“Like a box a’chocolates”…BCOM Frosh Acts Class 2012

BCOM Frosh Acts Class Spring 2012

You know the rest of the Forest Gump line…

“ya never know wha’cher gonna git.”

As usual, I have another great group of keen students who hang on every word. I feel incredibly fortunate to have a hand in shaping their lives and future ministries. They have given me two exciting mornings. Could there be anything better job? I think not!

The Other Side of the Boat

Reaching Host Cultures

Evangelicals should know that after 1850, the spiritual climate in Europe changed drastically. The waning of the effects of the Reformation along with the rise of the Enlightenment in Western Europe and atheistic communism in Eastern Europe has made the continent overall highly resistant to the Gospel. European anti-theism is as resistant as Islam.

For almost two hundred years evangelical Christians have attempted to penetrate such countries as Spain, Germany, France, Italy and even the UK (where vital Christianity once found a home) with biblical faith. We might now have to say with the disciples, “We have fished all the night long and have caught nothing.”  With this admission Jesus might respond with, “All right boys, throw your net on the other side of the boat.”

OTHER SIDE OF THE BOAT 1

Remove American paternalism by bottom-up support for national leaders and partnering with pre-evangelized immigrant populations regardless of minor theological nuances.

This is what the Lord showed me some fourteen years ago when I first began working in Italy. I was often told by veteran missionaries that Europe is called the “graveyard of missions.” Many Americans who have answered the call to Europe return home after four years, never to return. This caused me to wonder, should we be fishing on the other side of the boat? Should we perhaps be doing something different than what we have always done without apparent success?

With numerous mission agencies and denominations actively working, statistics were not convincing anyone that we were making a difference in the religious landscape of any region of Europe. Often we were told that 35,000 villages and cities in France did not have one evangelical Christian. This could be said of almost all of the other countries as well, and with 749 million people in Europe, what achievements we can point to are a drop in the proverbial bucket.

What would it mean to “fish on the other side of the boat”? There were several thoughts that eventually emerged. First, it occurred to me that perhaps our American evangelistic models would not work in a post-Christian, postmodern culture where there is little, if any, Christian memory and what memories were held were not accurate. The “hit and run” evangelism methods of tract and literature distribution, street mimes, and attractional/invitational church models proved useless in suspicious and religiously cynical cultures. In most nations, American missionaries were being viewed as right-wing, Republican, politically conservative people who didn’t have  REAL jobs and this perhaps placed us in –E-2 relationships to those we were attempting to win.

Though slow going, it was clear to me that we must win people through authentic relationships because Europeans would likely never trust the message until they had confidence in the messenger. The gospel must be explained, caught not taught, and hard-sell methods would not work. So, to win Europeans would require a steady investment in the lives of individuals. Evangelism in Europe is more about the individual trees than the collective forest.

At that time (2003) I was in Trieste (Italy) working alongside American mission groups that had a two-pronged approach to evangelism: stationed American missionaries and short-term evangelism teams that were shuttled in, armed with a few badly rehearsed mimes and printed Italian renditions of “The Four Spiritual Laws” or “Bridge to Life” tracts, at great expense and little effect.

The short-term teams from North American are a good idea from one standpoint. Young, inexperienced Americans need exposure to the opportunity and complexities of missionary service. I believe in mission trips as the first step in acquiring a vision and heart for fulfilling the “Great Commission.”  Still, with all of the millions of dollars spent in air fare to bring them in, if you ask me if it makes much of an impact, I would have to say that the impact is negligible if not almost measureless in non-need based societies.

