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Inside this issue:
UK leaders discuss risk Pg. 2EuNC sale finalized Pg. 6
Nepal starts rehabilitation Pg. 8
Lebanon kids give to Nepal Pg. 9
First M+Power training draws 15
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DARE TO DREAM by Gina Grate Pottenger, Eurasia Region Communications
MANCHESTER, UK -- Pioneering and risk-taking were the themes of the Dare to Dream conference held for pastors and lay leaders across the United
Kingdom 29-31 May at the campus of Nazarene Theological College (NTC). The conference was a cooperative effort of the British Isles North and South Districts, Momentum UK and NTC.
Through a series of speakers, guided discussions in small groups, prayer,
worship, and visits to innovative ministries, the 110 attendees wrestled
with how to be pioneers and embrace risk in ministry when overall attendance of UK churches has plateaued.
“For quite some time there’s been a sense that the Nazarene church needs to be reinvigorated in the UK and part of that is helping people think about what it means to take risks and dream big dreams and have strong, godly vision,” said Deirdre Brower Latz, principal of NTC.
The UK church has been involved in missional sending and pioneering to other parts of the world over the decades. Sometime around the 1950s, the church domestically became more settled, organized and structured, which
“mitigated that apostolic, pioneering spirit which happens in an organization in the first two generations and needs to be rediscovered,” said Trevor Hutton, director of Momentum UK.
The conference explored the theology of risk-taking, studying how God takes risks, and how people in the Bible put their faith in God when taking risks. The group also examined case studies of churches that are engaged in pioneering and innovative ministry within the UK.
Philip McAlister, district superintendent for the British Isles North District, was excited about the potential for the conference to open up the church to trying new things and setting its young leaders loose to be creative and experimental.
“We have ‘centers of excitement,’ that’s how I would describe them, where
really good things are happening,” he said. “Some of our churches are
doing some really innovative work, partnering with like-minded people in
their communities. Out of those centers of excitement there is a growing number of young people that really want to engage and want to commit their lives to making a difference. Historically in the British Isles, we have had seasons of this happen before and the church has never ever capitalized on what the Lord has been doing with young people and as a
consequence …we lost some of our finest young people. We have a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on what God is doing in the lives of young people.”
McAlister said he hoped that conference participants would leave the
weekend with a fresh enthusiasm and a belief that all things are possible, and to know they are going to be listened to by the district leadership.
Hutton added that he wanted the conference to help the districts identify
catalytic people and create opportunities for further development in training, as well as cross-fertilize between the two districts.
The series of speakers, some Nazarene and some from other denominations or organizations, shared stories of real experience with innovative
ministries, taking chances and dreaming large. “It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to make a mess of things. It’s OK if things don’t always go right. That’s part of the missional experiment,” said speaker Martin Robinson, author and principal of ForMission, a mission training college.
Several times, the attendees gathered into different corners of the campus to discuss prepared questions based on the speakers’ presentations, such as “Pioneers work on the edge. What does the edge look like for you?”
“I’m not going to go out and do steam punk ministry tomorrow, but maybe with job seekers,” said a woman in answer to the question, referring to one speaker’s example of a missionary working among people from the steam punk subculture.
The discussion groups were key to helping Kat Wood, associate pastor of
Ashton Church of the Nazarene, British Isles South District, in processing the ideas she was hearing.
“The question I was asking myself, ‘What are the risks God is asking me
to take in my ministry, maybe with relationships that need to develop more? Is there something God wants me to do in the community?’”
“I’m risk averse, I sail close to shore,” said Ruth Clarkson, a participant from the Trinity Church of the Nazarene in Perth, British Isles North District. “Living on the edge is not going to be something nice for me, but we’re not called to be comfortable. It’s challenging
us and we don’t know what it looks like. We feel God is trying to tell us
something.”
David Montgomery, district superintendent of the British Isles South District, said, the time is now to encourage churches to take risks.
“We felt that we needed to do something new, something different, and
just where our churches were at the time, we felt it was a good thing to cause them to dream somewhat as to what could be. If we’re not moving forward, we’re either standing still or going back, and so we need to be moving forward, and that usually takes an element of risk.”
