Hangin' with the Bosse

Bosse is quite a man. He is retired and now it seems like he gives most of his time away. He's fully of joy even though he has lost his wife to cancer and one son to a plane crash. He serves New Life welcoming visitors and drawing plans for expanding their new building. Today I found out he helps churches in Estonia with renovations and housing visitors to Sweden. We know some of the same people there. I'll bet they think as highly of Bosse as I do.

Locked & Loaded

Packed up for Stockholm tomorrow. Talking with friends about their vision of 20 new churches in Stockholm by 2020 to see if we can find some ways to partner.

Seventy new ones

The EFK is an exciting group in Sweden. I know the picture doesn’t exactly convey the electricity in the room, but that was because this was at the end of the day, following a lunch and we hadn’t been properly re-caffeinated.

A vision to start 70 new churches in Sweden before 2020 is inspiring. The sad reality is that by their estimation, that only slows the decline in the number of believers in Sweden. They told us how they close churches every year and hope to start new ones to replace them in growing areas of Sweden, but it’s difficult to keep up.

I should mention that there were more people at the meeting earlier, but I was too engaged in the conversation to think about getting a good group shot. Regardless, it was an encouraging day as they expressed their desire to help as many people as possible start as many new churches as possible. And they asked us to help.

Later today we hop over to Tallinn, Estonia for 48 hours to check in with Argo, a church planter there. No updates for a bit, because I’m not taking my computer. Pray that we can be an encouragement like we’ve been encouraged here.

Pleasant surprise

I stopped into a coffee shop to get some internet time. So I felt obligated to buy something if I was going to use their free internet. A coffee and a little ‘breakfast bun’ should do it. The coffee was good, the bun was a surprise. It was soaked in honey, which was great. I made the assumption that the black sprinkles on top were poppy seeds. After the first bite I gave a closer inspection. It was ground black pepper. Maybe not what I would have chosen if I had known, but better than you might think. When I asked some Swedes about it they told me it’s not anything they’d ever heard of before. Happy I found it.

Learning about New Life

Today James and I were with the staff from New Life Church all day. It was a very good day. We shared blessings and needs then spent time praising our Father and asking Him for help. James sat in on their staff meeting while I met with the pastor of Tomaskyrkan, another Evangelical Free Church of Sweden (EFK) partnering with New Life. I think we both learned a lot today about Stockholm, these churches, and what partnering with them might look like.

Here are some things we learned:

Tomaskyrkan and New Life are working hard to connect artists with the Gospel through Synergy.

New Life wants to be a part of starting 20 new churches in Stockholm by 2020. (Stockholm 2020 is aiming for 50)

About 1% of youth in Sweden have any contact with a church or youth group.

God is working here.

Bosse in Stockholm

Stockholm is a city of almost 2 million people.  James Lauderdale, my co-worker, and I are here learning as much as we can about Stockholm and a group with which we’d like to partner. We were told that the Stockholm of today is significantly different than the Stockholm of 20 years ago. Over 35000 immigrants each year settle in Stockholm. Most of the Swedes aren’t attending any church at all.

Bosse is a retired architect who gives his time to New Life Church. He started attending New Life two years ago after his wife died of cancer. He wanted to make a new start, so the EFK (Evangelical Free Church of Sweden) church he was attending blessed him and sent him to New Life to serve this Swedish church with a strong international profile. Bosse says, “I have a new life at New Life!”

We attended the coffee house they have on Monday nights at the rented facilities where they meet. It’s how they welcome new people to their community. It was exciting to see how this group of about 30 (primarily Russian speakers) were encouraging each other.

New Life is a church of about 600 people representing about 50 different countries. They have a vision to start 10 more churches in the Stockholm area in the next ten years. James and I are hoping to learn a lot this week.

Poland and Sweden

Aside from a little altercation in the late 1600's there isn't much to connect Poland and Sweden other than the last couple weeks of my life. We had our ReachGlobal conference for our Europe staff in Wisla, Poland and then Kristi and I went to Stockholm to meet with some church leaders and planters to talk about how ReachGlobal might possibly further the progress of the Gospel there.

Wisla is a nice ski resort in the southern part of Poland, so it makes a great place for a bunch of missionaries to go in the summer for a conference. It was great to spend a day fasting and praying together as well as reconnect with friends from around the continent. Quite a few significant conversations took place over the five days we were together. One important event was saying farewell to our International Leader, Rick Burke. I've worked with Rick almost as long as I've been in Europe and I've profited from his influence in my life over the years. He has been a great boss and an even better friend. He's taking a role as missions pastor at First Free Church in St. Louis, MO so I'm planning on staying in contact with him in the future.

Kristi and I went to Stockholm with Gary (Associate Executive Director of ReachGlobal) and his wife, Karen. We had a great time together because we match up well. Gary and I enjoyed our lengthy meetings where we were learning about what God is doing in the free churches of Sweden. Karen is an educational consultant so the conversations with Kristi were frequent and practical. We all enjoyed learning about Stockholm and the Church in Sweden. One thing we came away with was a better understanding of the decline of the local churches over the past eighty years and the need for starting new churches for this generation.