Church planting advance in the Balkans

September 22, 2017

Gene leaves tomorrow for Belgrade, Serbia, then drives four hours to Leskovac, in the south, close to Macedonia. He will be working with Ritch Trca, a colleague who lives in Prague. You may remember that Linda and I went on an exploratory trip last fall to meet the Roma (Gypsy) church planters there.

From September 25-29, we will be equipping about 30 Roma leaders interested in Church Planting. Miki Kamba, a Roma leader from central Serbia, is inviting people from Balkan ethnic groups that were once enemies, to join hands for a new church planting movement. He will be coordinating, leading worship, and doing some teaching. Please pray for the three of us. On our skype call this week Miki said that forty people had signed up and they are still waiting to hear from Roma from other Balkan countries.

Please pray that everyone that God wants involved in a new wave of church planting for Serbia and the region, would be there. Pray for Miki Kamba.

Please pray for God to provide $1,320 which represents less than 5euros a day for each trainee and covers their noon meal, manual and translation/interpretation into the Serb language.

From there Gene and Ritch go to Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is a fascinating, and spiritually needy place. Fifty-five percent of the people are Muslim, descendants of families converted under the Ottoman Empire. The minority Christians are mostly Orthodox and Catholic. There are only 3,000 Evangelical Christians in this country. The capital, Sarajevo, with a population of 350,000, has only three visible churches and a smattering of house churches. Our missionaries went to help with physical and spiritual needs at the end of the Balkan war, and stayed to form a small house church movement. Now they are passing the baton to the Bosnian leaders. It will primarily be a ministry to help missionaries transition to a new role, and pass the baton to Bosnians. We also will discuss plans to further support the local house church leaders with training and coaching.

Thank you for standing with us in prayer. We are seeing much fruit. Ten years ago, Gene developed a Spanish Church Planting Course that continues to be used by God to impact Latin America. Seven years ago, we helped leaders from Africa develop their own curriculum for equipping African church planters. It is now used in 31 countries of Africa, and 20,000 have been through at least one of the levels of training. To God be the glory!

The Roma don’t have much. We would like to help by providing $1,320 to cover a noon meal each day, and the cost for interpreters and materials. If you are able to help, please contribute whatever God puts on your heart, one of the three ways indicated below. Thank you so much for helping us equip church planters and leaders in this region that has been devastated and fragmented by war.

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Gene Wilson