We arrived in the Czech Republic yesterday after spending some time with a missionary family in Vienna. Dave and I are partnering with Lance Roberts, a missionary sent by Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. He has been in the Czech Republic for twelve years and has been serving as an assistant pastor in Kroměříž since 2008. He serves as the dean of Český biblický institut, which exists to train pastors for local church ministry. Lance’s passion is to build a ministry around strong local churches, trusting that where churches are strong and faithful, multiplication will happen as God intends.
I’ll be teaching on corporate worship at a church in Brno this Saturday. I’ll also be teaching identical content at churches in Slovakia and Prague on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. The focus of the conference is helping laymen and pastors understand what it means to worship God and how we can pursue corporate worship that is acceptable to God. I’ll be teaching on biblical theology of worship, choosing songs, preparing services, and building music ministries that unify God’s people around the gospel. [edit: just for fun, here is the pamphlet we’ll be handing out to the attendees. …ok, and if you don’t read Czech, here’s the English version.]
We spent today with Lance, the pastor of his church, and a ministry intern. Our time together was both encouraging and heartbreaking. Believers are hungry for solid teaching from God’s Word, but churches are small and struggling. The Czech Republic is statistically the most atheistic nation in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have no access to a local church that preaches the gospel. The entire nation is lost in spiritual darkness. Many congregations have no pastor and no teaching.
Please pray that the next four days would be a time of great encouragement for believers and church leaders in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Pray for clarity in communication. Pray for grace as we confront existing corporate worship practices that are contradictory to Scripture. And pray that God would send forth more laborers into His harvest. I am seeing it with my own eyes: the harvest is plentiful beyond comprehension!
– Dan