Exciting News: Our Move to Prague is Approved!

We’re thrilled to share some wonderful news with you: we’ve been approved to move to Prague in August! Thanks to the incredible support from our dedicated ministry partners, including many of you, and several new supporters, the Lord has provided significantly towards our monthly pledges and relocation costs in record time.

Current Financial Standing

While we’re still about $1,500 short of our monthly pledges goal, MTW has given us the green light to proceed. To help make this happen, we’ll be taking a voluntary salary reduction to meet the administrative requirements. This temporary measure allows us to move forward while we continue to trust in God's provision to meet our full financial goal. This also means that Caleb and Mary can start school in Prague at the end of August while we continue to trust the Lord to raise the last bit of financial support needed for the long-term viability of our ministry in Prague.

How You Can Help

Please pray with us for the Lord to bring in the remaining monthly, quarterly, and annual pledges. The frequency of the pledge is less important than the commitment to ongoing support. Whether you can give monthly, quarterly, or annually, every contribution helps take the Gospel to the lost in Prague and helps us trust the Lord together to strengthen and continue Faith Community Church's growth in grace.

Special Needs

In addition to ongoing support, we need approximately $14,000 in additional special gifts to cover one-time expenses such as moving costs, real estate and school deposits, visas, and more. Since the U.K. is no longer part of the European Union, we also require a special veterinary exam and an EU “pet passport” for our dog Aldo. Fortunately, driving to Prague with Aldo will be more cost-effective than flying.

Join Us in Prayer

We’re incredibly grateful for your continued prayers and support as we embark on this new chapter in the Czech Republic. Together, we’re bringing the Gospel to the heart of Europe. Please pray for the Lord to provide the remaining financial support and for a smooth transition for our family.

Stay Updated

To stay updated on our journey and ministry, please continue to follow our blog. We’ll be sharing more updates and stories about our work and experiences in Prague. Your prayers and support mean the world to us as we take this step of faith.

Thank you all for your love, support, and prayers. Let’s continue to trust together in God's provision and grace through our partnership in the Gospel.

Blessings from London,

Dawson, Shanna, Joshua, Caleb, and Mary Elisabeth Bean

An Encouraging Note to You, from Our Friend Rico Tice:

Dear Friends and Partners of Dawson & Shanna,

The Revd Rico Tice

My name is the Reverend Rico Tice. I was ordained into the Anglican Church in 1994 and then spent 29 years as an evangelist on staff at All Souls, Langham Place in London. In that time, I also set up Christianity Explored, which is a charity that seeks to help churches and individuals look at the person of Jesus in Mark's Gospel. I’m honoured to have been asked to be one of the keynote speakers at Mission to the World’s Global Missions Conference this upcoming November in Atlanta. I left All Souls in 2023 to work full-time for Christianity Explored and in part in protest at the apostasy of the leadership of The Church of England, took my family out of the Anglican Church and joined the International Presbyterian Church of Ealing (IPC-Ealing) and delightfully we found ourselves in Dawson and Shanna's Home Group.  

I wanted to write, because I just can't speak highly enough of their care and leadership.

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.

Secondly, their theology is followed up by really self-sacrificing lives. I rang them last week and they were out with a couple, both young Christians and the wife was in the middle of really a bit of a breakdown, and it was just so typical that they had their arms around that couple, when I spontaneously rang.

Furthermore, last Monday we had a birthday celebration for a dear man in the group. He's 42, single, lives with his mum and is pretty vulnerable. Shanna organised the party which they hosted in their back garden. There were three cakes and when I drove him home, he said to me, "That's been the best birthday I've ever had". It's just simply living out what it means to be a church family and opening your home again and again.  

And then there is their evangelism. There has been a constant stream of men that have come to IPC-Ealing with Dawson. When I went for a haircut in Pitshanger and tried to raise spiritual things with the barber, he said, "Oh there's an American who comes in here called Dawson, who has spoken to me about this". Furthermore, I was driving through Greenford, a village near Ealing, on a Saturday morning and there were Dawson and Shanna out on the streets doing open air evangelism.  

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.

 

1 Thessalonians 1:3 springs to mind - "We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."

 

Warmly in Christ from London,

 

The Revd Rico Tice

Evangelist & Founder

Christianity Explored Ministries

www.christianityexplored.org

www.honestevangelism.com

 

Meanwhile Back in London: An Encouraging Holiday Weekend For Our Home Group And Ministry At IPC-Ealing

Over the Memorial Day weekend (called the Spring Bank Holiday here in the UK) we were so encouraged to see a young couple from our Home Group, Fenno & Reka, get married at IPC-Ealing, the church in West London we've been serving at for the past 2 1/2 years, and to see another newlywed couple who we've been meeting with regularly for discipleship, Eduard & Alice, come into church membership.

