Czech Republic – Serving The Vision

Radim Čapla works as mission coordinator and administrator for the NLI Church Planting project in Czech Republic. We’ve just completed the first full year of this project, so what better opportunity for Radim to reflect back on his first year…

Radim Capla

NLI has been in relationship with a group of Pentecostal churches in the Ostrava area since 2005. In 2009, six new churches were launched in target cities that are mostly without any evangelical church at the moment. I joined NLI in January 2009 and have already learnt a lot. My scope of responsibility is to assist the church planters in communication with NLI, with the overseas partner churches and to help with organisational matters.

The idea of planting new churches as a way of a church growth is excellent. There are so many lost people, maybe even looking for ‘something’, but no church is available in their neighbourhood. I’ve been humbled by the church planters’ attitude. Their way of serving the Lord is amazing. The sacrifices they bring as families are sometimes enormous – small babies, full time jobs, serving in their mother church and on the top of that, starting a new church in another community! For some of them it is a real sacrifice for the Kingdom. I love these people.

Church Planting…

The NLI commitment to actively support the church planters works very well: really a good vision. It would be much more demanding without such a support: for some planters perhaps even impossible. Now you can see how visions and dreams, which some church planters have had for a long time, are becoming real! Isn’t it awesome? The permanent NLI involvement also creates the feeling that the church planter is not left alone somewhere in space! It is very encouraging. The church planters can see that there are many people supporting them – their mother church, NLI, and brothers and sisters from the partner churches.

I can see how demanding the task is to start a new church. Without God’s blessing it is impossible. However, the importance of other people’s support, faithful brothers and sisters, is to be emphasized too. Church planters need another people to support their hands. What is great about this project is that there is real teamwork. NLI creates a bridge between overseas partner churches willing to support the missions here, and the Czech church planters who are called to do the job. It is really nice to see this kind of cooperation and commitment. The partner churches are doing a great job in faithfully supporting the planters with prayers, finances and mission teams. I applaud it! It is a strong help for the project!

Mission Teams…

The mission teams did a great job here this first year. I realised how vital the short term mission teams can be. They can make a real impact on the community or on a group of people, especially when the mission is well prepared in advance. It was encouraging to see the effort of teams helping the church planters to impact their community. Contacts and friendships were made and I am really looking forward the next few years, as I believe we will see fruit from the mission. I was nicely surprised that all the teams came with a humble attitude – “What do you want us to do here? We came to serve you. Tell us what you want.” They even came with a willingness to do manual (practical) work to bless the local community.

The soil in Czech is not that soft, but we can see how things are moving forward. We read testimonies from the field of how God is opening doors and how people are responding. It is a long race and we rejoice in every small success. We cannot see multitudes coming yet, but each soul given by God is a miracle. I think that at the end of the project we should have a big celebration of what the Lord has done! Please continue to pray for us, as the opposition is often strong.

Thank you all who support the church in our country in any way. May the Lord reward you in abundance! God bless you real good!

Thanks Radim. You’re doing a great job!!

Please pray for Radim and his family. He does a great job in helping us support the church planters and in organising the mission teams in Czech Republic. I know from personal experience that the job can have its frustrations, so pray particularly for smooth and effective communication with the church planters, partner churches and project staff.

To find out more about Leadership development, church planting and mission teams in Europe, check out the ‘mandate’ and ‘mobilize’ pages on this website… then get in touch with NLI.

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Mission Impact

“I’m passionate about sharing the Gospel and reaching the unreached! One of my passions is seeing God work in the darkest places: seeing him use people to impact the world in which we live. God has given us all talents and abilities to shine in a dark world! He looks for people who will stand in the gap for their friends and families. He wants us to be willing to go to the ends of the earth to share His love. I’m privileged to have God as my Saviour and feel it is my responsibility to bring the love of God to those who don’t get it and to share it with anyone and everyone.”

These are not the words of some seasoned evangelist or famous preacher, they come from an 18yr old lad from England…Chris Budhi is from Yorkshire, (UK) a county not known for its passionate men, but as you can see, Chris is clearly bucking the trend. He’s passionate about mission and about serving God. This Summer Chris took a 6-week break to invest his life into mission in Ukraine. Here’s his story.

Chris Budhi

“I learned Russian at school for 3yrs. Why? Because I believed God was going to call me to a nation where they speak Russian. I actually felt called to Ukraine at the age of 14 when I went on my first mission there (NLI mission to Poltava). I fell in love with the country and the people. At the beginning of 2009 I had an opportunity to get involved with a church in Kiev during the summer break. I prayed about it and God told me as clear as anything that this was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down and that I was to go and serve the church. On 27th June 2009 I went to Ukraine for 6-weeks, to the ‘Light of the World’ church in Kiev, where Igor Stepchuk is the pastor. During my 6-week stay I was involved in loads of different church activities.

With some of the kids on mission

I went on mission to Nikopol with a team from Kiev. We spent time with the young people in the church, including some relationship seminars. We also held evangelistic events, including a concert with a Christian rapper! We played games, had water fights, and held competitions with the children on the streets.

After a week back in Kiev, I helped out at a camp with about 100 children. One of the things I helped with was the Bible study group – I had 6 lads aged 14-18… and an interpreter of course! We prayed together in our groups and did crafts and fun games with the kids. Every evening we met together and had a camp fire. On the final morning in my Bible group I had an opportunity to preach the gospel to 4 of the groups (about 45 youth). At the end I gave an appeal and 15-20 people asked God to be their Saviour! This was the highlight of the whole time I was in the Ukraine.

Finally we went to a church in Pitihatki. We did a lot of practical work – cleaning, gardening, chopping wood, and decorating various buildings on the church site. It was hard work! We had some fun too – competitions with the kids, relationship seminars for the youth, youth meetings, visited local families, and held a tennis tournament at the church. We also held an evangelistic event and took the Sunday school. I had the under 5s. They were great.

Doing crafts with kids

What impacted me most was the camp. Some of the kids were from backgrounds where their parents beat them or shout at them all the time. Others have been brought up to believe they are a mistake, because their parents tell them that all the time. They were lovely kids. They were so happy to be part of the camp. Because I’m from England a lot of the children were happy that I was there and wanted to spend lots of time with me. This was cool in itself, but the best thing was seeing these kids come out of their shell and start to join in the fun.

We noticed that some of the kids wouldn’t join in the fun because of their backgrounds. It was like their past was holding them back, so it was great to see them start to open up and allow us to pray with them. And then on the last day when those youth responded to the gospel and accepted Christ into their lives, you could see that the camp had affected their lives so much that they didn’t want to go back home without God. It’s an awesome experience to see how the Word of God has such an impact and changes the lives of young people!

Sharing the gospel

I love to see God at work in people’s situations and see their lives change when they let God take control. I believe it’s our job as Christians to share what we have (God) with everyone: to love unconditionally so that people will see this God we preach about!! God is an awesome God. He always has been and always will be. In John 10:10, Jesus says He has come to give us a life of abundance. This starts when we start to share this life with others, giving people a glimpse of the awesomeness of God, showing people that God is in control and that when we ask God to be our Saviour He gives us this totally amazing life – giving us stuff we never thought we would have or doing stuff we never thought we would do. It’s our responsibility to share this life with others. Freely we have received, freely we must give!!!”

Maybe one day Chris will be a famous preacher. He certainly has the heart and passion of an evangelist! Chris is back serving in his local church, working at McDonalds and raising finance for future mission ventures. He plans to go back to Ukraine in 2010 and then attend the Planet Shakers College (Australia) in 2011.

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