Connect Together Gospel Churches

Tomorrow we'll spend the whole day in Ravenna where the local Baptist church
has organised a Get Together Day!






4 local churches will come for a day of fellowship and envisioning to develop a Gospel vision for partnership.
Alongside the Ravenna Baptist Church and our Impatto A Budrio church-plant, there will be the Team Church in Forlì and the Acts29 church-plant La Rocca in Imola.

Jonathan Gilmore will preach in the morning, then we'll have a bring and share fellowship lunch together.

In the afternoon we'll get to know each other by playing together some games and sharing the stories of our churches and communities.

Pray for this day and that more Gospel Partnerships will be established in Italy.

Mid-week Prayer Meeting

Tomorrow evening we'll have a mid-week prayer meeting in our house.
Our desire is to search the Lord guidance in everything we do, so to be led by His Wisdom
and His vision!

This week we'll pray specifically for the ministry of
Youth for Christ Italia. We'll focus on the work of the My Space Clubs for teens in Bologna and Budrio and for the Exch@nge Summer Camps.
We'll also pray for The Cage soccer ministry of the next week with a team from YfC Netherlands.

We'll have with us Ester, National director of YfC Italia and we'll also have a Skype with Kristin doing a short term experience with YfC Arabian Gulf.

Sunday afternoon service in Budrio - Acts 18:1-22

Tomorrow afternoon we'll have
our Sunday Family Time as
Impatto A Budrio church-plant.







Stefano will lead this Family Time focused on God's Word.
We'll continue our series on the Book of Acts engaging with
Acts 18:1-22 "A missional responsibility for today's Corinths".


Our desire is to grow in our comprehension of
the unity we have in Christ and our vision for reaching out the community of Budrio with a sense of the global reality of God's Kingdom.




We'll have a time of vision and prayer followed by a family bring&share meal together.






Matteo and Justin & Carli
will give a report about our presence at the Acts29          Europe 2015 Conference
in Nottingham UK.

For us from a little church-plant in Italy
it was great to be exposed
to great teaching and the
global vision and ministry of Acts 29 Network!

We really enjoyed to get connected to other like-minded brothers and sisters and we felt very
blessed by the hospitality of our old and new friends
who opened their homes
and drove us around!

Acts 29 Europe Conference Nottingham 2015

This morning Stefano is flying to
Nottingham UK to participate to
the Acts29 Europe 2015 Conference.

This year conference is particularly
exciting for us because 5 of our church-plant members will be there. Alongside Jonathan and Stefano, will join us also Justin & Carli and Matteo who has been recently baptised.

This year the topic is: Behold the Man and the main speakers will be: 

Darrin Patrick, Vice President of Acts29.
Darrin is the founder pastor of The Journey church in St. Louis, Missouri US and is the author of several books, including Church Planter: The Man, The Message, The Mission, and The Dude's Guide to Manhood: Finding True Manliness in a World of Counterfeits.

and Vaughan Roberts, Rector, St. Ebbe's Church Oxford, UK.
Vaughan is also President of the Proclamation Trust an organisation that encourages and equips Bible teachers.
He's also author of several books, including God's Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible (2002: Inter-Varsity Press), God's Big Design: Life as He Intends It To Be (2005: Inter-Varsity Press) and  

True Spirituality: The Challenge of 1 Corinthians for the Twenty-First-Century Church (2011: IVP) 

There will also be break-out sessions which will bring the gospel to bear on the nuts and bolts of planting healthy churches : getting started, raising funds, managing your time, training leaders and planters, preaching, evangelism & apologetics, community and discipleship and more:

-Starting from Scratch

-A Week in the Life

-Word and Community

-Keep Going

-Evangelism

-Persuasive Evangelism

-Islam in Europe

-Islam in Turkey

-Contextualisation in Post-Protestant Europe

-Contextualisation in Post-Catholic Europe

A great day of community!

Yesterday we had a great day of community as Impatto A Budrio church-plant.
After the service we had a lovely fellowship lunch at the local park.
During the meal we celebrated the Lord's Supper and it was great that some new friends stayed with us the whole time.

In the afternoon we joined the first "Walk for the Schools" to raise support for the primary and middle schools of Budrio.
It was great to talk with
many people and to support
our community.

Sunday Service - Acts 17:16-34

Tomorrow we'll have our morning service
to worship God together and to proclaim
His Word in Budrio.






We are glad for the Lord's provision of the main room in
Le Torri dell'Acqua, the theatre&modern art-gallery right at the centre of Budrio, well known as a cultural meeting point.

At 10.00 am we'll enjoy our time as a church family
with a lovely breakfast together.

At 10.30 am we'll continue with Stefano
our series on the Book of Acts.



Tomorrow we'll engage with Acts 17:16-34 and
together we'll see that to be missional means:
to participate,
to comprehend,
to contextualize.

Jenny will lead the time with
the little ones engaging on
the same topic, looking at Acts 17:23.


Together we'll see how to live and share the Gospel in Athens, for Paul meant to go where people were, to understand people's felt needs, and to be understandable to the community he was reaching!

 

Tomorrow, we'll continue to follow the pattern of Acts 1:8, so we'll start our service with a time of prayer characterized by thanksgiving and casting a vision for God's work in our community and globally.

We'll pray for the Acts29 Europe conference in Nottingham and for Jonathan, Stefano, Matteo, Justin and Carli from Budrio's church that will be at the conference.

