Kristian:
Hello, and welcome to the mobilisation thread at the Lausanne 2020 conversation. My name is Kristian Lande, and I’ll be leading these podcasts. As Europe is becoming a bigger and bigger mission field, we as a church are trying to find out how to respond to it. One of the challenges is that there is an increasing number of neighbourhoods and city parts, which has no Christian presence. It’s beautiful to see that around Europe Christians are now doing something about it. They’re intentionally moving in.

One of the movements that has responded to this is Move in. They are focusing on urban neighbourhoods with a majority of immigrants, many of them from an unreached people group. It’s amazing to hear what God is doing through them, and I would encourage you to check out their web page, www.movein.to.

However, it's not only areas with large numbers of immigrants which lack Christian presence. It’s also true for many neighbourhoods with a majority of ethnical Europeans. And today I want you to meet two good friends of mine, which recently moved into such an area, they did something, they acted. Katerina and Daniel Kocyan from Czech Republic, welcome. My first question to you is this: What made you do such a move? (notification: Katerina and Daniel are not part of the Move In movement, but inspired by it)

Katerina:
Yeah, I think you’re right Kristian. Often Christians don’t live in places where non Christians are. So, just as you said, these places don’t have a Christian presence. And I think, today, unbelievers are more then ever looking for some authentic true friendships. They often feel lonely, they feel lost, they are struggling with their identity. And therefore we decided to move into a neighbourhood, which actually is actually is located in quite an industrial town. And in this neighbourhood there is a lot of large blocks built during communist times here in the Czech Republic. And as I mentioned, you know, the town itself is quite industrial, but there are some Christians living in nearby villages, but there are actually very few Christians living in the neighbourhood where we are, in these big blocks. So that’s the idea which we decided to move here, because this place is really unreached. So we kind of realised that people really live so near to each other, they live near so nearby, but at the same time they feel so lonely. And they are often fighting with depressions, with mental illnesses, with loneliness, and they don’t actually have a chance to meet Christians.

Daniel:
Also what we can see is that Christians are often used to go to church on Sunday, and somehow expect that non believers would come. And what we believe is that it should actually be us Christians coming to them, sharing our lives with them. That's the reason why we decided to move to our neighbourhood. To be there physically but even more importantly emotionally - opening our house to be a place of acceptance and peace. A place where people can come and feel safe but also where deeper conversations can happen.

Kristian:
How does that look like practically?

Katerina:
Well, we decided personally to focus on young people. And we are now the youth leaders in our church. As mentioned before, you know, our place our town is very industrial, and connected to that, many kids are struggling with difficult family situations. Their parents have struggles with alcohol and drug addictions, and often the family backgrounds are not ideal. So, our youth group is called LivingRoom - the idea is to create an environment where people can really make a step closer to Jesus. Whoever you are, wherever you come from. Just like any LivingRoom should be, we want to invite young people into a place where they can - almost physically - feel the love of Jesus. The truth is that most of the evangelism and discipleship actually doesn't happen during the youth group on Friday evening. It's often actually in our home where we are having really long and deep conversations, or it can be in a nearby kebab or McDonalds, where we would often talk to people about the questions they are troubled buy.

Kristian:
Beautiful. You know, it’s really interesting that you are actually doing this as part of a traditional normal church. It makes me realize that you don’t have to pioneer, or to pioneer a new church plant, or something like that, but you can simply do it sent out and blessed by your local community.

Katerina:
We love our local church. We really love them, and we feel 100% that we are part of our church.

Kristian:
Beautiful. Yeah, I think that it’s encouraging for all of us to hear that we can do it where we are, and just think about where in our neighborhood, where in our area is there such a place with no Christian presence. Another question. Could you share a concrete story of something God has done through this?

Katerina:
Woo. There are so many stories, but if I had to choose one. Well, there is a girl called Niki in our youth group. Niki comes from - not a very easy family background. She never actually met her father, because before she was born, he just decided he want to have nothing with her. So, she never met him in person. She has been growing up with her mum, who is also not an ideal mother, probably. But when she was a teenager, she decided to join Living room. Little by little she started coming, and little by little she started building friendships and relationships. At the beginning she didn’t really care about God, she didn’t care about what was shared during the talks, but she really felt safe and good. Just last year, she finally decided to commit her life to Christ, and it is beautiful to see how God is changing her life. She is now doing final year in high school, and she’s preparing to be a kindergarten teacher, to study at the university. She is very often hanging out with us, and she now joined the church, and she’s helping with the kids at church. It’s just beautiful to see how God is transforming different people. So that would be just one example of many. It started with relationships, but it actually led into an understanding of the gospel and who Jesus really is.

Kristian:
Fantastic! You know, it strikes me that you’re eating kebab, you’re opening you’re home and inviting the youths to come and just spent time with you. It strikes me that is doesn’t sound very difficult. It is actually something we could all do. The hard part probably is, I would assume, to make the actual move, and not just expecting them to come to us. So my question to you is, what is, or what was, difficult in making such a move?

Daniel:
So, as you said Kristian, it does not sound very difficult, but to be honest, it hasn't always been easy. We had the opportunity to build a house in between mountains, on a beautiful land my parents own about 10 km from here. However, we felt really strongly we should live in the neighbourhood where the kids are in order to be approachable for them.

Katerina:
It's also not easy to be available all the time. It's actually quite time consuming to be there for the people all the time. Often it actually feels like we make one step forward and it’s two steps back. We are still learning, we are still working on it, and sometimes we learn from our mistakes. Specifically working with teenagers, often doesn't have visible fruits, it takes longer. At the same time, we have seen quite a few people last year making a decision to follow Christ, getting baptised. And what I love even more is that we have seen some lukewarm Christians who started sharing their faith, and their hearts just suddenly started opening up, started breaking down, for non believers, and people around them. So, it hasn’t always been easy, but when you see this, when you experience it, you just realise that it's like 100% worth doing this.

Kristian:
Fantastic! Thank you so much for sharing your story. It makes me wanna pray for you guys, and for the teenagers you are serving among, and for your neighbourhood. Also, I would like to pray for ourselves. How is this moving us? Where do we see neighbourhoods around us which does not have any Christian presence? So, that was the mobilization thread of today. See you next month.