[“It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to make a mess of things. It’s OK if things
don’t always go right. That’s part of the missional experiment,”[Martin Robinson]
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CREATING A CULTURE OF RISK-TAKING by Teanna Sunberg For Eurasia Region Communications
There is a place tucked into the arms of the Rhein river, a tiny place with a German name that has been preparing and sending Nazarene young people into the world for the last four decades. Somehow, that little spot in Büsingen dreamed world-changing dreams. It used radical vocabulary like “transformational” and “impact” and “movement.” It believed that the God of an immense universe laid His finger on the edge of the Rhein River and pointed “here.” And they came. For 40 years, a constant stream of Nazarenes ebbed and flowed through the campus of European Nazarene College (EuNC), building their knowledge, deepening their spiritual journey, sharpening their skills in this quiet German village. Each one came to be filled, believing that they were called to go as pastors, as lay-people, as ministers to their generation in their home countries. In the middle of May 2015, the last group of Nazarenes in our collective history departed the EuNC campus for the final time.* Quite ironically, this last group was the first group of Eurasians to become a part of M+Power, which is a new regional initiative that dares to declare Eurasians for Eurasia as a missional focus. Sixteen young people and 12 mentors came together from 10 countries for the first step of their mobilization, which is a cross-cultural orientation. At the end of an intense weekend full of seminars, prayer, role playing and interviews, the participants are now ready to be propelled into various ministries across the region, which spans 39 countries and 127 languages. Christian is 26 years old and from the Gelnhausen Church, in Germany. By profession he is a chemical engineer, but plans to take a five-month leave from his job in Germany to travel to Nepal where he will help the church develop a safe and secure water system in the postearthquake atmosphere. “I have been to Nepal before, I know the guys there and they are my brothers in the Lord,” he says. “If God opens the door, I have nothing to fear and I want to help.” Nepal is not an easy destination in the wake of two earthquakes, nor is Jordan, and that is where Annebeth from the Netherlands plans to go. Twenty-two years old and already learning Arabic, she has recently graduated from university. An independent, articulate, self-assured young woman, I question how she will find herself in the vastly different society of the Middle East. On this sunny, German spring day, she smiles and pauses to think. “It will be difficult, of course. But, I am willing to try because I am called.” And there is Carla from Spain and Sam from India and Federika from Italy and Guillerme from Brazil, and the list builds to 16 individuals, all of them already fluent in at least two languages. At the age when they could be embarking upon exciting careers, these young people are saying, “If God will open the door, I am willing to be sent.” “It’s a dream answered,” says Annemarie Snijders, who serves with her husband, Arthur Snijders as the Regional Director team for the Eurasia Region. It is out of their initiative that a network of individuals have come together for the purpose of empowering this God-sized dream. There are Dr. Paul and Cathy Tarrant of the UK who have been faithful supporters of Nazarene missions their entire lives. There are Randolf and Jessica (Hagelgans) Wolst, a cross-cultural mixture of Dutch and American, who have both served extensively as volunteer missionaries. There are regional support staff working behind the scenes to deploy. And there are mentors and coaches being trained to receive and to aid the volunteers as they step into new missional roles. This is the Church in Eurasia believing that God’s missional call is reverberating from the Alps to the Himalayas, and it is unprecedented. For the past 200 years, the greatest missionary impetus has come from the North Americas and Great Britain, as these countries sent missionaries into the world. That dynamic is changing as formerly receiving countries now become sending entities. The mission force of this era is multi-gender, multinational, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and powerfully equipped to be sent by God into the broken spaces of our planet. We are sending people like Guillermo, who is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese but not in English. During a role playing session about cultural conflict, he played the Holy Spirit, whispering into the depths of the heart where conflict finds its fuel. It was a good reminder that although English seems to be the lingua franka of our day, it is not nor ever should be a barrier to serve. It was Saint Francis of Assissi who reminded us, ‘Preach the Gospel always, when necessary, use words.’ Long after we said our final goodbye to buildings and pathways and memories that have been the elements of the EuNC campus, reflections from the first MPower training poured in. We learned that the bringing together of young people who are speaking different languages and referencing different cultures for the purpose of being sent out, was, well, it was empowering. “I grew in confidence. I am excited about how God is going to use me. I left the MPower orientation feeling encouraged and resourced for my future mission activity.” Of the 16 candidates, 13 went through the interview process and five hope to be sent out in the next six months. Indeed, the Church in Eurasia is moving into the world. God is doing a new thing as His Holy Spirit leads us across borders and barriers to fill the broken spaces with his healing presence. *While European Nazarene College continues as a virtual campus fulfilling its mission to prepare European pastors, the campus ceases to be part of our Nazarene identity on June 30, 2015. See next page
