May Prayermail

May 27, 2008

Dear Friends,
Lately we have felt like kids – full of visions and dreams and cool ideas; high-fiving each other in the kitchen for the latest enhancement of the plan. The last few weeks have been exhilarating and exhausting! Here is the latest:

www.viertelkirche.de

Don’t bother clicking on that link yet because there isn’t anything there yet. We just recently reserved this Webaddress. ViertelKirche means QuarterChurch. God has been deepening and expanding our vision for a high church – free church from one church to 86 – one for every neighborhood, or quarter, of Cologne. We believe that there should be a witnessing fellowship within reach of every person in town.

Thank you for praying about this. Since we wrote last, we have had 2 small group meetings with 4 of us at the first and 6 at the second one. We are using the ancient practice of “lectio divina” in which we read the same passage of scripture 4 times with reflection and sharing in between. It has been encouraging to experience how God speaks through His word – without a lot of commentary.

God has also led 3 other couples to join with us to form a start team. From the outset, it has been important to us to set the right tone so we have each shared 3 names of people we know and would like to pray for – people we want to invite to come into a relationship with God and into the new church. Then, as we envisioned these people actually coming to faith and attending church – we read Luke 15 where Jesus tells three parables illustrating how important the lost are to him. After that we spent some time praying for these people.

Please pray that God would give us courage and unity as we begin to work with the start team to sharpen our vision and determine our shared values and formulate a mission statement.


Consultation for Church Planting

On April 14 the second German Consultation for Church Planting took place in Frankfurt. Thank you for praying. There were 24 people in attendance representing many of the national church planting ministries and denominations in Germany. It was a great day of seeing such a diverse group of people come together in a spirit of unity. After some good discussion, we unanimously approved a mission statement, vision statement and strategy. This is what we came up with:
Mission Statement: The consultation fosters church planting in Germany through cooperation at a leadership level of State Churches, Free Churches, Ministries and Movements on the basis of the Lausanne Movement.
Vision: Saturate Germany together with living churches.
Strategy: Networking, Learning, Research and Goal Setting.

We agreed together that we don't want to just talk and discuss strategies. We realize how much we need to do it in the power of Jesus. We don't want to say that lightly but want to also be much in prayer together as we meet.

We scheduled future meetings for Monday 24, November in Frankfurt and then again from 23-24 March, 2009, in Kirchheim for a two day consultation including a guest speaker. We are trying to book Michael Frost - Founding Director of Centre for Evangelism & Global Mission at Morling Theological College in Sydney and well known expert on reaching Post-Christian cultures.

It is exciting for me to be involved in the steering committee for this. It is hard to say at this point where this is all headed but we sense that God is moving as these various groups are willing to work together and focus on what we have in common (which is much) rather than on our differences (which are few).

Your missionaries to Germany,
Jason and Sue