So we as we leave Gjakova I can’t help feel a deep sense of sadness and regret. Not regret about anything that has happened or sadness about how it has all played out. But just a sense that God is on the move in our fair city, that his army is advancing, and that there’s till work to be done.
But all things for a time and all times for a reason or something, so we move into the unknown. It’s Stivi and silemon (as we have become known) first stop Macedonia. The landscape might not change but these neighbours are worlds apart, motorways, road signs, constant electricity and the promise of MacDonald’s greet’s us on the other side of the border. We meet up with the wonderful bowers and out what it’s all about.
The issues are similar, high unemployment, alcohol, drugs, money. The same issues batter us the world over but what we learned in Macedonia was an interesting lesson. As its summer hear, the Glasnost 24-7 prayer community is mostly quite, at least this week, not so much is happening. However as we carefully question and observe the Bower in his habitat we see this is about friends. Friends, first and foremost of God, as we are invited to be, but then. As they strive to find authentic Christian values and live as a community of likeminded people with the same ideals, we see friendship. Phone calls hear, a football game to watch there, a few drinks late one night and this is the foundations of the work here. Its amazing to see and hear how this lowly bunch of misfits who didn’t fit into any of the forms of church offered to them have developed their own unique form of Christ centred community and it works, its strong, its finding its feet but. It’s the friends of friends simple living how Christ intended them to, finding how that can be authentic and pulling in the people around them in the same situations.
This is how it’s happening and it’s working
I’m sure we will learn more lessons, I’m sure we will see other ideas but for now as we stood in various places above the city of Skopje intreged as to Gods plan for this city, it seems that this large metropolitan mass has a network beneath it, working in the back ground in simple conversations, in little meetings and in the darkness. Simply doing, simply loving and simply being.
Thanks for having us guys.
But all things for a time and all times for a reason or something, so we move into the unknown. It’s Stivi and silemon (as we have become known) first stop Macedonia. The landscape might not change but these neighbours are worlds apart, motorways, road signs, constant electricity and the promise of MacDonald’s greet’s us on the other side of the border. We meet up with the wonderful bowers and out what it’s all about.
The issues are similar, high unemployment, alcohol, drugs, money. The same issues batter us the world over but what we learned in Macedonia was an interesting lesson. As its summer hear, the Glasnost 24-7 prayer community is mostly quite, at least this week, not so much is happening. However as we carefully question and observe the Bower in his habitat we see this is about friends. Friends, first and foremost of God, as we are invited to be, but then. As they strive to find authentic Christian values and live as a community of likeminded people with the same ideals, we see friendship. Phone calls hear, a football game to watch there, a few drinks late one night and this is the foundations of the work here. Its amazing to see and hear how this lowly bunch of misfits who didn’t fit into any of the forms of church offered to them have developed their own unique form of Christ centred community and it works, its strong, its finding its feet but. It’s the friends of friends simple living how Christ intended them to, finding how that can be authentic and pulling in the people around them in the same situations.
This is how it’s happening and it’s working
I’m sure we will learn more lessons, I’m sure we will see other ideas but for now as we stood in various places above the city of Skopje intreged as to Gods plan for this city, it seems that this large metropolitan mass has a network beneath it, working in the back ground in simple conversations, in little meetings and in the darkness. Simply doing, simply loving and simply being.
Thanks for having us guys.
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