Church Planting in Stockholm
The International Baptist Convention, of which North Sea Baptist Church is a member, has recently been ramping up its church planting efforts. Part of their strategy is the formation of LEAD Teams, and I am the captain of the one based in and around Scandinavia. 
In other words, I have a group of pastors currently from Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and Germany. There are three other teams who are also planting, or working toward planting, churches around the world. Currently the IBC has church plants underway in places like Darmstadt, Germany, and Panama City, Panama. My team is working toward planting a church in Stockholm, Sweden. We have begun to receive applications from church planters, but the process still has a long way to go. Once we find the person we believe God wants in the job, then their will likely be 12-18 months where they have to raise support, and Sweden is not a cheap country to live in.
In the meantime, we are also exploring the possibility of planting churches elsewhere, with ideas like Helsinki, Berlin, Oslo, and Reykjavik being thrown out amongst others. My hope is to do another site assessment, where a team of us goes to the location to meet with local pastors, community leaders, missionaries, local organizations, and more to get an idea if the place we are looking at is a viable site or not.
The unique thing about our church planting is that we are actually planting international churches. So we are looking at how many refugees, expats (professionals who are working abroad for some length of time such as in the oil industry or at an embassy), college students, and other internationals are living in the area and studying whether or not a primarily English-speaking church plant is warranted there. I plan to meet with my team over Skype in the next few weeks, then we have a two day meeting scheduled for March 21-23 where we will meet in person to continue to press forward on Stockholm and narrowing down where our next site assessment should be. Please keep us in your prayers as we seek to expand God’s Kingdom.
