My team and I have been in Albania for a little over a week now, and it has been a perfect example of what it looks like to live missionally. Our ministry has been to live a normal life, making friends and building relationships with people, taking the name of Jesus with us wherever we go. We’ve made friends at the gym, the local pizzeria, coffee shops, and even on the buses.
Thursday morning, our host Erion told us he wanted to meet with out team and share something with us. We showed up and he pulled out a white board, we were ready to learn. He shared the story of how he has been planting churches here in Tirana and how the Lord has blessed their ministry with a building they now use as a youth center, with a small service on Saturday nights that he hopes will soon be a church. He then told us he had a crazy idea, and if you know anything about our team you know that instantly excited us. He said that for the next 3 months we are here, he wants us to plant a church in the building the Lord has blessed him with. Awesome!! Now we have somewhere to invite all of the friends we’ve made and they can hear Erion share the gospel with them.
Erion proceeded to tell us “…and Luke, you’re the pastor. You will all be on the Dream Team. And I’ll just be a visitor.” Hold up… Me? The pastor of a church? I mean I want plant a church at some point in life, but I always thought it would be sometime in my late 30s or 40s. I don’t feel equipped to do this. And the truth is that on my own, I’m not. But the good news is I’m not on my own. The Lord is going to be with my team and I every step of the way. One of my favorite quotes is “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.” That statement has never been more true in my own life than now. I know that the Lord has called my team, Kingdom Bringers, to bring the Kingdom to Tirana, Albania. He has called us here, and has given each of us gifts in order to accomplish what He has called us to do.
Our first service is tomorrow night! So I want to ask each of you to pray. Pray for our team as we prepare to plant a church. Pray that the Lord would put people in our paths that we can share the Good News with and invite to church. And pray against the spiritual attacks that will come and have already started to come against our team as we prepare to do something that the enemy hates.
Most importantly, don’t forget that God sent His son down to earth to die for you and me. And then He rose up out of the grave, and we can live freely as His children forever. That’s the Good News of Jesus.