Frustrated by what I was seeing (or not seeing), I began to pray about another approach that might be more fruit producing. After a brief trip to visit an Italian/ Dominican couple, church planters in Naples, I was told of another couple who had just moved from Bologna to Parma with the idea of planting a church there. Just before leaving their home for the airport, Gianni said, “If you are ever in Parma, you should meet our friends Aldo and Mariela Cerasino. He is from Puglia and she is from Santo Domingo.” Something resonated and I felt as though I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Here it is! This is the other side of the boat.” With few days left in Italy before returning home to the U.S., I called Parma and spoke to Aldo Cerasino and his wife Mariela. I asked if I might travel by train down to Parma and meet with them to discuss what God had laid upon their hearts.

The next morning I was on the train and in their apartment by afternoon. They were hardly settled from their recent move, and Aldo was still working in Bologna (2 hours away from Parma). It was the hottest day of the summer, and while we talked on the balconetta with cups of expresso I learned of their interest in starting a different kind of church and mission. With thousands of Latinos, many with Italian ancestry and citizenship, moving into the region they were confident that they could start a Spanish speaking church and from this beginning train the Latino people to reach the Italian host culture.

In 2004 we began this congregation of people from Dominican Republic, Peru, Columbia, Puerto Rico and several other central and South American countries as well as the islands of the Caribbean. In all, there were seventeen adults present at the first service. There were no musicians and only a few plastic chairs for women and children while others stood around the room through the entire service, held in a store front shop on the bottom floor of an apartment building.

The early days, 2004

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BOAT 2

Bottom-up, not top-down. Working toward Evangelical reconciliation and unity.

January 2012

Today, less than eight years later, there is a thriving congregation of about 250 in that church. Sunday attendance averages somewhere between 140 and 180 people. Gruppo Cristiano Latino Americano has not been intimidated by the host culture; they’ve focused on moving beyond their own ethnicity and reaching Italians with the gospel. These are people providentially situated by God, ready with the language and living in the culture, working and studying alongside Italian nationals. Though the name of the church reflects its origins, it is for all intents and purposes no longer Spanish. The language of the church is, for the most part, Italian and most of those recently baptized are from Italy.

Director, Francesco Abortivi

For the purpose of training their own congregation and believers from other evangelical churches, the church launched Progetto Archippo, a ministry training school for those interested in serving the Lord in ministry, missions and the marketplace. Under the leadership of Francesco Abortivi, ACCI, and Gruppo Cristiano Latino Americano, this training school has partnered with more than fifteen international and national mission agencies. You can learn more about this see the website listing at the bottom of the page.

The motivation for embracing the wide variety of missionary organizations was another example of fishing on the other side of the boat. In Italy, as in other nations, top-down, competitive, sectarian isolationism has left the evangelical church throughout Europe fractured. This reality has caused people confusion since evangelicals seem to all be saying something different from each other.

For this reason evangelicals are viewed in one of two ways. They are either seen as a foreign religious cult – something akin to the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons – or as a religion for immigrants, not the native Italian. Gruppo Cristiano Latino Americano and Progetto Archippo are Christ-centered and Kingdom- conscious ministries committed to Christian reconciliation. They hold to the persuasion of John the Baptist … that it’s the bridegroom who should receive His bride, not a particular church or group.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BOAT 3

No pat answers. Stepping up and responding directly to the questions people are really asking.

ACCI, Progetto Archippo and SES at Parma 2011

Finally, Progetto Archippo came to the conclusion that Christians were perhaps too busy answering the questions that Europeans are not asking. For this reason they decided to partner with Southern Evangelical Seminary and their ministries – TEAM (Truth Evangelism Apologetics Mission) and Ratio Christi, a growing campus apologetics ministry, to address the real questions that trouble Europeans about Christian faith. While SES and Progetto Archippo both know that we should place no confidence in answering people’s questions, it was clear that people are intellectually biased and would not trust what we had to say if we dodged or couldn’t answer their legitimate questions. As Ray Ciervo puts it, SES is committed to making the way straight by removing the obstacles out the way.

