Mission Czech Republic Summer 2014

I’d like to invite you to partner with me as I serve this July in the Czech Republic. For our longterm blog readers you may remember that I have come to love deeply our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Czech. Over the course of the last three years, I have had the privilege serving alongside partner churches in Prague and southern Bohemia discipling believers and sharing the gospel with spiritual seekers as I’ve made 4 separate trips. I’ve co-lead teams from my church, Christ Community Church, made up of college students and adults and have travelled there myself. It has been an exciting ministry relationship.

I have counted it a privilege to teach the gospel to a people who have a rich Christian heritage which includes the likes of Jan Hus who, just a century before the great German reformer Martin Luther, was burned at the stake in 1415. A fate Luther himself was able to avoid in part because of the legacy of Hus. Walking around a city like Prague you can’t but be struck by the richness of it’s Christian past. These days sadly it ranks as one of the top five most atheistic countries in the world. This is in no small part due to the dictatorships that have ransack and assaulted faith and inoculated people from believing in anything for fear of being controlled. We go as Jesus’ ambassadors proclaiming a self-divesting kingdom nothing like the regimes of fascism and communism they have known.

Sasa Flek, my good friend and pastor in Prague — by the way he’s responsible for the recent translation of the Bible into contemporary Czech vernacular with Bible21, translation which is now widely used in the Czech — has invited me to be the speaker for their annual church retreat taking place on July 17-20. Our church supports Sasa’s ministry and I’ve been blessed to have spoken at his church, Ta Cesta, in Prague a number of times.

During the retreat I will be giving seven talks on the theme “What’s so good about the Gospel?” Sasa told me that Czech Christians have a thin understanding of the gospel (my words). And that has been my experience too as I’ve talked with many of them. So we will be simply asking: Why is the message of the gospel, good news? I should add, though, this isn’t only a problem in the Czech Republic I’m afraid. It’s a problem on our continent too!

I will be sharing from the Bible what it teaches about the meaning of grace. We will consider questions like: what is the significance of the death of Jesus? And what do we learn from Jesus’ life? We will look at sin and talk about how we make sense of harm in our lives? Finally we will think about the important and redemptive practice of lament, mourning the struggle of this life, as a path to gospel-living. I’m excited to work on these themes and to share them with the church. These are themes I have been reflecting on a great deal personally of late.

This year the best thing is Karla will be coming for the first time. In the past, because of our young family, she’s not been able to. Karla will be there doing what she does best—relational ministry. Honestly, I’m so excited to do ministry together.  She deserves the credit for any ministry success I’ve ever had! Her gifts will be such a powerful tool for gospel ministry.

While in Czech we will also make a trip south a couple of hours to visit our church’s partner Elim Church in Pisek. It has been with Elim that I’ve served these three years doing camps with twenty-somethings. We will spend a couple of days with believers there encouraging them and being encouraged by them — in the Pauline sense of sharing our gifts with teach other for mutual encouragement (Rom. 1:11-12).

If  you’re interested in being involved in our ministry in Czech this summer, here’s how you can. First, we would like to recruit a prayer team who will commit to praying for us regularly over the course of the next two months as we prepare and go. We will be creating a Facebook group to update and share requests and information. If you would like to be included please shoot me a FB message. Second, we also have some financial needs and our church is graciously sponsoring the mission. If you feel led to participate this way please use this link to give online: https://cccgoteams.missionsconnex.com/willitts258 through Christ Community Church. Your gift is tax deductible. Thank you!