International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP 2014) - Bologna Event

The second Sunday of November is set apart internationally to remember and pray for the persecuted church, through the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP).

Tomorrow morning we'll have a service in Nuova Vita Church in Bologna where 5 local churches will join together.
The focus will be to be challenged in our approach to the persecution Christ church is suffering, by His radical love.

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" 

Matthew 5:43-44 (ESV)

In the afternoon we'll meet together in Chiesa Tempo di Grazia a Bologna,
to pray specifically for those countries
where the church is most persecuted.
Every church will present a focus on a country such as: Iraq, Syria and Nigeria.

Matteo, from our church Impatto A Budrio,
will introduce the situation in the Islamic State ISIS and 3 prayer points both for the Christians persecuted and for the persecutors.

Today’s greatest untold story is that more than 100 million Christians worldwide face persecution for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Daily Christians in countries such as Eritrea, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Sudan and Sri Lanka face imprisonment, violence and even death.

IDOP is a time set apart for us to remember thousands of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world who suffer persecution, simply because they confess Jesus Christ as Lord.

Porterbrook - Campus Bologna plenary session

Tomorrow from 3.30 to 7.00 pm
in Nuova Vita Church we'll have the
plenary session for students of the
foundation and advanced years of
Porterbrook - Campus Bologna.

Foundation Year 2 students
will interact with the module
The Bible in Missional Perspective,
led by Gianpaolo, pastor of Forte Torre.

In this session, students will interact with these units:
7. The method established - a people
8. Failure and remedy - one man for a people
9. The story continues - a people

The Bible is the story of God's plan and purpose to redeem a people for himself. This is how God wants to be known.
This course will teach you to understand how the Bible fits together around this theme. It will show you how Jesus fulfills God's salvation plan and how we fit into God's purposes as the Church. The course will introduce you to biblical theology in a way that will reshape your life around the gospel.

Advanced Year 3 students will interact with the module Evangelism and Social Action,
led by Stefano co-pastor of ImpattoABudrio.

In this session, students will interact with these units:
7. Evangelising The Heart
8. Communities Of Grace
9. Communities of Welcome

Social action flows out of a transformed heart.
The gospel word produces communities who care for their neighbourhoods. Learn how social action and evangelism belong together without collapsing one into the other.

To illustrate the difference between a Community of Performance and a Community of Grace, we'll watch this video:

Sunday Evening Family Time

Tomorrow evening we'll our bimonthly Sunday Evening Family Time as core group of the Impatto A Budrio church-plant.

Stefano will lead this Family Time characterised by a desire to be led together by God's Word, with a time of vision and prayer.

We'll interact together with what we are learning in the Sunday morning series on Gospel, Community, Mission.



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 strong sense of the global reality of God's Kingdom.

Part of this Family Time will be to enjoy fellowship with a bring&share meal together!

My Space Budrio - Club for teens

Tomorrow afternoon we'll have our My Space Budrio club to reach out local teens.
Please pray with us, that this will be a meaningful opportunity the Lord will use to call them.

Tomorrow we'll interact with the YfC Rock Solid material following the theme: Halloween: Trick or Truth?

The goal of this session is to look at the event of Halloween, its history and what it celebrates.

We'll be challenged to think at what scares us and why we can also find darkness intriguing.

 

We'll do many fun games to illustrate this point and we'll interact with clips from the movie:

Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas, where we'll see Jack's desire for love and light!

 

We'll see that we are scared by what can 

hurt us and by what we cannot control.
We'll see that often people do in the dark, what they are ashamed to do in the light.

Yet we'll discover that we can trust the Lord when He says us: Fear not (Isaiah 41:10).
We'll see also that Jesus' light came to shine in our darkness and that He gave His life,
in order to give us the right to become children of God! (John 1:5-13)

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 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 Service in Budrio - Community

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 family time together with a lovely breakfast.

At 10.30 am we'll continue with Stefano our new series on Gospel, Community
and Mission.

Jenny will lead the time with the little ones engaging on the same topic.

They'll look at how we can be members of the body of the church with Christ as head of our community.

Together they'll make this puppet as illustration of the importance of the different parts, but above all about the importance for the different parts to be connected together in a Community defined by the Gospel.

Tomorrow we'll begin our service with a time of prayer characterized by thanksgiving and casting a vision for God's work in our community.

We'll rejoice with Kristin Gilmore that tomorrow will be baptised in Sicily. We'll pray for her witness and Christian walk with the Lord.

We'll pray for Mission 2014.
This is the fifth national Italian mission congress which offer an opportunity to Italian Christians to be informed, challenged and formed about world mission. 
This year the main speakers will be Dr. Lindsay Brown and Rev. David Robertson.