We well understand that Europe is no longer dominantly Roman Catholic – a religious or even a spiritual culture – but rather has surrendered to the philosophies of Darwinian naturalism, materialism, Marxist atheism, rationalism, relativism, existentialism, nihilism and others. Heavy-handed and muddled religious dogmas, unsubstantiated religious claims and confidence in science have caused the European cultures to entirely reject the Christian faith as a viable topic of intellectual discourse. In order to fish on the other side of the boat we must step up to the intellectual challenge of answering these empty philosophies. Ordinary people must be equipped to defend the truth by adequately responding to the false assumptions of Europeans mired in hear-say, intellectual dishonesty and popular anti-theism.

For more information visit these sites:

www.adventive.ca

www.progettoarchippo.org

www.gruppocristiano.it

www.ses.edu

“Your old men shall dream, dreams…”

A look at the year ahead…

One enormous three-month trip this year!

My 37th trip in thirteen years, I think?

This Christmas will be quiet for us while John, Amy and the boys make their way to Minnesota to be with Jeremy and Rachel’s and Matt and Noemi’s families. They were hoping to see Sky and Angie as well but apparently their work schedules over the holidays prevent them from making the trip. We would love to be there but Jeanne  had a recent visit and I will be in Bloomington at Bethany College of Missions from January 30 to February tenth so I’ll get my turn.

March and Surgery…

It is said that people will only change when they hurt enough to change. Well, I’ve had it with my rotator cuff. If you haven’t had this problem don’t hope for it. For about five years I have not had the ability to lift weight above my head without incredible pain. This is not good when you travel lugging fifty pound suitcases that you have to hoist over your head in crowded airplanes and trains. After missing night after night of sleep, I’m biting the bullet and gettun ‘er (a mid-western plains word) fixed. They say it will take about three months to get back to normal so if I want to keep doing ministry, I’m going to have to be able to travel and sleep (sometimes in uncomfortable beds).

Alessandro is coming in March or April! 

Alessandro is an Italian, ACCI missionary serving in Italy and Africa. What a story! Alessandro is less than four feet tall but nearly forty years of age. Born with a brain tumor that left him dwarfed, Alessandro found the Lord through “Christ is the Answer” in Palermo, Sicily. Since then he has been fearlessly preaching the gospel. As often as finances will allow he works in the slums of  south Africa among the poor, prisoner, disabled and AIDS patients, many of whom have no hope.

Major outreach to Europe.  

SLOVENIA…  Because of the cost I will be making one long trip to Europe. I expect to leave in mid-August and go to Slovenia where I will preach and do evangelism in the northeast corner of the country. Two our newest missionaries, Andrej and Lidja will be planting a new church in that region. I hope to be joined by Pastor Chris Pachalczak of Grassroots Church in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  I will return to Ljubljana, the nation’s capital where, again I will be preaching in the church there.

ITALY…

Trieste, Venice and the Veneto

At the end of August I will go to see our missionaries, Caleb and Linda in Trieste and then head to northern Italy, Trento to meet with Pastor Pippo and my friends in that region, among them Belgians, Emile and Imra. We will discuss future possibilities for Southern Evangelical Seminary to serve in the area.

Citta di Castello

Next, I will train down to Bologna, Arezzo and finally bus my way to see missionaries Luke and Dawn serving in the beautiful mountain village Citta di Castello. I always had a dream of recruiting others to serve in Italy and by God’s grace we now have over ten committed to reaching Italians!

Parma 

Before going to London to meet Jeanne, I will spend several days in Parma helping the team there organize for the outreach concert planned from the end of September.

London, Scotland, Ireland and Wales 

Sometime around the first week of September, Jeanne will come over to England to join me. We will spend about ten days visiting friends and Christian workers in the UK and our friends Mike and Jane have offered to be our cultural informers, driving us in their car. I’m always finding places to teach and preach as I travel along.

London

Once we are back in London, I will be organizing with the church there, Eltham Green Community Church, our first weekend outreach concert featuring old Canadian friends,  father and son musical duo, Fred and Joel Williams. By doing this we aspire to take the gospel in a relevant way into the proximity of the unchurched. Eltham is located  in southeast London, one of the socially disordered and neediest burrows in the London area.

