Relatório Ministerial - Dawn Latin Europe
According the vision God gave us, “mobilize and train the body of Christ in Portugal, Spain and Italy for a dynamic transformational church planting movement (TSCP), committed with the transformation of each Latin Europe nation”, we have looked for to serve with allegiance in the countries that constitute the Dawn Latin Europe region. In these first six months, although a serious accident (surgery - right arm broken in two places), we tried to honor the expectations written in our Global Action Plan 2008 in terms of five operational goals which have been the following ones:
Latin European teams (nationally and regionally) recruited and empowered
Coordination, Consultancy and Research
Vision casting
Developing training
In terms of practical and visible outcomes in each one of the countries of the Latin Europe region, we point the following ones:
Coordination, Consultancy and Research
Vision casting
Developing training
In terms of practical and visible outcomes in each one of the countries of the Latin Europe region, we point the following ones:
Latin European Teams (nationally and regionally) recruited and empowered
During this period we have been involved in different efforts to pursue the goal to set-up of 20 regional teams planned for 2008. We sadly recognize that this goal it’s not already achieved in our first priority country. We didn’t have too many conditions to do the needing efforts to provide a national task force in Spain. Although we had an important presentation of our Dawn vision to the leaders of FEREDE in Spain and as a result of that meeting they invite us to attend to a church planting consultation in Madrid this June. In Italy we didn’t found so far our “John Knoxer” but we keep doing some good contacts. Paulo Pereira, from Luxembourg, had spent one full day with us to receive a better understanding of what his Dawn vision and how we could contextualize the TSCP vision to his reality.
Coordination, Consultancy and Research
We start our semester with a GM2015 retreat of two days just for the executive group (5 couples). It was a good opportunity to discuss and coordinate our initiatives and spend an important portion of time in prayer looking what God is doing among our national movement and as a preparation for the first national congress.
Although the difficulties as a result of my accident, it was possible to participate in some meetings with the Portuguese national team and some task groups (Tentmakers network, Research Network, Emergent Church Network) to encourage, give direction and coordinate the ministry. We tried also to make contacts with different leaders in order to raise new financial supporters for the ministry.
As a specific outcome in terms of research in Portugal, we have now a picture of the Portuguese evangelical reality in our country better than we have ever before. We can finally say with confidence that the Evangelical Portuguese community is 0.97% of the population and that we have a enormous challenge to reach the 43 municipalities/districts that do not have any evangelical presence, and 21 more municipalities that have evangelical churches but not centralized in the municipalities capitals and even 170 more locations that have a middle school but are without any evangelical church. We only have these statistics because of a dedication to careful research, so Portugal now has a challenge to reach these 234 strategic locations. That information is already available in an website updated with all data about Portugal. Our research team has been given this data to the European Missions Research Group and it’s also available in http://www.emrgnet.eu/
Vision Casting
During this first period we received an official invitation from the leadership of Italian Evangelical Alliance to present the Dawn vision. This meeting was done before the IEA General Assembly and we we had the opportunity to greet all the leaders and make important connections for the future. It was really helpful to enlarge our understanding of the needs in terms of church planting. The impression we got it’s a good atitude from IEA leaders to hear of the experiences of other Latins and, over all, a big need in terms of research to evaluate the dimension of church planting needs.
In terms of vision casting we could say that the 1st Portuguese Missionary Congress which was promoted by our team in Portugal, was the most important contribution. The event brought together more than 200 denominational leaders, 14 missionary organizations, missionaries and church planters, bi-vocational workers and representatives from the others countries of our Dawn Latin region, Italy, Luxemburg and Spain. We made some investment to bring those leaders from our latin region as a way to cast vision for a TSCP in their countries.
Church Planting Movement
At the First National Missions Congress of GM2015 the denominations and associations had expressed their missionary goals in terms of Church Planting and Cross-cultural Missions. We now know a lot better, the effort that is being done and understand the necessity for us to establish strategic partnerships between the different agencies involved in the mission Jesus entrusted to us. We don’t known at this point what progress we are having in terms new churches planted as our planned outcomes but we can easily identify a new commitment with the TSCP movement because we are seeing churches and leaders adopting in prayer unreached counties.
Developing Training
During those last months, we gave special attention to a new area of ministry, in a traditional Dawn type process, witch is Training. Ken Benson is our Training Coordinator for GM2015, and he has the responsibility to develop church planting training opportunities, and identify resources to offer to churches and denominations. He is also committed to give support to short-term initiatives in terms of pre-evangelism in the counties with no church.