We'll pray for "out neighbour",

and specifically for the "walk for the schools"

a walk around Budrio organized by the 

local walking group to raise money for 

local primary and middle schools.

As a church we decided to be part of this project. This will be a great opportunity to be part of our community and to have natural Gospel conversations with fellow walkers!

We'll also pray for "the end of the earth",

and specifically for Kristin that is serving in Dubai with YfC Arabian Gulf!

 

After the service we'll have a pic-nic fellowship lunch in the local park. During this time we'll also share the Lord's supper.

At 3pm we'll then join our friends for the 

"Walk for the Schools"!

Torah & Bologna: history, development and significance of the found scroll

In 2013 the University of Bologna has found the oldest complete scroll of the Torah which may have been written more than
850 years ago.

The university's Professor of Hebrew Mauro Perani says this would make it the oldest complete text of the Torah, and an object of extraordinary worth.

Dr. Mauro Perani and Dr. Daniel Block

Nuova Vita Church has organized a series of conferences with Bologna University on: Torah & Bologna: history, development and significance of the found scroll.

This evening at the first event in the main Uni conference hall will speak Dr. Mauro Perani and Dr. Daniel Block from Wheaton College.

Tomorrow there will be a conference in the Jewish Museum of Bologna on the ethical significance of the Torah with Dr. Block and Dr. Ahronee Nahmiel.

After there will be a lunch with Dr. Block and local pastors where Stefano will represent Budrio's church-plant.

On Saturday there will be a day conference in Nuova Vita Church on Moses' Gospel: 
Ethics & Theology in Deuteronomy.

Mid-week Bible Study - Gospel Change

Tomorrow evening we'll have our home-group mid-week Bible Study in Budrio.
We'll interact together with Unit 5:

The means of grace - the bible, prayer and community of the module Gospel Change 

from the Porterbrook course.
The goal of the Christian life is to be conformed to the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:29).
In this course we will learn how to apply the gospel to our everyday life.

 

It teaches Christians to connect the truth about God with our 'Monday-morning struggles'.
We will find out how change takes place as God’s truth is applied to the heart, and also how to effectively minster the gospel to those around us.

Sunday afternoon service in Budrio - Acts 16:6-17:15

Tomorrow afternoon we'll have
our Sunday Family Time as
Impatto A Budrio church-plant.







Stefano will lead this Family Time focused on God's Word.
We'll continue our series on the Book of Acts engaging with 16:6-17:15 "A missional strategy: households & cities".

Our desire is to grow in our comprehension of
the unity we have in Christ and our vision for reaching out the community of Budrio with a sense of the global reality of God's Kingdom.




We'll have a time of vision and prayer followed by a family bring&share meal together.




Later we'll have a Skype call with our friends from Cornerstone Church in Brighouse (UK) during their meeting @ the Café 139,
to update them about our work in Budrio!

Sunday Service in Forte Torre Church

Tomorrow morning we'll join our
friends from Forte Torre Church
for their Sunday service.

Stefano will preach from 
Acts 12:1-24.

We'll engage with God's Word,
to see if the Gospel
is really a Good News,
whether we see liberation 
from suffering,
or we experience God's love 
in suffering!  

My Space Budrio - Club for teens

Tomorrow afternoon we'll have our My Space Budrio club
to reach out local teens.
Jenny with Justin & Carli will interact with the
YfC Rock Solid material engaging kids with the theme:  
Because I Say So! Engaging with Authority.

Together we'll interact with kids to find out how we deal with authority.

We'll have fun playing different games to illustrate the point such as: "Strawsome", "Coin of Destiny" and "Beat the teacher".
We'll see that there are some people who have authority and who are easy to respect.
Other people in authority don’t seem to command any respect at all.
We’ll be thinking about how we should treat people
in authority and how to handle it when those people just annoy us.

We'll also see how often we find that rules
can be really annoying. Sticking to rules
can be hard work and confusing.
So why do we bother with rules?

Or how should we respond when we don't think that the person we’re supposed to respect deserves it?




We'll engage with Ephesians 6:1-9 seeing how God's Word challenges us whether we are in a position of authority or under-authority, whether we are parents or children.
We'll ask ourselves, do we need a final Authority? Why?

Youth for Christ Italy: Board Meeting

Tomorrow morning Stefano will be at the National Board meeting of YfC Italy.

Please pray for all the board members to be led by God's wisdom and vision in dealing with the review of last year activities and especially for YfC Italy vision, goals and strategies for next year and the longer terms!


In the afternoon we'll have the annual meeting of all the associated from around Italy.
It will be a great opportunity to share our vision and prayer challenges!

Budrio town-hall meeting for kids' 2015 summer

This afternoon in Budrio's auditorium the town-hall has invited local parents to present all the activities available this summer for their children.

We've also been
invited to present the
English Sport Camp Exch@nge organized in partnership between our ImpattoABudrio church-plant and
Youth for Christ Italy.


When last year we've been invited to this meeting,
there were about 80 parents!

Join us in praying for this opportunity the Lord is opening for us in order to serve our community and proclaim the Gospel to young people!

Video of last year Exch@nge 2014 Budrio Camp

Baptismal Service Pictures

Some pictures of the Baptismal Service we had on Easter Sunday.

We've been really blessed by the Lord
in listening to the testimonies of
Matteo and Maura,
and the love of families and
friends from nearby churches!