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UK leaders discuss risk
EuNC Sale finalized
European Nazarene College (EuNC) released the following statement regarding its campus in Büsingen, Germany: What has been announced earlier has taken place now: The property and facilities of European Nazarene College in Büsingen have been sold. The EuNC Board of Trustees unanimously voted on this step in January 2014, and the General Board of the Church of the Nazarene approved it in its meeting in February 2015. We are thankful that we were able to sell the campus to the town of Büsingen. After long negotiations, the sales contract was signed in March. On 30 June 2015, the keys to the buildings will be turned over to Mayor Möll. The college board and administration have been experiencing God’s guidance throughout the process and are confident that this step was necessary for European Nazarene College to be viable and to fulfil its mission. During the next weeks, the buildings and the property are being prepared to be turned over to the new owner and the move of the organisation needs to be arranged. A final decision on the location for the new EuNC Administrative Centre is still pending. One of the reasons for this is that the EuNC Board of Trustees needs to vote on the new location in their next meeting in January 2016, which needs to happen before the move can take place. The new location will be in the Frankfurt area of Germany. In the meantime, EuNC will be renting the library space of the present location until February 2016 from the town of Büsingen. This provides the storage space needed for everything that will be moved to the new location such as library materials, the EuNC archives, and all necessary office furniture and equipment. Please, pray with us for this process and that we continue to follow God’s guidance as He “teaches us the way we should go” (Psalm 32:8). EuNC has approximately 15 learning centers serving more than 300 students in 17 countries. In 2006, EuNC followed its own strategic plan to decentralize its theological education among the four fields it serves across the Eurasia Region. As a result, attendance at the learning centers expanded while attendance at the central campus in Büsingen gradually declined. The residential program closed in June 2011.[Reprinted from NCN News, www. nazarene.org/news.]
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Two of Dare to Dream’s planners, Trevor Hutton and Philip McAlister, shared about the ideas and timing driving the conference.
Where Worlds Meet: Talk about the theology of risk-taking.
Hutton: Theologically there’s no greater example than God taking a risk of becoming one of us and the vulnerability of that possibly going wrong. Jesus being born, His own life was always in threat and in danger and ultimately it being taken; and yet God used all of it (the good and bad) for working His own purposes out. But the risks were real! The idea of taking risks in mission means that things can go wrong or things don’t work out the way you think they ought to be, but in all of that, God will be redemptive and work it for good. It doesn’t mean everything is going to go smoothly or according to plan. There’s no taking risks without that possibility. That’s a God thing. God decided to enter into humanity in the incarnation and empty Himself. We take the possibility of rejection as well. Jesus sent the 72 in vulnerability like sheep among wolves (Luke 10). Some people are not going to welcome you or accept your message, but go anyhow.
WWM: Talk about the role of pioneering in mission and risktaking.
Hutton: I think that part of the backdrop to why the church got into difficulty in mission in the West was that it’s stopped pioneering new things for two reasons. One, it assumed the culture had become Christian, so there was no real need to pioneer new things because we had influenced the West sufficiently. That happened in the 1950s, we were doing quite well. We had lost an emphasis on the work of the Spirit from 1950s onwards. In our particular denomination, being at that stage of our history, being 50-60 years old, we settled into routine, whereas the first driving years of our movement, pioneering was the focus because we were trying to establish new things. It was in our culture all the time. There came a more settled period, organization, structure and that mitigated that apostolic pioneering spirit which happens in an organization in the first two generations and needs to be rediscovered. There seemed to be this strange idea of being willing to take risks overseas and continuing pioneering, but in the West we became more established and set because we’d done quite well within those first few generations and then organized ourselves around our purposes. What we were doing overseas we needed to do at home. That meant that we need to look at rediscovering our mission and the implications of what that might need to be, and we’re still working through that.
WWM: The very idea of risk implies the possibility for failure. Talk about the role of failure in ministry.
McAlister: I think that we have been too cautious because of some of the failures we’ve had in the past. But we need to create a culture of risk-taking and to say to the young people, if it doesn’t work out we’re not going to flog a dead horse. We’ll just leave it and we’ll try something else. I don’t think failure is failure unless we fail and do nothing; that’s failure. But if we fail and learn from it and do something to change it, then we can turn failure into success.
