Frontliners...

As I mentioned, I went to Budapest to work with Ron and Ben in doing some initial training for a round of church planters who will be seeking to plant culturally relevant, seeker-sensitive churches in Budapest. Because of the urban nature of the environment, and the fact that the people who live in Budapest are both largely multi-national (or have a global perspective), post-modern, and used to contemporary things, these men and women face a lot of the same challenges that GCC has successfully engaged or negotiated. My job, therefore, was going to be to do a brief overview of Purpose Driven principles, as well as how to establish a “profile” for who their church would be trying to reach. I talked about our “Granger Gary” general profile, talked about Saddleback’s “Saddleback Sam”, and how both Rick and Mark B set about surveying to identify how they would proceed with building their churches. In addition, the people here were asked to “sign on” for a 2 year “learning community” in which church-planting issues would be “workshopped” rather than “directly taught”, and to provide a network for one another that would allow them to build, encourage, and learn from/with each other. Please note that the two gentleman on the far right standing by me are both deaf (their names were Imrek and Odrian), and are planting churches among the deaf community in Budapest (about 5,000 people, by their estimation). They were delightful to be around, and had tremendous hearts for Jesus. They were also assisted by Odrianna, the dark haired, thin lady who provided sign interpretation for them throughout the training. You can be praying for each of these people as they set out either as individuals or in teams to begin the process of impacting their communities, and can pray as well that Ben and Ron would be able to support them well.