Speech in Munich

On Saturday past there has been a convocation of pastors and church leaders of about 30 churches in southern Bavaria. The board of the assembly has invited me to speak about “emerging”-issues and to introduce our Gothenburg project. Presenting innovative ways of doing church was quite a challenge for me, because the problems and subjects of postmodernism are not very well known in Christian circles of Germany. It was my goal to avoid misunderstandings or to communicate disregard for traditional approaches of ministry. At the same time I wanted to be challenging, highlighting current cultural changes and the necessity to contextualize the gospel to a complete new culture. In the end, I was hoping to get a lot of new contacts to churches which might be willing to support our mission project.

At this point I’d like to give thanks to everybody who has prayed for this important meeting. Thank you very much! It seems to be that God has answered your prayers. I got a lot of positive answers and responses. Spontaneoulsy, I received an invitation to be the speaker at a seminar for cell group leaders from Bavaria. The board of the association itself announced publicly to decide by next autumn on supporting us (This is an important signal.) They reccomended to all of those present church leaders to invite us and to pray about supporting us. The pastor of my church in Ingolstadt, Gerhard Smits, reinforced this call very convincingly. So God has really blessed this afternoon.

Please keep praying that all those new contacts won’t forget me, in order to get more invitations and supporters. Please pray that God will keep blessing it and that our fundraising can be accomplished until next summer. Thank you so much for your prayer support!