I have been, over the years, historically bad at doing regular updates on life and ministry in Stockholm. Supporters of us, and what we do, I fear have been shortchanged. I have on a number of occasions been rebuked by a few people about this poor showing. Sadly, it seems each time their rebuke had but short-lived effect. Maybe, this time will be different, maybe not, we’ll see. Hope springs eternal.

I’ve spent some time reflecting on why this is and I think there are a few reasons. Firstly, I really don’t like talking about myself. It’s possible that I’m allergic. Secondly, day to day, week to week, month to month there is a very simple ordinariness to life. We’re just raising a family and serving a Church and in one sense there’s nothing particularly special about that that requires a newsletter or some such thing. Thirdly, and here I’m in the realms of weak excuses, doing this never quite seemed to make it to the top of the to-do list and so I didn’t do it and therefore it didn’t get done.

However, it isn’t as if there is nothing that can be said about what God is doing amongst us here in Stockholm. And there is always some valuable things that you might be willing to pray about with us.

Let me do a quick recap, to catch up anyone who might be new to our journey. We’ve been in Sweden for 12 years now and in Stockholm for 11. In 2012 we, with some a small group of friends, started what became Grace Church. Over the past decade we’ve grown from a small group that could comfortably meet around our kitchen table to a fellowship of somewhere between 150 to 200 people. Which, I have to say is encouraging. It’s also a fairly interesting setup with services in three different languages (Swedish, English, Swahili) in two different venues each Sunday.

I work full-time for Grace Church and my wife Emma, works part-time an international preschool. The rest of her time is mostly given (unpaid) to church. She runs an wonderful daytime group for women who find it a place for prayer and friendship. Emma is also part of the kids team at Grace Church and leads the work amongst the younger children. And then time and energy is given to her creative abilities with some excellent pottery and printing. Our kids are great and muck in with everything really. Couldn’t be prouder.

I have just returned to work after a four month rest sabbatical. I’ll try and write a few things about the sabbatical from different angles, but the highlight was a month long family trip to Georgia and Armenia (see the picture at the top of this post). I’d never had a sabbatical before and I’ve been a church planter and leader for 23 years, so some argued it was long overdue. The purpose was really just mental rest but it also allowed the team at Grace to make a few changes. To be perfectly honest, I’d become something of a bottleneck with almost everything somehow working it’s way past my desk even though I didn’t want it to. So some re-engineering was necessary to dig me out from some of the day-today mechanics and to allow me to focus on some key next stage developments.

Here are a few of the areas that I’m hoping to get to work on and we’d value your prayers for any or all of these things.

• The Swedish language service is perhaps the most important initiative we have. If we are to become a city reaching and nationwide planting church then Swedish language is crucial. Yet as with any new planting initiatives there is always moments of strain. The team all work and study in busy jobs, so stewarding time and energy is key. We’ve applied for a significant grant that would give some funding over the next five years and would allow us to release time in a variety of ways. Please pray that this application would be successful.
• Grace Church has mostly grown by transfer growth. We’ve done well in being a stable, healthy home for people who find themselves here in Stockholm for a variety of reasons. However we’d like to strengthen the ways in which we can help people find Jesus for the first time. Please pray for us that we’d be able to develop the ways in which we can reach out to people with the good news of Jesus.
• Stockholm is not a cheap place to live and work and we spend quite a lot of money on building rentals. This stretches our resources and yet for us to continue to grow we need a step up in our finances to be able to resource both what we’re doing in Stockholm and what we want to do in terms of church planting in the future.

There’s more to say about each one of those, which is a good reason to keep doing these updates I guess, but that will do for now. If you have any questions, or there’s anything you’d like to hear more about then please ask. I would answering questions a great way of writing more of our news!

I have four, count them four, conferences coming up (here, a quick trip to Cyprus with Newfrontiers, here & here) in the next month or so which combined with preaching and keeping up with the family, will mean a busy next five or six weeks. Prayers for a wise stewardship of my energy would be great.

If you’d like to partner with us financially here’s what we’d use it for you. Primarily it would enable Emma to join me on some of my travels around Europe and to some of these conferences. It would also allow more of her time to be given to serving the church, which is something she is very capable of doing. Living cross-culturally brings with it extra costs and issues of travel and recently this has become more challenging.

If you want to give to us personally you can do that via Stewardship or you can give directly to the church which will could be put either towards a future premises or our ongoing ministry costs. If you do choose to do this, we’d be incredibly thankful.

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