Jesus said something that I believe is very important as we think about people coming to Christ and new communities of believers beginning to form. Jesus said: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day…” John 6:44 As we have […]
Over the last year, I have been reading through the Gospels and the book of Acts in an attempt to understand how Jesus and his disciples thought about starting new churches. It seems clear that Jesus intended believers to live out their faith in community, and both Peter and Paul, the primary leaders that we […]
I’ve moved around quite a lot in my life. Because of my Dad’s changing job situation and some other factors at the time, I went to a different school in each of my four years of high school. That was followed by my first and second years of university at different schools. Gina and I […]
On Thursday, Paul and I met a good friend from Gambia after not seeing him for several months. As we were catching up, we learned that he had recently baptized another young man and was now going on to disciple him to follow Jesus. It was great news, and it seemed that he was developing […]
So as I wrapped up my session talking about birthing spiritual grandchildren (see the previous posts on part 1 and part 2), we moved to Matthew 13. We read verses 1-9: That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got […]
As I was preparing to speak, I had thought of the people that Paul had been greeting in Rome. They were people that he clearly knew, and had been some of the same names that I had read about working in other places while reading in the book of Acts. In short, they were now […]
Tomorrow morning, we will begin to meet as a 3/3rds Group in the large park in Catania called Villa Bellini. I’m looking forward to having a weekly rallying point that will include a time of thanksgiving and praise, prayer for one another, scripture study and discussion, thinking of how we can put God’s word into […]
This last Saturday, I was given the privilege of speaking at a missions camp just outside of Vittoria, Italy. They gave me two 45-minute sessions, one for a Biblical teaching, and another to introduce our ministry work. There were about 50 or 60 people in attendance, mostly younger people from around Europe, including Italy, France, […]
At the inaugural ceremonies on Saturday, Marco showed a few Before and After pictures that I thought would be good to share as well. Even these Before pictures show the building after tons (literally!) of the trash inside had been removed, so it is difficult to get a true picture of the scale of work […]
This last Saturday, our Italian partners, working together as one organization called Missione Agape, coming together from nine different churches, opened a new Community Center that will be available to people from the immediate community, children, immigrants, and many others. We have worked to try to help make it a reality and are proud and […]