At the First National Missions Congress in Portugal, we provided also a good oportunity to train leaders. We appreciated the efforts that lots of heroes of the past have done but it was also demonstrated to us that there are ways to contextualize how “to be and do” church in a post modern culture. Neil Cole, the author of the book “Organic Church” left us with some food for thought on how to adequately interpret the new challenges for the Church. This workshop has been recorded in DVD and it’s now a another resource available for training.
Dawn Latin Europe coordinator
Paulo Pascoal May, 26, 2008
During this period we have been involved in different efforts to pursue the goal to set-up of 20 regional teams planned for 2008. We sadly recognize that this goal it’s not already achieved in our first priority country. We didn’t have too many conditions to do the needing efforts to provide a national task force in Spain. Although we had an important presentation of our Dawn vision to the leaders of FEREDE in Spain and as a result of that meeting they invite us to attend to a church planting consultation in Madrid this June. In Italy we didn’t found so far our “John Knoxer” but we keep doing some good contacts. Paulo Pereira, from Luxembourg, had spent one full day with us to receive a better understanding of what his Dawn vision and how we could contextualize the TSCP vision to his reality.
Coordination, Consultancy and Research
We start our semester with a GM2015 retreat of two days just for the executive group (5 couples). It was a good opportunity to discuss and coordinate our initiatives and spend an important portion of time in prayer looking what God is doing among our national movement and as a preparation for the first national congress.
Although the difficulties as a result of my accident, it was possible to participate in some meetings with the Portuguese national team and some task groups (Tentmakers network, Research Network, Emergent Church Network) to encourage, give direction and coordinate the ministry. We tried also to make contacts with different leaders in order to raise new financial supporters for the ministry.
As a specific outcome in terms of research in Portugal, we have now a picture of the Portuguese evangelical reality in our country better than we have ever before. We can finally say with confidence that the Evangelical Portuguese community is 0.97% of the population and that we have a enormous challenge to reach the 43 municipalities/districts that do not have any evangelical presence, and 21 more municipalities that have evangelical churches but not centralized in the municipalities capitals and even 170 more locations that have a middle school but are without any evangelical church. We only have these statistics because of a dedication to careful research, so Portugal now has a challenge to reach these 234 strategic locations. That information is already available in an website updated with all data about Portugal. Our research team has been given this data to the European Missions Research Group and it’s also available in http://www.emrgnet.eu/
Vision Casting
During this first period we received an official invitation from the leadership of Italian Evangelical Alliance to present the Dawn vision. This meeting was done before the IEA General Assembly and we we had the opportunity to greet all the leaders and make important connections for the future. It was really helpful to enlarge our understanding of the needs in terms of church planting. The impression we got it’s a good atitude from IEA leaders to hear of the experiences of other Latins and, over all, a big need in terms of research to evaluate the dimension of church planting needs.
In terms of vision casting we could say that the 1st Portuguese Missionary Congress which was promoted by our team in Portugal, was the most important contribution. The event brought together more than 200 denominational leaders, 14 missionary organizations, missionaries and church planters, bi-vocational workers and representatives from the others countries of our Dawn Latin region, Italy, Luxemburg and Spain. We made some investment to bring those leaders from our latin region as a way to cast vision for a TSCP in their countries.
Church Planting Movement
At the First National Missions Congress of GM2015 the denominations and associations had expressed their missionary goals in terms of Church Planting and Cross-cultural Missions. We now know a lot better, the effort that is being done and understand the necessity for us to establish strategic partnerships between the different agencies involved in the mission Jesus entrusted to us. We don’t known at this point what progress we are having in terms new churches planted as our planned outcomes but we can easily identify a new commitment with the TSCP movement because we are seeing churches and leaders adopting in prayer unreached counties.
Developing Training
During those last months, we gave special attention to a new area of ministry, in a traditional Dawn type process, witch is Training. Ken Benson is our Training Coordinator for GM2015, and he has the responsibility to develop church planting training opportunities, and identify resources to offer to churches and denominations. He is also committed to give support to short-term initiatives in terms of pre-evangelism in the counties with no church.
At the First National Missions Congress in Portugal, we provided also a good oportunity to train leaders. We appreciated the efforts that lots of heroes of the past have done but it was also demonstrated to us that there are ways to contextualize how “to be and do” church in a post modern culture. Neil Cole, the author of the book “Organic Church” left us with some food for thought on how to adequately interpret the new challenges for the Church. This workshop has been recorded in DVD and it’s now a another resource available for training.
Dawn Latin Europe coordinator
Paulo Pascoal May, 26, 2008
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