Starting the journey
Friends, let the journey begin, of Aaron becoming a church planter in Sweden! Fiskebäcks Mission Church has agreed to be the mother church to the new church plant. The ECC is in the same place, sending me as a new project missionary, who feels as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders. Yet, we are waiting now for the month of May to come and for the Swedish Mission Church (Svenska Missionskyrkan, SMK) to decide on this church planting project as well.
I mean, think of it an American pastor sent from the ECC to Sweden as a missionary. The Swedish Mission Church accepting him as a pastor and then making him a church planter..wow God is crazy, who else could think this up, really!!?! I left my Minnesota, Swedish background home to be an international youth pastor and now I am in the thick of it, being asked to start a new church. Where did that come from? I’m from small town Minnesota, who am I? This is a question I often ask. But as I look at this picture above of last Easter, almost a year ago…I see a congregation in worship. During last Easter I was honored to be a part of the baptism of two of our international students in this Swedish Church. Why would a Swedish congregation be baptizing Chinese people? Why, because God is making His kingdom come, not to us, but to Him.
The churches that we know are much more than just Sunday services, they are to be a reality of God’s Kingdom here and now. I hope that when we are sitting in the pews of our churches through out the world that we are not waiting for God’s Kingdom to come, but instead actively being a part of it already today. Our calling is NOT to sit in a waiting room, but to live out our faith WITH the people who are in and around us everyday. We’re not called to love people just so they come to faith, though our hope is that they do come to faith, but we love people because we love people. Just as God loves us because He loves us. His love is a demonstration and the source of our love. And now my journey of learning to love people, my journey of walking with others in God’s Kingdom, finally takes a serious new turn: church planting. My hopes are that this new church plant has less to do with starting a Sunday service than it does with being a part of the Kingdom of God and living it out and having others join in. We learn as we go, because as we read several times in the Gospel books, “the Kingdom of God is near.”
Last Easter’s service at Fiskebäcks Mission Church sparked something in me. A fire started….and a new journey has begun…and I simply wonder what is in store???
