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.

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.