Some of our home group gathered for a group pic

Fenno and Reka jumped into church life and our home group straight away after finishing university at Durham and moving to London. It's often something of a discouraging theme to see young people let their relationship with Jesus and the church lapse during the University years, if not walk away from Christ altogether, but that has certainly not been the case with Reka & Fenno as they were deeply involved with the ministry of Durham University’s Christian Union, and got stuck in to church life and our Home Group immediately upon moving back home to London after university. They've also been some of our most committed teachers for our Tuesday night Free English Classes at the church. For Reka, coming to IPC-Ealing was a return to her home church where her parents have been long-time members since moving to the U.K. from Budapest, Hungary when Reka was only 10 years old, while Fenno was quite keen to chase after his fiancee and now bride to London after University, and likewise moved to the UK as a child with his parents from Kenya. Their own experience as immigrants to the UK as children has allowed them to see first hand that welcoming the nations with strategic opportunities for Gospel engagment like Free English Classes is a great opportunity for sharing the Gospel and making new friendships with international people.

Eduard and Alice meanwhile have also gotten very involved at IPC-Ealing as well since moving to Ealing as newlyweds last year after pursuing one another long-distance and getting married and have joined the church now as members. Alice comes from a presbyterian Free Church of Scotland background in her native Scotland, while Ed is originally from Ukraine with roots in Hungary and grew up in Orthodoxy after being baptised in secret as a child of believing parents, in defiance of the communist regimes that previously controlled both Ukraine and Hungary. Ed has been in the UK for many years after coming to study for University, and is a poet, writer, and artist, while Alice works in the world of finance.

We've so enjoyed meeting regularly with each of these couples for discipleship and one-to-one Bible reading, and are so glad to see each of them following Jesus and making Him and His church their top priority in life. Please do pray for them.

Hello from London!

We've come to realise that many of our friends, family, and ministry partners have gotten off of social media altogether (and some were never on it to begin with!), and as a result, have not been seeing our regular ministry updates. So we've decided to try a new approach, starting this new blog/website titled The Beans in Prague: Taking the Gospel to the Heart of Europe. 

While we'll continue to post personal, family, and ministry updates on our social media accounts and groups, we'll be adding this as a new alternative that people can subscribe to and read updates about our ministry over the past 2 1/2 years in London, and our upcoming move to Prague (more on that soon!). Over the next few days, we'll be posting past content from our social media accounts to create something of an archive for those who feel like they may need to "catch up" with what we've been up to.

We hope that you'll find this to be a helpful (and free!) alternative to logging in to social media, that's also a much more cost effective way of keeping you up to date with how God is at work in our lives and ministry than mailing out very costly paper newsletters through "snail mail" which we are constantly having to update people's mailing addresses for, though we'll continue to send those out from time to time as well.

So feel free to leave a prayer request or comment to let us know you're out there, and share posts with friends and family who might also be encouraged by how God is at work in the world today. 

Now get ready to come on a European adventure with us! (Okay, that was more cheesy than Red Leicester.....😬)

From London With Love,

Dawson, Shanna, Joshua, Caleb, and Mary Bean

Prague, the Birthplace of the Reformation is Now Capital of the Most Atheist Country in the World. Will You Trust Jesus With Us to Help Change That?

Hello Friends,

Shanna and I couldn’t possibly be more encouraged and excited to share with you that this past weekend, Faith Community Church (IPC) in Prague, Czech Republic (www.faithcommunity.cz), voted to extend a call for me to serve as their interim pastor, which we've enthusiastically accepted pending the approval of our mission agency Mission to the World. As Faith Community Church continues to be a mission church that is not yet fully self-supporting, we will continue to be faith based missionaries with Mission to the World while serving in this new role. We're still in need of your generous gifts and prayers on our behalf in order to serve in this capacity in the capital and largest city of the most atheist country in the world, Czech Republic.

On Prague's Famous Charles Bridge

Known as “The Heart of Europe” and birthplace of the Protestant Reformation, today only 0.76% of Czechs are Bible believing Christians, while 78.4% describe themselves as atheists, a higher percentage than North Korea (71.3%), Japan (60%), and China (51.8%). The number of Gospel-centered churches in Prague, a city of 2.7 million people, can be counted on just two hands. It is absolutely vital that the ministry and witness of Faith Community Church and their church plant DoSlova continue for the future of the Gospel in Czech Republic, Europe, and the western world. We’ve long prayed for and dreamed of a day when we would get to serve the Lord where there is little to no indigenous Gospel witness, and now God is calling us to just such a place.

Over the next 40 days, we'll finish out our roles and responsibilities here in London at IPC-Ealing where we've been serving for the past 2 1/2 years in outreach to internationals, pack up our home, and then return to the United States to visit with current and potential donors and partnering churches about this new role, and we’d love to see you and share more with you about how the Lord is at work in our lives and in Europe. We will not be able to begin our work with Faith Community Church and move to Prague until this much needed financial support for our move and day-to-day ministry there is raised.

Would you pray with us for this financial need to be raised as quickly as possible for the good of our family and the church in Prague so that we can get to them as quickly as possible and begin serving them? After surviving for the past year without a pastor, they are quite eager for us to arrive as soon as possible, as you might imagine. 

 Prague is nicknamed "The Heart of 
Europe". 

Lord willing, it would be best for us to arrive in Prague to begin serving the church there in August, and so that our children can begin school there uninterrupted after the summer break, but we are trusting that the Lord knows what timing is best for our family's arrival in Prague and what would be best for Faith Commmunity Church. Gifts toward this need may be given through the MTW website at www.mtw.org/bean.

Warmest regards from London,

Dawson, Shanna, Joshua, Caleb, and Mary Bean