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.

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

Home Group Off To A Start for 2024

Hey friends,

After a very busy month of outreach in January with Hope Explored and getting our weekly Free English Classes off to a good start for the term, we were finally able to kick off our first Home Group Bible Study of 2024 tonight, starting a new study in Ephesians. We had our biggest group yet with 28 in attendance, including a really encouraging influx of newcomers from English class and Hope Explored, most of whom are not yet Christians and new to studying the Bible. Our friend Kit from Hong Kong came, as well as three other friends from Hong Kong, Calvin, Barbara, and Benson who I've been meeting with regularly to read the Bible together. 

Our Kuwaiti friend Khaled from English class came as well, even though he speaks almost no English whatsoever. Thankfully we had two other newcomers in attendance who can speak Arabic, Nadia (Iraq) and Habib (Iran) and were able to help translate for Khaled, and we also had some Farsi speakers who were new as well, Davood and Nayesh. Habib and I were able to visit more with Davood and Nayesh after the study to find our more about their story and they shared with us that they are from a Muslim background in Iran, but came to London in December wanting to learn more about Jesus. Last but not least one of our English class regulars, Mila from Ukraine came tonight as well who Shanna and I were really encouraged to see connect really well with one of our Polish friends Patrycja Pe-Ka who is a strong Christian and one of our Home Group regular attenders. Patrycja and her husband Dawid Kaliński and their children are very dear to us and have been such an encouagement for our family over the past 2 years here in London.

Please pray that the Lord would give us good opportunities to continue to follow up with each of these newcomers about Jesus, and that they would continue coming to Home Group and Free English Classes that God is using to help us connect with people, and especially that they might come along to church with us on a sunday morning or evening.

Please Pray for Asylum Seekers from Iran

Hey folks, would you please pray for our friends Bijan and Najme and their daughter Artemis? They came to London as asylum seekers from Iran just a couple of months after we arrived here in the U.K. ourselves, and yesterday at 3am they were evicted from the hotel near the church that the U.K. government has put them up in for nearly 2 years now. They recently received their approval for asylum status and granted the right to work in the U.K., which is good news, but that also meant that they were now put into a different category and no longer qualified under the contract the government has with the hotel for housing them and countless others of our refugee friends here in London from the Muslim world, Ukraine, and Russia.

Unfortunately, we have seen this as a common theme with asylum seekers in the U.K. After spending the night and most of yesterday in a homeless shelter, thankfully, a couple from church has stepped in to take them into their home for a couple of weeks while they try to find a place of their own to live nearby, and the church’s deacons and others are also stepping in to help as well.

Bijan, Najme, and Artemis arrived here with almost no English in 2022 and have been very faithfully attending church at IPC-Ealing, Persian Fellowship, and our English classes for the past 2 years, and Bijan’s need to learn English was actually one of the driving forces behind us starting an English class at the church that men could participate in. They are strong (though new) believers in Jesus coming from a Muslim background who have been through a lot and fled persecution for their faith in Christ, first from Iran, and then Turkey before landing here in Ealing.

Please pray for them to find a home near the church and Artemis’s school that they can afford so that they do not have to completely lose the community of care and support that they currently have around them in the church, and have to start from scratch with a new church, new school, and new community far away. Please also pray for their job search as they now finally have the right to work here in the U.K., but their job prospects will be slim as they continue to learn English.

Also, we have quite a number of our friends who come to our Free English Classes, the Persian Fellowship, and who we encounter every day here in Ealing who are in very similar situations and live in this same hotel and others like it nearby who are asylum seekers. Many of them are either new Christians, or very open to talking about the Gospel, especially as they experience care and friendship from Christians and the church. Often they had very good and successful careers in their home countries and then find themselves stripped of everything, including even the ability to communicate and work after fleeing for their lives to find safety in western nations like the U.K. and U.S. Your prayers for them would be so appreciated.

**This is not a picture of Bijan, Najme & Artemis, as it would not be safe for us to share a picture of them with you. This is a picture of another Iranian family who were denied assylum status in Sweden several years ago because they had become Christians, and were sent back to Iran. Right now the Christian faith is growing faster in Iran than in any other place on Earth (https://www.persecution.org/.../the-worlds-fastest.../). If you would like to read more about their story, you can click here:

https://www.persecution.org/2013/03/27/iranian-christians-denied-asylum-even-though-arrest-torture-and-death-await-back-in-iran/

https://www.charismanews.com/world/38808-sweden-denies-asylum-to-christians-facing-persecution

https://www.christianpost.com/news/iranian-christians-fleeing-severe-persecution-being-denied-asylum-in-sweden.html

Hope Explored Session 2 tonight, please pray

Hey friends, please pray for session 2 of our Hope Explored outreach tonight at IPC-Ealing at 7pm London time (1pm CST). We had a really encouraging turnout last week of about 55 for dinner and discussion about the Gospel, and many of those who came were not Christians and not in a church anywhere, and from many different religious backgrounds including those from Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu, as well as secular backgrounds.

