BAO introduces a new book
BAO has just translated into German and is getting ready to distribute “The Leadership Baton: An Intentional Strategy for Developing Leaders in Your Church”.
This book provides a great foundation for church based training and some practical steps in how to implement this in your church. There are a few events planned this year to highlight this book and encourage intentional discipleship in the church. One of the authors, Bruce Miller, will be here in November and BAO is also planning to host a few training days in different parts of Austria.
Developing church leaders is crucial, especially here in Austria where there is less than .03% Evangelical Christians. The churches are relatively young, about 30 years, and very small. Church leaders are mostly lay people or at most part-time. Not that there is anything wrong with this only it poses special challenges when they want to do more.
This is where church based training and BAO come in. BAO already has courses designed, over 30, to train people in the church for the work of the ministry.
Date with God
Christy is away at our churches 2 day women’s retreat. They are celebrating 10 years this year. Each year they have a theme of the retreat and then at the end there is time for them to be alone and be quiet with God, hence the title “Date with God”.
This has been a highlight for Christy each year. Time to be with Austrian friends. I love these times too because I am glad Christy can do this and I get to have some special time with my girls. We have read books, played Chutes & Ladders and watched Chitti Chitti Bang Bang with Dick Van Dyke. Elena has been feeling under the weather so we have kept things local this evening. Hopefully she will be feeling better tomorrow.
New Web Site launched
Well, I have been tinkering around with a new website layout and really like this one. It displays pictures (okay I know I need to work out the kinks with which picture displays), and groups posts into catagories. One thing I kept hearing when we were in the states is, “What exactly do you do? We hear so many different things it is difficult to understand.” One attempt in making this clear is grouping the posts into the main areas I am working in 1) The Bible Academy (EVAK) 2) Church Based Training (BAO) 3) Church (Kagran Children’s ministry) 4) Greater Europe Mission (GEM) as cofield leader I will also post things with our family as a catagory and then culture and missions in general.
Thanks for your interest in us and our life and ministry in Austria. The picture is our most recent family picture taken by my brother when we were visiting in Colorado.
Back in Vienna
After 10 weeks in the US over the summer we arrived back in Vienna on August 30th. It was a Whirl wind tour of all our supporting churches. It was good to reconnect with many good friends and meet some new people.
Kati is just completing her first week of second grade today and she is excited. This week her class is beginning to write in cursive and is very proud of what she is learning. Elena is going through Kati withdrawl and is at loose ends while Kati is away at school. Christy and myself have rearranged our apartment to better accommodate our needs, we rearranged the bedrooms and office space.
We are glad to be back in Vienna and are praying this next school year is good for our family and for the various minstries we are do. This past week I was in on two meetings that got me back into the swing of things quickly. The Evangelical Academy had a faculty training day and the day after we had some meetings with a large Bible school from Germany. I am excited about both and will write more about them next week.
I just wanted to get my feet wet blogging and want post more consistently.
