This month, I had a great opportunity to attend the Nordic- Baltic Church Planting Conference held here in Rīga. The Baptist Union of Latvia hosted the event and I was able to help out with some of the technology and graphic design needs. Over 100 church leaders came from 10 different countries (including speakers from the US and UK) to talk about opportunities and challenges in church planting for those in the Nordic-Baltic region.

It was an interesting and diverse conference that allowed me to see many of the strategies being used to plant churches in Europe. For two days (Thursday afternoon through Saturday morning), we had six main sessions, several mini-talks, and workshops. One of my favorite parts of the conference was a workshop led by Jacob Remmel from 3D Church in Estonia. They are a relatively young church and I was grateful for Jacob sharing how the Lord is using their church and many of the lessons that they have learned through the process. He talked about how many churches have “gaps” along their discipleship paths:

• For some churches, that gap is between at the very beginning – people do not know how to get involved in the church because there are no entry points into the life of the church family.
• Other churches have a gap between entry level programs like Youth or Alpha Course but then there is a gap between those entry-level programs and becoming involved in the life of the congregation and growing as disciples.
• Finally, some churches whose philosophy of ministry is seeker-driven face a gap between building seeker-driven programs and then taking those seekers and helping them become disciples who are giving (time, talents, and gifts) and not only consuming in the life of the church family.

I have oversimplified some of his points, but it was a very helpful workshop that was very thought-provoking as he discussed how they faced great opposition, a lacking of focus, and burnout in their early years. Some of my take-aways from the conference were:

• Staying Simple – One of the themes I heard in the conference was the importance of staying simple. If you want to reproduce small groups, leaders, or churches, you must work to keep it simple and reproducible.
• Empowering Leaders – One speaker said, “To be a pastor who does not raise up leaders is like being a fisherman who does not like to touch fish.” In essence, a pastor who does not raise up leaders is not really pastoring. Empowering leaders who build teams and develop their own leaders is an important part of pastoring.
• Dreaming Big – One of the speakers asked if we are willing to pray that 10% of our city would come to know God. For many of us, that number might not sound like much, but it is. I was able to talk with a church planter in a former Soviet bloc who helped plant a church and after 6 years they only have 25 members. The soil is hard and discouragement is real, but our God wants to see people come to know Him and worship Him in spirit and truth. Do I ask God for things that only He can do?
• Refugees – We had a speaker share about his work among refugees and it brought me to tears many times. It was heart-wrenching to hear the horrendous, almost indescribable, nightmares that they are fleeing and the difficulties they face along the way. He shared one story of a Muslim couple that came to his church for worship. After service, he asked them why they had come to a Christian church. They replied that during their difficult journey they were met by Christians who loved them, cared for them, and helped them along the way. They wanted to understand what kind of God could love them in these ways.
• Defining Words – One of my other take aways from the conference is that it is important to define what we mean, even the very simple things. Too often we use words like “God,” “gospel,” “church,” and  “disciple,” and take for granted that everyone knows what we mean by that word. It is important for us to go to Scripture and let God’s Word define what these words mean. While our methods should be held with an open hand in our ever-changing world, the truths of God’s Word must be the foundation for what we do and why we do it.

Here are some pictures from the conference. I was busy running the computer and projector, so there aren’t as many pictures as I would have hoped.