In View of the Bridge

It has been an extremely busy month for us this May, in light of the fact that our team's church plant - named Most which is Slovak for 'Bridge' - has officially been launched!

(Cue trumpets and people cheering in background :-p)

Mark and Liz Holdcroft, our fellow team members, first started planting the seeds nearly two years ago through activities and outreach programs in Sala.  Every time they kept driving through on their way to Nove Zamky, they started to feel a real burden for the town, which ended up growing into a passion and from all accounts, lots of sleepless nights.  Their team at the time consisted of  themselves plus two other great people - Dominika and Lukaš.  After a year of outreaches and activities within Sala, the team started after-school clubs, otherwise known as Hore Nohami (Upside Down). During this time, more people became involved, including Petra and, of course, ourselves.

After some discussion, we were sounded out to go to Newcastle, England for a YouthAlpha course in November 2009.  Here we learnt the skills needed to go forward in bringing HN into line with what our team felt.  The idea was to take that burden for the youth of Sala and to plant a church according to their spiritual needs and difficulties.  Slightly after this time, our team started to meet every Sunday at Villiam and Monika's flat, where we had house-group and the beginnings of the realisation of our church.

In February 2010, we moved from Nitra to Sala and a host of problems came along with that move.  Illnesses, culture shock, learning how to live together as newlyweds within a strange new town... we saw them all off with a lot of support from our friends and family.  YouthAlpha sessions became a regular feature of the HN clubs and near to the end of the run this May, twelve kids gave their lives to Christ.  We've also had a massive response from the local area, especially in regards to the Roma minority.  The numbers within the club didn't just gradually go up, they leapt, with the last HN/YouthAlpha club nearly overwhelming us.

From the positive response at the beginning of May, we made the decision to formally plant the church as soon as possible.  We have now had our 6th service and have about 30 people attending.  Most Church was born.