"You're still here?" Why we are in Lučenec

 “You’re still here?”

Our first flat in Lučenec

Lucy and I had been thinking about buying a house. We had been living in Lučenec for a few years paying high rent. This was one of the last places I thought I would find myself. I spent my first two years in Slovakia, living in Lučenec, and my wife was from here. It’s not a bad place to live, a small town, a great park, but it’s not where we thought we would go. It felt like a step back, not forward. We prayed, fasted, ask others to join us in searching where God wanted us to go, and all signs pointed to Lučenec. My wife was working for the state as a social worker, I was working for the church helping with finding a way of revitalization, and our son was attending a Hungarian-speaking preschool and about to graduate to the first grade. Knowing that a mortgage would be cheaper than our rent we went to a real estate office to see what our options for homeownership are.

Taking Matúš to preschool

               “You‘re here?“ I ask recognizing the reality agent as someone I taught English to over a decade before. He was just as surprised to see me I think and started telling me about the others who had stayed in town after graduating. This seemingly random encounter turned into the seed of a new ministry.

At the pub

When we moved to Lučenec the plan had always been to help in the church first and after a few years to be released to plant a new church. We didn’t know for whom this church would be, but the desire was in our hearts. Starting from this one encounter the Lord has given us a circle of about 20-25 friends. We started first meeting up in the pub, then we gathered the families together in our backyard, we celebrated birthdays together, a wedding, and sadly even funerals. We are friends, and it has been through these friendships that we have been able to share our lives and our faith. You see, almost all our friends have two things in common 1). They have not yet trusted in the good news of Jesus, and 2). They are not connected with a community of Jesus.

One of the first BBQs in our yard

Upon further research into the statistics of our town, I found out a few things. The first is, the largest population in our town is the 30-65 year olds. In Europe, this group is known as being the hardest group to reach for Jesus; in fact, most of the time, we are told it’s an impossible group, so no one tries. We believe that God saves regardless of gender, education, social status, and even age. The second thing I learned was that in our town of roughly 30,000 people, over 5,000 claim to believe in nothing, with another 6,500 unknown. That means potentially one-third of our city is lost without hope and untouched by a Christian community.

Families gathering to eat in our yard

These stats just confirmed what our experience with our friends was. What the stats don’t show is how many of our new friends are interested in Jesus. They are not interested in an institutional or formalized church gathering, but they do have questions and what to talk about and learn more. We started a discussion group with those who desire to know more, and I believe that some of them are very close to giving their lives to Jesus. We believe that this is the seed of a new home church plant in our city. We also started dreaming and praying what if we could start more home churches in people’s yards, blocks of flats, dorm rooms, café’s, etc … What if Jesus could start up 12 new communities in our town, giving the lost a chance to hear and trust in the good news of Jesus, find a place among a loving community, and learn to follow Jesus in their context?

From my birthday party a year ago

We believe that this is what Jesus wants to do in our town, and we are asking others to partner with us through prayer, joining personally in work, and with finical gifts.

Our group, for the first year of discussions and talks about Jesus

The moral of the story is to always be prepared for those “random” meetings with people; you never know the places they can take you.

Noah