Back to Parma, Italy

Taking Jeanne and the others we will go for  week to Parma and provide another outreach concert in cooperation with Gruppo Cristiano Latino Americano. Hopefully other churches will join them in inviting people to the Festival.

Back to Ljubljana, Slovenia

We will spend another week with  Binkostna Cerkev, the largest evangelical church in this country of  two million people. There are only 1,000 Bible Christians in Slovenia.

Oslo and Vale, Norway

I am expected in Norway in what they call “week forty-two.” This means that I need to arrive in Norway by October eighth. In all I will log three months of flying on planes and riding trains. As the musicians return to Canada, Jeanne will either come with me to Norway or go back to Charlotte until I finish teaching at Kraftskolen in Vale and the GaUt Centre in the Oslo area.

Please pray for me as I make this commitment to ministry and expense.

When you help us, you help others…

Many of our fellow workers and friends have little money so we are doing our best to help our missionaries and the projects they are working on from training new workers, planting new congregations to building facilities for future growth. Besides our own living and ministry expenses, last year we gave away $9,000 to European gospel expansion.

The Europe Outreach Concert Project! 

Jeanne and I have budgeted as much as $7,000 for concerts in these three cities, London, Parma and Ljubljana. The budget includes assistance on travel, advertising and rentals. We invite  you to invest in this and reap with us the eternal harvest. It is amazing what has happened in a mere thirteen years. We have seen hundreds “turn from the power of Satan to God and from darkness to light.” More and more missionaries are being recruited , trained and deployed. ACCI’s influence around the world is multiplying!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas,

Tony and Jeanne Hedrick

My students at SBI Kraftskolen, Vale, Norway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ5ghr4IXps

More inspiring news from ACCI and Progetto Archippo in Italy

We have a terrific team in Italy and it is growing all of the time. In Trieste we have Caleb and Linda, Citta di Castello, Luke and Dawn, Parma Aldo and Mariela as well as Francesco and Alessia. We also have Alessandro an Italian from Palermo who  works in Italy and South Africa. Soon, Brad and Julia will find their spot. But seeing ministry grow and people coming to faith isn’t the only good thing going on, the church is also being strengthened by people like Luke and Ann Hinrichs who make trips encouraging believers. More recently we have partnered with our friends from Southern Evangelical Seminary and now we have another five to seven leaders taking part in our work in Parma. Just recently the Director of Progetto Archippo, Francesco wrote with encouraging news. Progetto Archippo, a ministry training center (supported by about fifteen mission agencies in Italy)  began  about two years ago with most of the attendees coming from our local church, Gruppo Crisitano Latino Americano but now we are seeing a big change where believers from other churches and communities are becoming involved.

Francesco, Director of Progetto Archippo

Look at what he writes in an email received just yesterday… I quickly share some good news…  The last 2 seminars of Archippo finally paid themselves. I’m confident this trend will be confirmed with the next ones…  The number of participants from other cities has increased (12 last seminar).

Yesterday I held a short seminar on evangelization at a Brazilian church in Reggio Emilia. They want to reach Italians and needed basic apologetics training. It was very good and said they’ll call me again.

In January (Pastor) Aldo and I will go to Sicily where I’ll hold a seminar on basic apologetics and multicultural evangelization and Aldo will talk on Sunday morning. We hope this will be the first one of many we’ll organize in Sicily.

After many years of thinking/praying about it we finally have a Christian group at the University. I contacted my friends at GBU (Intervarsity), gathered the University students of our church and we had 8 people at the first meeting. A promising start.

We’ll try to organise a public seminar in January when a group of SES students will be visiting with Simon Brace.