Please pray for our associate pastor Reuben Hunter's talk on Peace from the Gospel of Luke and for good discussion, and pray that many would come back from the week before as well others who were not able to make it for session 1. Please pray for our friends Kit, Alicia & Edward from Hong Kong, Adil from Pakistan, Jorge from Chile, Khalid from Kuwait, Francesco & Diana from Italy, and many others who may come along as well.

Here's a short preview video with Rico Tice to give you an idea of what the programme is like, especially if you might like to give it a try at your own church or just at home with non-christian friends. It works equally well in small groups or one-to-one (if not better) as it does in more of a programme setting at a church, and can be done using the videos or someone giving a talk on the topics in person. Blessings to you all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8AbJ2N8NAY

Thank You For Praying For Hope Explored

Thank you so much for praying for our first of three Hope Explored outreach events last night at the church- we have two more weeks the next two Wednesday evenings so please do keep praying! We had a really encouraging turnout with about 55 in attendance for the discussion and a couple of great talks on the topic of “Hope” by Christianity Explored’s Rico Tice and our associate pastor Reuben Hunter. Please pray for the many non-Christians who came along, including Mary Elisabeth’s friend’s mum Kit and Kit’s nephew Edward (who are both Buddhists from Hong Kong), as well as Jorge (from Chile), Adil (a Muslim from Pakistan), and Nadia (an Assyrian Catholic from Iraq), who all come regularly to our English classes and are meeting with them for one to one Bible reading together. 

I had a really encouraging conversation for about an hour after the event ended with Adil from Pakistan (pictured in the black coat at our discussion table) about the Gospel where he just about asked me every question about Jesus that you can imagine. Please pray for the Holy Spirit to be at work in his heart and the hearts of all who came and heard the Gospel. 

Finally, please pray for a newcomer named Khalid, a Muslim and refugee from Kuwait who showed up seemingly out of nowhere to our English Class Christmas Party last month and since then has shown up to not only Free English Classes, but also Sunday morning church service and now Hope Explored. We are working very hard to try to communicate effectively with Khalid using things like Google Translate, but Arabic is his first language and he speaks almost no English whatsoever, but he seems very friendly and interested.

More Home Group Members Joining the Church

We were encouraged this evening to have some more of our Home Group Bible Study members join the church this evening. When we started our Home Group after arriving in Ealing in 2022 we wanted to gear it toward newcomers to the church and those on the “periphery” who were not already plugged in. We also hoped that it would be a safe place, both for non-Christians who we and our members are building relationships with to be able to come with their questions, and for hurting and broken people to experience the grace and loving care of the Lord and his church.

While new to IPC-Ealing, Rico, Lucy, and their three children have been anything but on the periphery, and have jumped right into church life and our Home Group since moving from Central London to just around the corner from us here in Ealing over summer. We’ve been so encouraged by their faithfulness to the Lord, their heart for sharing Christ with others in evangelism, and how they have already helped in caring for other members of our group!

Rico has a gift for evangelism and will be leading a Hope Explored dinner outreach at IPC-Ealing the next three Wednesday nights of January on the 10th, 17th, and 24th, which we and many other church members are inviting non-Christian friends to. Shanna and I will also be helping with the outreach by hosting a table at the dinner each night and facilitating discussion. Please pray for the Lord to be at work to bring many non-Christians to the Hope Explored events, and that he would use these next three Wednesday evenings to clearly present the Gospel to those in attendance.

An Encouraging New Years Eve Email From Japan

Hello Friends, we received such an encouraging email on New Year’s Eve from our friend Kaoru from Japan who you may recall us requesting your prayers for this past spring. It’s not every day that we get to hear from those we’ve had a chance to minister to after returning from the U.K. to their home country, so it’s a special treat to share this with you. 

