug use and binge drinking are common in Czech Republic, with Czechs having the highest per capita beer consumption of any nation on earth for the past 29 years in a row, with an average annual beer consumption of 184 litres per person.😳
Prague and the Czech Republic are truly examples of how Francis Schaeffer once described the human condition, as a "glorious ruin”. Schaeffer used this description to help people understand the fallen human condition as those who continue to bear the image of God, and yet are desperately broken by sin and in need of redemption and restoration. Like a broken down old ruin, we can still see the marks of the creator’s design and purpose, yet no longer reflecting the creator’s glory to the same level. Yet out of these ruins, Jesus is still at work redeeming a people for himself out of the ashes of Prague through churches like Faith Community Church and DoSlova, who are trusting God to raise up even more Gospel-centred church plants together in the years to come.
First of all, they both have such a clear and winsomely reformed theology. It has been wonderful to be led by people who have such a grip on the sovereignty of God. I really can't think of anything that Dawson has said, as he's led study after study, which hasn't been theologically faithful. There are a number of people in our group, for whom English is a second language and they then personify the old adage that 'those who understand deeply, teach clearly'. The notes that are given out are clear and really enable people who struggle with the language to follow along and take home something solid and digestible. It's obvious they've been so well trained.
So as I commend them, there's theology, care of the church family and evangelism. All three have been modelled and embodied by the Beans. There's a real joy in the Lord in them and, as we have interacted with their children, we have just felt that their kids are with us in this great work, but nevertheless are themselves and have lots of personality. My wife Lucy thinks the world of Shanna and has so appreciated her example, and I have appreciated Dawson's. I really want to wholeheartedly commend them both to you their partners in ministry, the Board at MTW, and now to their new church in Prague, Faith Community Church. They are outstanding Christian workers, who have certainly shown themselves to be really effective in the cross-cultural context of West London.