_____________________________________

Ted, me and Simon

Just recently Jeanne and I had lunch here in Charlotte with Ted W. and Simon B. two leaders from Southern Evangelical Seminary. We discussed future developments in our strategies to reach Europe from Oslo in the north and Parma in the south.

_______________________________________

To learn more about ACCI: Visit www.adventive.ca

Southern Evangelical Seminary at:  http://www.ses.edu/

Progetto Archippo at: http://www.tredispace.com/archippo/

Meet the lads…

Dan, Tano, Brad, Sam and John

It is interesting that boundaries from country to country, denomination to denomination vary widely as to what constitutes a “good” Christian. In some countries like Norway, among my present associates there is no drinking, no smoking and so forth, while in Italy, wine and beer with supper is quite normal and then in England one may go so far as to have  Bible studies in the local pub with a Guiness in hand (this makes it slightly difficult to turn the pages of their Bibles). Of course these observations are only generalities but this what I have encountered. I don’t know quite what to conclude so I don’t criticize any spiritual mores as long as believers are kind and exhibit Christian disposition, character and integrity. When it comes to lifestyles, I have seen very severe believers that were quite holy on the outside but on the inside as nasty as could be. Jesus, Paul and the New Testament are all pretty clear about what boundaries matter. The overiding  principle is not to cause another brother to stumble and Paul said that if eating meat would cause his brother to stumble he wouldn’t touch it so long as he lived.

The Pharisees were very insistent on the details concerning certain observances, like special days, washings, cleansings, dietary laws and the like. Though strong drink is indeed dangerous (I am not advocating drinking at all), Jesus on the other hand made it clear that foods and drinks didn’t defile a person but rather that which is on the inside – that which came out of the heart. Paul went on to say that the kingdom had nothing to do with what a person ate or drank but the kingdom was actually a matter of righteousness, peace and joy in the holy ghost. The kingdom was not a matter of hair splitting over religious specifics.

Now, I say all of this because, while I am not an ale or stout drinker myself, some of my English brothers are and so we spent a couple of hours at the Tudor Barn discussing the matter of extending the gospel to the citizens of Eltham. All of this was done over a pint or two.

Leadership and Vision Seminar, Etham…

Leadership Seminar at the Tudor Barn

One of the reasons I came around this way was to do a seminar on Leadership. Pastor John Watson picked me up at Eltham Station, took me to house, fed me a good supper and while he was out, his wife Janna and I laughed our heads off watching comedians Brian Regan and Tim Hawkins  – if you haven’t seen these guys, you need to Google or You Tube them immediately. I can’t think of two funnier people and apparently Janna thought so too. No one I know of laughs as hysterically as Janna does. The next day she could remember almost every line.

My watercolor of the Tudor Barn

On Saturday at ten we came together at the Tudor Barn for the seminar. There were about twenty in attendance. It is my guess that many greatly benefitted from the ideas presented as there was good interaction and feedback.

On Sunday morning I preached at the Eltham Green Community Church. It was a good time of worship and then following the service I treated ACCI missionaries Brad and Julia Frey (Brad is the youth pastor at Eltham Green and the Frey’s are candidates for Italy in about a year) and former BCOM students Tano and Angela Bellone. We were joined by guests Tom and Marcy McEvoy. Marcy is the daughter of Luciano and Marlene Cassandro of Parma, Italy. Luciano and Marlene are very dear friends in the Gruppo Cristiano Latino Americano congregation.

Eltham, Sunday morning

It was great to see Tom and Marcy again after about a year. I last saw them when they were married at a Villa outside of Parma last year. You can scroll back to the story and photographs of the entire affair on this site.  I was honored to be invited to preach the wedding sermon on that occasion. They obviously went to some trouble to come around to Eltham as they live some distance away.

The lunch crowd

Another of the things I love to do is connect people so now we have an entire network of new relationships between McEvoy’s,  the Bellone’s, Frey’s and Watson’s. It’s been a good day and I finish up tonight meeting with some of the guys at Tudor Barn as we have a drink and go over the weekend events.  