After meeting with Kaoru several times and him coming along to English classes and our Home Group Bible Study in the spring and summer, it became apparent that Kaoru was already a Christian, which was an encouraging surprise! We’re so thankful to hear from him about what an encouragement our ministry to him was while he was away from his home culture, wife, and children, and that he was able to pass his Japanese government service English exams with distinction. 

Please continue to pray for Kaoru, that he would continue to walk with Jesus while living in his home country of Japan, one of the world’s largest unreached people groups, where less than 0.6% of Japanese people are Bible believing Christians and Christian fellowship and good teaching can be very hard to find. Please also pray for his efforts to be promoted to a foreign service post with his government in the U.S., U.K., or other English speaking country, or that the Lord would give him more and greater opportunities to witness to his faith in Christ at home in Japan.

London's Cutest Evangelist

It’s been a very busy week for us here, with multiple Christmas party events, carol services, and even a funeral of a friend from seminary, but one of the of highlights of this week was getting to see Shanna Hymes Bean share her testimony and clearly present the Gospel to the ladies gathered for the Free English Classes women’s Christmas party on Wednesday morning at the church with women in attendance from Iran, Ukraine, Japan, and several other nationalities who do not have access to the Gospel in their home countries. I’m not often up there for the women’s class because some of the women come from cultures that discourage them from interacting with men outside of their family, but I had to go drop some things off at the church from our co-ed English Class Christmas Party the night before, and I just happened to walk in right as Shanna was getting up to give her talk and was able to snap a sneeky pic of my cute evangelist.

Please pray that the Holy Spirit would be at work among the ladies present for the Christmas Party to hear Shanna’s talk, and that many of them would come to one of the church’s four upcoming Christmas Carol Services over the next week to hear more about Jesus.

Please Pray for Parham

Would you please pray for our friend Parham from Iran? I’ve met with Parham probably 4-5 times now over the past several weeks to answer his questions about Jesus, and we began reading the Gospel of Matthew together today. Parham came to London to pursue a master’s degree in renaissance art, and first began considering the Gospel after his dissertation research led him to a book called The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by the German political economist Max Weber.

Weber argued in his work that it was Christianity (and specifically the Protestant Reformation) which has led to the progress and prosperity of the western world, which to Parham, seemed to stand in stark contrast to what he has seen in his homeland, dominated by Shia Islam and Sharia law which have led Iran and other predominantly Muslim nations mostly to inequality, poverty, injustice, and systematic oppression. So Parham sought out a Reformed Protestant church like IPC-Ealing that might be able to help him understand the message of Christianity better, which is how we met.

In God's amazing providence, Parham came to IPC-Ealing for the first time in the middle of a Sunday afternoon after the morning service had ended, and the only thing going on at the church at that time was our Persian Fellowship Bible Study as we discussed that morning's sermon in English and his native language of Farsi. Since that time, Parham has been coming regularly to our Free English Classes outreach, our Home Group Bible Study, and to the Sunday evening church services. In his own words, Parham is at a place right now where he is no longer a muslim, but he's not sure yet if he is ready to trust in Jesus.

Please pray for Parham to trust in Jesus, and not merely in an intellectual or pragmatic way, but so that he might repent and be saved.

Thank you for praying for our Tuesday night Free English Classes Christmas Party outreach this evening!

We all had a fantastic time and I honestly have no idea how many people we had, it was like counting fish in an aquarium, they wouldn't stop moving! Probably about 60+. Nearly all of them were non-Christians, several of whom we’re connecting with regularly and sharing Christ with through small group and one-to-one Bible reading, and so many of them have become some of our favourite people!

Regardless, we had a merry time and there were several newcomers who came along, including an entire family of Persians who emailed me out of the blue just yesterday, and a very sweet Pakistani family who’ve been coming and brought several family members who’ve never come to English class before. At one point I did have to answer a question from a newcomer named Abdul about whether or not the mince pies we were serving were "Halal friendly" or not, which honestly was not something I'd had to think much about before!

Dawson read the story of Jesus’ birth from Luke 1 & 2 in front of the group before dinner and spoke about the hope of Christmas in Jesus Christ, as well as expressing our gratitude and appreciation to our team of teachers and volunteers with some special gifts, all of whom we could not run our weekly Free English Classes outreach without!

Our Wednesday morning women’s Free English Class will have their own Christmas party in the morning, which Shanna will be sharing her testimony at in front of about 40-50 women. Please pray for the Lord to work in the hearts of these women in the morning and for those who came to the party this evening to come to know our great saviour Jesus Christ.