Catalyst 2022

This past week our host church here in London, IPC-Ealing held our annual equipping conference for church planters, pastors, missionaries, and emerging leaders, Catalyst 2022. Over 250 attendees from numerous denominations and independent churches throughout the U.K. and Europe benefited from three days of fellowship and Biblical teaching from renowned Scottish theologian Sinclair Ferguson, Westminster Seminary professor Jonathan Gibson, American pastor Jonathan Landry Cruse, and some really great local church leaders from here in the U.K.

Shanna and I, and our entire church staff put in many hours to help make this year’s Catalyst conference a success, and we couldn’t be more happy with the results. For many of these church planters and pastors, who faithfully spend tireless hours preparing sermons and Bible studies for their churches and disciples each week, this is a rare opportunity to sit under good Biblical teaching themselves and rest and “recharge” with good fellowship with one another.

Among those in attendance were our friend and fellow MTW missionary and church planter Jonas Stava and three members of his church planting team, Niko, Thomas, and Kenneth from Hamar, Norway. These brothers don’t just envision planting a single church, but an entire network of Gospel-centred churches in Norway! We were thrilled to get to host them in our home on Tuesday evening for a cookout in our “back garden” (backyard) along with a key leader in the IPC denomination, Gethin Jones and his wife Katie who serve together in Paris, France. In addition to being an IPC pastor in Paris, Gethin serves as the stated clerk for the IPC and was able to visit with these church planters and answer their questions about their church plants joining the IPC and how the IPC can help and encourage them in their church planting efforts in Norway and as their churches mature into fully formed congregations.

It’s an honor and privilege to have such an encouraging gathering happen (literally!) in our own backyard that we hope the Lord will use to help strengthen Gospel-centred church planting in Norway!

***Please note that the pictures we post in this private group have been shared with the permission of those pictured. When necessary we obscure the faces and name tags of some of our friends who may one day have to return to a home country where their involvement in a church sponsored event, associating with a missionary, or even walking into a christian church may put them or their family in danger. Please don't share these images further without permission. Thank you for helping us keep them safe!!!***

Meetings in Prague

I’ve had the incredible privilege of spending the last several days in Prague, Czech Republic encouraging and being encouraged by the network of pastors, elders, church planters, and missionaries from across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East whose churches make up the International Presbyterian Church (IPC). Founded by Francis Schaeffer in 1969 as an evangelical denomination in the reformed tradition, the church that we serve with in London, IPC-Ealing, was the very first church planted. It’s an honour to serve with these Godly men and pray with and for them as they have shared about the amazing things King Jesus is doing in their churches and communities as they press into God’s Kingdom work through church planting, evangelism, and discipleship. What an incredible blessing.

The IPC is not a large denomination, and IPC-Ealing is no mega-church. Not by a long shot. But out of IPC-Ealing an entire network of Gospel driven churches has been planted, and we’re amazed by the ways God is at work in and through them. We’re reminded of Jesus’s words in the Parable of the Mustard Seed:

“And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

-Mark 4:31-32

It might be tempting to look at the incredible cathedrals and basilicas of Prague and all over Europe and think that the Kingdom of God is big, flashy, and expensive, but sadly, as beautiful as we may find them, most of post-Christian Europe’s cathedrals are empty of people, and sadly often, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They're beautiful, but all too often they are little more than museums that memorialize a time long past when the Gospel saturated this continent. I’m thankful for God’s faithfulness to work in and through tiny Gospel preaching churches dotted around the world like those in the IPC and other denominations and networks who would rather give and work sacrificially to plant the next Gospel centred church in a place where the Gospel isn’t present than build a cathedral.