Hutton: Part of that risk-taking and pioneering spirit will mean that we’re going to have to relearn some things. We’re going to have to teach ourselves some of the skills we’ve taught to people going into cross-cultural ministry overseas. That will include the possibility of being in for the long haul, the possibility of setback and the whole idea of learning to read culture and be innovative within culture in ways that we’ve not really thought about for the last 30 years. That means mistakes are going to be made and we’re going to get some things wrong and therefore you can’t embrace risk without at least the possibility of some of that not working out right.
WWM: Why is now the right time to have this conversation as the church in the UK?
McAlister: We’ve been given a window of opportunity to do something on our district. We had 23 district licenses given out to young pastors (at district assembly). We have over 40 young people who have gone through the Leadership Development Initiative program. There’s a growing excitement that God is doing something new. I do think that I have a dynamic advisory board at the moment. So all of these things are dovetailing, working together, and I believe God has something very, very special for us. I would really love to cut some of these young people loose. If they had an idea to start something and they were able to work on it together, I would like to think that we would draw alongside them and just say go and do it. We need to trust the next generation of leaders and God has given us a great pipeline of young leaders. Now the question is, are we going to trust them? The answer has to be yes from this conference. It’s not just pastors that God is going to use to plant churches. We need teams of people and we need our leading lay people to be here as well. I had one pastor go to ask a young lady in a shop if she would be interested in coming to church if he was going to start a church in her town. She said, “Not on your life.” He said, “If I were to open up my home for individuals who were wanting to experience a relationship with Jesus Christ, would you be interested?” She replied, “I would love something like that and I would pack your home out with all my friends.” I think there is a hunger for relationship with God that they are crying out for. I’m not sure the established church can reach these people. We need to think creatively and dream God’s dream, ask God to show us where we can be engaged with these people and win them for the kingdom.
Trevor Hutton is the director of Momentum UK, a missional agency fostering new communities. He is also the pastor of Didsbury Community Church, an experimental café church in Manchester.
Philip McAlister is the district superintendent of the British Isles North District, and the former field strategy coordinator of the denomination’s Northern Europe Field.
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Nepal relief transitions to rehabilitationThe Nazarene disaster relief team in Nepal has been delivering emergency food, water filters and tents for the past month to people in the Sindhupalchok District, the area hardest hit by the April 25 earthquake. Now they are transitioning their focus and resources to longterm rebuilding and rehabilitation, which will include helping people build quality earthquake-proof homes, and implementing childfocused development centers in several communities to address ongoing needs. Until now, the church had no presence in Sindhupalchok.
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Lebanon children give to Nepal“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. “[2 Corinthians 4:17]
Do you have pictures of your church ministry in Eurasia that you would like to share with the region? Send them to communications@ eurasiaregion.org and we’ll consider posting them on our Facebook page.
www.eurasiaregion.org
www.eurasiaregion.org
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Prayer Requests- Please pray for the people and government of Nepal, as they rebuild their lives and communities following two large earthquakes. Ask God to give the Church grace, compassion and resourcefulness in assisting the people with relief and long-term redevelopment plans.
- Please pray for the young people who attended the Eurasia Mission Orientation in May, that God would clearly lead and guide them as they explore mission volunteering opportunities.
- Pray for Nazarenes across the UK districts, that they would fearlessly embrace God’s leading, when necessary taking faithful risks and accepting the possibility of failure as they try new ways to share Christ with their communities.
- Christ commands us to pray for more workers for the harvest in Luke 10:2: “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (NIV).
- Pray that God would raise up and equip new workers across the region.
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Where Worlds Meet is the monthly newsletter for the Eurasia Region of the Church of the Nazarene.
To subscribe, e-mail communications@ eurasiaregion.org or visit www.eurasiaregion.org
We welcome stories, photos and prayer requests.
We welcome stories, photos and prayer requests.
E-mail submissions to communications@eurasiaregion.org
Gina Pottenger, Comm. Coordinator gpottenger@eurasiaregion.org
Zarah Miller, Video Producer zmiller@eurasiaregion.org
Denis Sawatzky, Graphic Designer dsawatzky@eurasiaregion.org
Arthur Snijders, Regional Director awsnijders@eurasiaregion.org
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Transforming Our World:
In Christ • Like Christ • For Christ
Eurasia Regional Office • Postfach 1217 • 8207 Schaffhausen, Switzerland
Phone (+49) 7734 93050 • Fax (+49) 7734 930550 • E-mail whereworldsmeet@eurasiaregion.org
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