A quick stop in Chester…

The city center

On my way to London from Colwyn Bay, North Wales, I stopped in for the night at the city of Chester, England. They had suggested that I might find some good paintable images there (lots of tudor) so I gave it a try. Nate drove me over in

Dedicated to Queen Victoria 1897

the morning arriving around noon. I took a room at the Best Western, Westminster just across the road from the train station. Since the day was rather cloudy, I did walk about but couldn’t find anything worthy of a watercolor but did find an interesting city with loads of people all over the streets. Though nothing remarkable, here are a couple of the images.

A voice crying in the wilderness, Zion Pentecostal Evangelical

To Colwyn Bay in Wales…

What you might expect

For at least three years the Ussery’s have extended to me a standing invitation to come for a visit. Nate and Ali (Greenhalgh) Ussery were my students at Bethany College of Missions in Bloomington, Minnesota. After a period of time living in Bawtry, near Doncaster in England, they have for about three years  lived here on the coast North in Wales. Nate continues to work in Balkan reconciliation so he spends time in Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo and other nations of that ethnically and religiously divided region. 

Whar I'ad me bed

On Monday the 31st, I took a flight from Bologna, Italy to Stansted in the UK, caught trains, the underground, more trains and finally arrived at the Colwyn Bay station at around five in the evening. I was met by Ali and taken to the enormous home they share with her dad and mother Keith and Myra. The home sets straight across the road from the ocean so one might on a clear day see a hint of Ireland somewhere to the southeast.

In the morning after a good rest, we went out for a drive to see the countryside. Yes, Wales has a varied a beautiful countryside. I would love to have scheduled more time for photography. There are numerous and quaint hamlets at almost every turn.

 

The next day we spent time walking and stopping to pray at the UK’s smallest chapel. That afternoon Nate drove me down to Chester where I spent the night before boarding the train to London.

 

I arrived in London in a down pour and then had to navigate my way across the city to the other side and Eltham in the middle of rush hour. I have a word for you (especially older folks) don’t plan to do this with two suitcases. I lugged my cases in and out-of-doors and up and down one set of stairs after another. I finally made it to Eltham at around seven in the evening, then taken to Mike and Jane Haley’s for my billet. I sure needed a good sleep but I had eaten something that upset my stomach so for the entire night long I had no idea what to expect. I was up and down all night so I woke up exhausted and forced myself out of bed at eight, went over to visit Brad and Julia Frey’s only to find that I had to head back to the Haley’s and my bed. This I did and finally woke up after noon feeling much better.

“WeII, suppose we’ll know in five years.”

Socializing after a powerful service

Peter Ayling my mentor in my formative days could be slightly cynical. As an evangelist, I was always thrilled to report that this person or that received Jesus as their Savior to which he would often reply with this deflating line, “I suppose we’ll know in five years.” Like Peter, I’ve learned not to get too excited by visible results. Over the past forty years I’ve seen many people only make temporary decisions and have become lost to the kingdom (if they ever were really in it at all) along the way.

If we were to decide my effectiveness in Europe by visible results I would be a very productive Christian worker. Yesterday morning, for instance, I preached to about one hundred fifty people and at the time of active witness about ten people responded to a call for repentance and faith. Hopefully tears remain to be an evidence of earnest repentance but this cannot be trusted either as I have seen the emotionally unmoved, cold-faced decision maker stand firm while the one, almost hysterical regarding their sin has washed out. Good beginnings are never a guarantee of successful endings.

Anyhow, leadership was quite pleased with the message and response with some they had been praying for making a visible acknowledgement of their condition. “I suppose we’ll know in five years.”

Tor Erik giving testimony

Nevertheless, I doubt if preaching almost anywhere in America I would see this response from a single message in a group of this size so I am quite relieved to see that the Spirit of God appears to be moving, convicting men and women of sin, righteousness and judgment to come.