After last Sunday missionary meeting with the presentation about Nepal, we'll continue to pray for the work there.

We'll pray especially for the WEC work with Tibetan children as living example of reconciliation and restoration in the Lord.

A coffee with the ladies

Tomorrow morning the ladies from the Impatto A Budrio church-plant will enjoy
"A coffee with the ladies".

They'll meet in one of the lovely cafés in Budrio town centre to enjoy a time of friendship and fellowship together.

Bologna Pastor's Fraternal

This afternoon Jonathan and Stefano will attend the Bologna Pastors' Fraternal hosted by Nuova Vita Church. We'll have time to share and pray for each others and our for churches.



We'll talk about the idea to adopt the confessional statement and theological vision for ministry of The Gospel Coalition as defining documents for our network of churches training and working together.

Sunday Evening Family Time - Focus on Nepal

Great evening of fellowship yesterday at our Sunday Evening Family Time as core group of the Impatto A Budrio church-plant.

Yesterday has been our first missionary service.

Marco, from Turin, shared
with us his exciting summer experience on a mission trip
to Nepal with an Italian team organized by WEC Italy.


  

It is encouraging to learn that the young church in Nepal continues to flourish amid pressure as a remarkable indigenous movement.  

 




It is exciting to see what the Lord is doing in reconciling the different groups in this country and how the church it's an example of peace-makers.

We'll pray for these churches and missionaries who faithfully work in hospitals, orphanages  and training 
centres to help the marginalized, 
reach out for Christ and built up Christians.

 

My Space Budrio - Club for teens

Today we had a great day @ the My Space club for teens in Budrio.


We learned that online, it’s all too easy to pretend to be someone completely different from who we really are. We can also find ourselves gaining our sense of identity in how people respond to us online.

When we’re online, it’s really easy to say something harsh or outrageous. It can feel as if it’s all unreal somehow and like there are no consequences to what we say and do. We can find ourselves saying things we’d never dream of saying in real life. The trouble is, when we say something, there’s no way of taking it back. It’s like trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube. And that’s just as true online as it is in real life. Our words on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram can hurt people or encourage them just as much as anything we say to their face.

In this Rock Solid session we pointed young people towards God as the only truly reliable source of our identity in Christ.

Sunday Evening Family Time - Focus on Nepal

Tomorrow from 5 to 8pm we'll our Sunday Evening Family Time as core group of the Impatto A Budrio church-plant.

This will also be our first missionary service.

We'll have with us Marco,
from Turin, who has been
this summer on a mission trip to Nepal with an Italian team organized by WEC Italy.

It is encouraging to know that the church in Nepal continues to flourish amid pressure as a remarkable indigenous movement.  

Persecution comes from the religious majority but also socially from within families and communities.

More infos and prayer points for Nepal are available at the Operation World website.

My Space Budrio - Club for teens

Tomorrow afternoon we'll have our My Space Budrio club to reach out local teens.
Please pray with us, that this will be a meaningful opportunity the Lord will use to call them.

We'll interact with  the YfC Rock Solid material following the theme: Who am I? Identity.

To introduce this topic we'll watch the trailer of the MTv program Catfish about fake online identities


Social networking can be a wonderful thing. It enables us to connect with people quickly and easily, regardless of where they are in the world. But there are some pitfalls, too.
Online, it’s all too easy to pretend to be someone completely different from who we really are and to make comments about other people we would never dream of making to their faces.
We can also find ourselves gaining our sense of identity in how people respond to us online.
This Rock Solid session addresses all three of these destructive patterns of behaviour and points young people towards God as the only truly reliable source of identity.

To conclude the session Stefano will give a talk from Ephesians 2:8,
connecting with the song Who am I by Casting Crowns

Youth for Christ Italy, Board Meeting

Tomorrow morning Stefano will be at the National Board meeting for 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!

Mid-week Bible Study - Gospel Change

This evening we'll have our first home-group
mid-week Bible Study in Budrio.
We'll interact together with 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 you will learn how to apply the gospel to your everyday life. It teaches Christians to connect the truth about God with our 'Monday-morning struggles'.
You 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 you.

Deputation 2014 - Republic of Ireland

Writing at Cork's Airport at the end of Stefano's 2014 Deputation with the European Missionary Fellowship.

I spent 10 days meeting Christians from 6 baptist churches and new friends across the land.

I've really enjoyed the time I've spent with Michael and Rosemary Grant.

It has been really encouraging to see a context similar to our in Italy and a group of churches working together to train a new generation in the leadership, and also working together to establish new church-plants in unreached areas.

We'll pray for these people I've met,
see you soon Republic of Ireland!