European Int’l SBC 2014 Report by Walter Nett

by WMD   08-26-2014   0 reads

“Faith in God” (Mark 11:22) was the title of our recent conference at the beautiful winter resort Willingen (Upland). We are thankful to God for blessing this conference abundantly through his powerful, gracious and challenging word. Thursday to Sunday (August 14-17), we studied passages mostly from the New Testament, with key messages from Mark’s gospel, and one from Ezekiel 37.

We are grateful for the work of the Holy Spirit in and through 12 messengers from 8 nations and 9 life testimony speakers, also from 8 nations. We were inspired by the opening address of M. Sarah Barry on Romans 1:17 to live by faith in Jesus from first to last, and by the closing address of P. Abraham Kim on Acts 28:30-31 to put our faith in God into practice through one-to-one and small group Bible study ministry. We also had a deep and clear lecture on “Growth in Faith – The Foundation for a Powerful Missionary Service” by Prof. Dr. Peter Beyerhaus. He is a renowned missiologist and defender of the gospel faith even at 85.

Apart from these very experienced speakers, messengers were young and (with one exception) novice speakers at an international conference. James, Sara Neusa, Georgi, Petrus, David, Enoch, Michael, Stamatis, Bruno: they all did a great job, serving God’s work with all their hearts, all their souls, all their minds, and all their strength – even with their own characteristic. They revealed the necessity and blessing of our faith in God very clearly and practically. Mainly, through Mark 5:21-43, we learned that we should make every effort to come to Jesus and that Jesus also challenges us to remain with him. And through Mark 11:1-25, we learned that Jesus is our true King and coming judge and that he challenges us to live by faith in the almighty God with whom there is nothing impossible.

The life testimonies by Marianne Blessing, Nuno, Denitsa, Lydia, Regina, Louise, Anna, Skyjo, and Sarah were deep and heart-moving witnesses to the grace and power of Jesus in this generation.

While the program was mainly in English, Bible studies on the main passages were held in various languages. We should have given more time for this fundamental element of enhancing faith in God. Reflection time was attended well and with humble and thankful hearts.

We had a gracious environment with music (orchestra, 4 worship bands, several choirs, even a musical), drama and dance. It all contributed to opening our hearts to the messages we heard.
European nations also prepared beautiful mission booths to inform about the practical and spiritual environment four our missionaries, including their prayer topics. This also served as an invitation for potential missionary candidates.

Parallel to the main event, there was a CBF conference with the identical theme. M. Hannah Shin of Czech Republic and many coworkers served more than 90 children (5 – 14 years old) whole-heartedly.
All in all about 830 people joined the conference, among them 235 between 15 and 25.

We are truly thankful to God for granting us a meaningful conference through the whole-hearted preparation by coworkers from 23 European nations and all their chapters. Through preparatory meetings with passages from Acts 1 – 5, God gave us grace to pray and work together as one heart and mind, listening to the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
We express our gratitude to Dr. Mark Yang, Dr. Henry Park, and Dr. Paul Hong who coworked well with P. Abraham Lee in supporting the young messengers. We are also thankful for the unceasing prayers from around the world, esp. from UBF Korea and USA.
Besides Prof. Beyerhaus, we welcomed friends in Christ such as Rev. Hyun Suk Lee (GIMNET General Secretary), P. Kwang Su Jang and Young Hea Whang (KOSTE), P. Okhi Denker-Park.

Through God’s word and grace, we were all strengthened and renewed in our faith in God and experienced young European students come to know faith in God, too. So we pray that God will revive Europe spiritually through our faith in God.

As a conclusion, P. Abraham Kim gave us the following prayer topics:

  1. Believe that the power of the gospel will transform Europe.
  2. Rekindle prayer for spiritual revival of Europe.
  3. Rekindle zeal for one-to-one & small group Bible study ministry.
  4. Let us double the number of new gens (15 – 25) at the 2019 European Summer Bible Conference.
  5. Pray for reaching out to Muslims in Europe and to the Muslim countries, esp. in Middle East and Africa.
  6. We also prayed sincerely for the upcoming CIS conference (Aug. 21-24 in Moscow) and M. David Byun’s stewardship.

Thank you for your sincere love and prayers.

In Christ Jesus,
Walter Nett


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