Caserta
Posted by Drew | Filed under General
This past weekend I went down to Caserta, home to one of the churches in the Reconciliation movement. Reconciliation movement - ok, this is going to take more explaining than I intended. Short version: it’s a network of Evangelical churches throughout Italy, and the leader of the movement is the pastor of this church in Caserta. Recently one of their pastors joined staff with Agape (Campus Crusade in Italy) to lead the FamilyLife ministry in Torino. That should do for an explanation for now. More later.
Anyway, I went down there with 3 fellow Agape Italia staff, (Scott Ketrow, Nicole Lewis, and Sarah Strand) to discuss plans for a summer camp in August, where they are expecting about 150 “youth” between the ages of 18 and 27 to come for a week of fellowship, praise and worship, and teaching from the Word. “They” being the Reconciliation churches, have hosted this camp for the last several years with good success. But I get the impression it’s a typical camp/conference where everyone comes in, feels challenged, inspired, motivated… and for some there is significant life change, but for most, the emotions fade and life continues as before. Where our ministry fits in has yet to be determined, but I’m very optimistic that this week in August could be very fruitful in launching discipleship relationships between our Agape staff and Italian students throughout Italy.
From the perspective that the most valuable investment of our time here in Italy would be to train and equip Italian believers to lead spiritual movements to reach their nation for Christ, this could be the one of the greatest opportunities we will have had since I’ve been in Italy. Already Salvatore, the youth pastor at the church in Caserta and coordinator of the camp, has been planning ways to carry forward the momentum from this event. My prayer is that we would find a way to pour into these students during the week, and maintain those relationships throughout the next year, offering training and encouragement, and that through this, God would raise up Italian leaders to carry forward this movement.
The idea for now is that 10-12 students or volunteers would take on the role of spiritual leaders for the week, guiding group discussions among the remaining 140 or so students. The current plan involves follow up conferences in October and April to offer more practical training to those that can come. Our idea is that we would offer a separate training during that week in August for those 10-12 leaders and equip them to continue to pursue the relationships developed in the small groups during the week, so that training and discipleship can take place all year, even if only from a distance. We’ll still have the follow up conferences, but this plan, if our better Italian speaking staff can be utilized as leaders, will give us an opportunity to help build movements all throughout Italy. And that’s exactly what we came to do! I love to dream of small pockets of Italian believers beginning small movements in their groups of friends, and within a few years seeing those groups expand to have an impact on universities, and communities, and then cities and regions, and all of Italy. Somewhere in there, we missionaries slip away and move back home, or on to another location, while the Italian movement is finally Italian led and growing. That’s the dream, right? That’s the vision. Please join me in praying towards that end.
